> Even though you didn't answer my question whether
> folks involved in My Lai ought to "should receive the
> same [military] benefits as a five-star general at 30
> years,"
I apologize for my oversight. Yes, absolutely. Or can you propose a reason we should make the wars that spawn such atrocities cheaper for the societies and governments that sanction them?
> So, to answer your question, no, I don't
> share every assumption of bourgeois ideology. I'm
> unapologetically selective about it.
You go on to address specific scenarios without addressing the question of underlying assumptions. This is probably my fault for not clarifying what I meant. Please allow me to correct my error.
Do you believe that it is the responsibility of the state to punish behavior you, or for that matter everyone, find immoral, disregarding the question of any harm that behavior's perpetrator might pose to society in the future?
If so, to be a complete prick and argue by book, I suggest you read John Thornton's fourth post in this thread yesterday and follow it up with a skim of Foucault's Discipline and Punish. Such moralistic thinking is as definitively a product of the bourgeoisie as the displacement of hereditary hierarchies with meritocratic ones.
If you don't believe this as it concerns, say, Stanley Tookie Williams after 24 years on death row, why do you keep applying it to William Calley?
-- "Hige sceal þe heardra, heorte þe cenre, mod sceal þe mare, þe ure mægen lytlað."