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The latter is sheer, unadulterated terrorism, without any conceivable moral
or political justification.
========
This presupposes that a human being has the moral authority to inaugurate
violent, death inducing acts against other persons or instruct or command
others to engage in said behavior.
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McVeigh blew up a day care center, and then
called the dead infants "collateral damage." Rhetorically playing with and
identifying with this kind of "resistance" to the state, a la Cockburn,
Ignatiev and now Vidal, is, in my view, a pose of "revolutionary real
politik" designed to show that one is subject to weak, vulnerable human
feelings, such as minimal nurturing care for an infant. There is, I might
add, an obvious gendering to this discourse.
Ian may want to argue for a pacifist position. Of all the moral absolutisms [ie, moral doctrines which allow no exceptions to their rules], I think pacifism is most defensible. If you are going to insist upon an universal prohibition, than the taking of human life is about as good a prohibition as I can think of. But this does not allow for the taking of human life in self-defense, or in the defense of someone unable to defend him/herself. ============= Jujitsu, Aikido etc. should be mandatory education. Self-defense is quite possible without killing the opponent.
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And I recognize that necessity. A just war can be a war in self-defense. ======= That's what the Japanese and Germans said. Preemptory self-defense is one of the finer lies in life.
Ian