Max Sawicky wrote:
>
> You can't. I was alluding to previous discussions
> here, well before last week, that entailed comprehensive
> criticism of ethics or morality. I'm as raging a
> moralist as anyone. Some people claim to have
> transcended that, but it ends up coming out in
> disguised form.
>
I think you are playing with words here. That is, you use the words "passion" and "morality" as necessarily linked. But even the reactionary Swift knew better, in his remark that he did not blame the hawk that had been killing his chickens but was happy to hear that the hawk had been shot. I did, I think, post large excerpts from the chapter in Ollman's _Alienation_ in which he argues that Marx did not make ethical judgments.
I don't think it either moral or immoral to support working-class revolution. In fact, I think that all efforts to maintain a moral system ultimately depend on a theistic belief. You can't separate morals from priests.
Destroying the towers was outrageous -- but it was not in any sense immoral. That judgment would be pointless.
I vaguely remember an interesting article by Lenin insisting that one could be passionate in one's support or opposition without taking a moralistic stand. I'll have to look it up.
Carrol