Deserving Americans

Justin Schwartz jkschw at hotmail.com
Fri Sep 20 15:00:37 PDT 2002



>Justin wrote:
> > Except that what goes around eventually does come around.
>
>No, it doesn't. Bad people don't necessarily reap what they sow and
>neither
>do bad nations. That is, acting badly can, on balance, be in one's
>self-interest.

It's my view that in the long term oppression provokes resistance--if that's not true, we on the left can just hang it up. Not all that resistance is in what we;d consider to be a constructive form.


>
> > I'd say 3000 dead at home, plus USAPA, are new reasons for that
>opposition,
>
>Only if we buy your theory of karma (I'd be interested to hear you ground
>it
>metaphysically).

How 'bout a simple causal story. If we hadn't been mucking around with the mujahadeen in AFghanistan, had kept our bases out of Saudi, etc., Osama bin Ladin wouldn't have been interested in us.

The US could well incur domestic casualties as a
>consequence of good foreign policy that some groups or nations might take
>exception to.

Of course. I never said that virtue is rewarded. I said that vice is punished. Not the same thing at all.

Put it this way: Timothy McVeigh's bombing of the Oklahoma
>federal building did not give us new reasons to oppose tax policy.

I confess not to seeing the analogy.
>


>
> > Hmph. Given what in general I now do for a living, let's hope not. Right
>now
> > I'm doing something very good that all would approve of, helping to
>instruct
> > a municipal police force how to not violate the Constitution (they
>asked).
> > But generally what I do now is to defend the rich and powerful (at best)
> > against each other.
>
>So do you think your serving the forces of evil?

Hey, our client list includes, e.g., RJ Reynolds. I didn't say that they were the forces of evil. I said that they were rich and powerful. You filled in the enthymeme. Me, I will never say anything bad about our clients. They are all creatures of light.

Eric Lormand, a leftist
>philosophy prof, recently questioned the consistency of my desire to become
>a corporate law whore with my professed inclinations to alleviate human
>suffering.
>

Yeah, I can see the conflict. Feel it myself.

jks

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