Peter van Heusden <pvh at egenetics.com>:
> > Ken, are you going senile or something? Think about what you're saying - the
> words "guilty" and "innocent" - doesn't that remind you of the debacle of
> Clinton and Lewinsky? The most recent test of innocence in US political
> consciousness - which culminated in Clinton bombing Sudan...
kenneth.mackendrick at utoronto.ca:
> If notions of responsibility and accountability currently fall short of their
> own ideals, or even some sort of non-idealistic practice, or the structures and
> institutions of national and international justice are impoverished, the point
> isn't to get rid of them, rather, to improve them (or get rid of some of them
> and built new institutions). Are you more comfortable with the designation that
> Clinton is neither guilty nor innocent? Guilt and innocence might not be the
> best ways to characterize responsibility and accountability... but we've got
> some fairly important concepts here that are tied up with justice, morality and
> law... concepts that I wager function to make any kind of sanity possible.
> Should corporations not be held accountable and responsible for their actions?
> Is the idea of guilt antiquated?
The idea of guilt, responsibility, and accountability, applied to corporations or the U.S. government, implies that these institutions may be good or bad, that there is no fundamentally valid critique of their _existence_. Abolition of the State and the class war aren't needed, just better rulers and class warriors, for some meaning of _better_.