I also believe in the right of other countries to be sovereign in their own territory and not be policed by the country that happens to be the most powerful.
So genocide is fine, so long as it's legal in the country in which it occurs?
(Yes, that's an extreme example, but your statement seemed equally extreme.)
No, it's not "fine", but I don't think it's morally right for other countries to punish it, either. And, on a pragmatic level, recent world history has shown that we make things worse.
If someone else's child hits his little sister, that's wrong of him, but it would also be wrong of me (a stranger not in loco parentis) to punish him.
So how long would you watch him punch his little sister? Until her nose bleeds? Until she falls unconscious?
And _some_ recent world history has shown we make things worse. I believe that a lot of the work in the Balkans was seen as a good thing, where genocide was prevented.
See my clarification here (http://andrewducker.livejournal.com/1640141.html?thread=10046669#t10046669). I was possibly jumping to conclusions.
My point was that it would be wrong for me to *punish* the hitter; I was imagining a situation where he only did it once and I then sent him to his bedroom or spanked him or took away his PlayStation.
If he were continuing to hit his sister, then if I could, say, separate the children until their parents got back so that he couldn't hit her, then that would be a good thing to do, obviously.
But the statement isn't, "s/he should be punished," it's "something must be done." That could be as much as shooting them in the head, or as little as physically restraining him.
Something must be done, yes, but what that something is isn't covered by the question, so I don't have a problem agreeing. To me, "Something must be done" is very similar in meaning to, "this can't be allowed to go on." How you dis-allow it or stop it being done is another matter.
Unless that something just writing a blog post, writing to your MP is the something that's most likely to have an effect. This is probably true. I wonder how much of an effect it has. We need studies!
Just to clarify: I'm assuming, possibly wrongly, that the kind of intervention you're talking about is large-scale and probably violent. If that's not the case, then I change my position. For example, if there's a genocide going on and we can give the victims safe passage over here and grant them asylum, then that's a good idea; that's not policing anyone or aggravating situations we don't understand.
I wasn't saying that the answer to X was to do _worse_ things. I don't think anyone was.
And you said that if an action was happening in another country then intervening was wrong. I assumed that you mean that intervening was more wrong than whatever was happening. As "countries" are constructs created by people with no 'natural' state of being, it seems you're willing to let these lines get in the way of saving people from awful fates.
"countries" are constructs created by people with no 'natural' state of being
So are laws, human rights, marriages, etc, but I respect those too.
Like I've said already, I think we were originally at cross purposes over the kind of "saving people" being discussed. I'm all for saving people in a way that involves offering them safety as opposed to going in and using our superior might to impose our will on their persecutors and force them to behave.
I'm with you on this ... there's sovreignty and there's humanity, and they are on different maps :-)
A country that decides that it is ok to have sausages that are less than 75% meat and chocolate and icecream that contain vegetable fat is not a case for sending in an army (well, depends on the chocolate!).
A country that decides it is ok to kill every baby darker than a certain skin tone, that's different.
And then you get the problem ... where is the moral dividing line? If a country seriously believes that life begins at conception sees a neighbouring country practicing abortion (and so, by country A's morals, is killing thousands of human lives) is it ok for Country A to invade Country B?
The first part of any genocide is declaring that some people aren't human (or aren't fully human) and that their lives are worth less than the killing groups. Whether this is done on race, skin tone, relgious belief or intelligence (and does eugenics like the forced sterilization practiced in Sweden in the first half of the 20th century on the mentally subnormal count?)
What about if country A sees women being badly treated, beaten and deprived of education and rights? Is it ok to stand by?
I am not looking for actual answers, I am merely raising the obvious point that as soon as you say it is ok to interfere in another country's affairs for a really good reason, then that opens the floodgates for people to decide their reason is really good. (e.g. to bring democracy, to bring education and sanitation, to bring "freedom", to stop the world being flooded with opium, to bring the "blessing of Christianity to the savages" etc. etc.)
Rwanda was terrible; Kosova, Bosnia the Kurds, and so many other situations equally so ... DR Congo and Zimbabwe ... where is it ok to go in, and what are acceptable justifications?
I can't answer that aside from the "if I point at it and say I think it's valid, then it's valid" level of decision making.
And then you get the problem ... where is the moral dividing line? Well, as morals are inherently subjective/intersubjective I'd say that there very much isn't a line, there's a great big blurry grey area.
If a country seriously believes that life begins at conception sees a neighbouring country practicing abortion (and so, by country A's morals, is killing thousands of human lives) is it ok for Country A to invade Country B?
Ok by who's standards?
I can't answer that aside from the "if I point at it and say I think it's valid, then it's valid" level of decision making. Me either. I'm ok with that though.
"The genocide is fine, if its legal in the country where it occurs" one is interesting:
Under Nazi law, being Jewish was essentially illegal. So was being homosexual.
After the war, the former was understood as genocide, but the latter wasn't, because - as I understand it - pre- and post- Nazi penal codes still defined homosexuality as illegal.
On this, I've often wondered what someone who was both Jewish and gay would say and where they would fit.
More generally, it's about different understandings - what is murder, rape, psychopathy etc, and are they universals?
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I also believe in the right of other countries to be sovereign in their own territory and not be policed by the country that happens to be the most powerful.
So genocide is fine, so long as it's legal in the country in which it occurs?
(Yes, that's an extreme example, but your statement seemed equally extreme.)
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If someone else's child hits his little sister, that's wrong of him, but it would also be wrong of me (a stranger not in loco parentis) to punish him.
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And _some_ recent world history has shown we make things worse. I believe that a lot of the work in the Balkans was seen as a good thing, where genocide was prevented.
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My point was that it would be wrong for me to *punish* the hitter; I was imagining a situation where he only did it once and I then sent him to his bedroom or spanked him or took away his PlayStation.
If he were continuing to hit his sister, then if I could, say, separate the children until their parents got back so that he couldn't hit her, then that would be a good thing to do, obviously.
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I'm glad to see you're on the side of intervention :->
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Something must be done, yes, but what that something is isn't covered by the question, so I don't have a problem agreeing. To me, "Something must be done" is very similar in meaning to, "this can't be allowed to go on." How you dis-allow it or stop it being done is another matter.
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Given the options presented to Parliament: War in Iraq. Do nothing for several months. Which way do you want your MP to vote?
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You have to make choices in it, and they would be driven by your moral code.
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Unless that something just writing a blog post, writing to your MP is the something that's most likely to have an effect.
(Actually assassinating MPs you think will vote the other way would be more effective. And some must be done.)
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Really?
That's now how I voted.
Unless that something just writing a blog post, writing to your MP is the something that's most likely to have an effect.
This is probably true. I wonder how much of an effect it has. We need studies!
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It's possible to understand that group A in a country is using group B as a scapegoat, lining them up and shooting them, I'd assume.
Personally, I don't see why drawing lines on the ground makes it ok to rape people on one side of the line and not on the other. Seems...odd to me.
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"There are ways of trying to stop bad_action_X which are even more wrong than bad_action_X" does not imply "bad_action_X is OK".
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And you said that if an action was happening in another country then intervening was wrong. I assumed that you mean that intervening was more wrong than whatever was happening. As "countries" are constructs created by people with no 'natural' state of being, it seems you're willing to let these lines get in the way of saving people from awful fates.
But I may be misunderstanding your answers here.
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So are laws, human rights, marriages, etc, but I respect those too.
Like I've said already, I think we were originally at cross purposes over the kind of "saving people" being discussed. I'm all for saving people in a way that involves offering them safety as opposed to going in and using our superior might to impose our will on their persecutors and force them to behave.
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Excellent point.
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A country that decides that it is ok to have sausages that are less than 75% meat and chocolate and icecream that contain vegetable fat is not a case for sending in an army (well, depends on the chocolate!).
A country that decides it is ok to kill every baby darker than a certain skin tone, that's different.
And then you get the problem ... where is the moral dividing line? If a country seriously believes that life begins at conception sees a neighbouring country practicing abortion (and so, by country A's morals, is killing thousands of human lives) is it ok for Country A to invade Country B?
The first part of any genocide is declaring that some people aren't human (or aren't fully human) and that their lives are worth less than the killing groups. Whether this is done on race, skin tone, relgious belief or intelligence (and does eugenics like the forced sterilization practiced in Sweden in the first half of the 20th century on the mentally subnormal count?)
What about if country A sees women being badly treated, beaten and deprived of education and rights? Is it ok to stand by?
I am not looking for actual answers, I am merely raising the obvious point that as soon as you say it is ok to interfere in another country's affairs for a really good reason, then that opens the floodgates for people to decide their reason is really good. (e.g. to bring democracy, to bring education and sanitation, to bring "freedom", to stop the world being flooded with opium, to bring the "blessing of Christianity to the savages" etc. etc.)
Rwanda was terrible; Kosova, Bosnia the Kurds, and so many other situations equally so ... DR Congo and Zimbabwe ... where is it ok to go in, and what are acceptable justifications?
I can't answer that aside from the "if I point at it and say I think it's valid, then it's valid" level of decision making.
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http://www.overcomingbias.com/2009/01/three-worlds-collide.html
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http://syndicated.livejournal.com/andyduckerlinks/608861.html
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Well, as morals are inherently subjective/intersubjective I'd say that there very much isn't a line, there's a great big blurry grey area.
If a country seriously believes that life begins at conception sees a neighbouring country practicing abortion (and so, by country A's morals, is killing thousands of human lives) is it ok for Country A to invade Country B?
Ok by who's standards?
I can't answer that aside from the "if I point at it and say I think it's valid, then it's valid" level of decision making.
Me either. I'm ok with that though.
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Under Nazi law, being Jewish was essentially illegal. So was being homosexual.
After the war, the former was understood as genocide, but the latter wasn't, because - as I understand it - pre- and post- Nazi penal codes still defined homosexuality as illegal.
On this, I've often wondered what someone who was both Jewish and gay would say and where they would fit.
More generally, it's about different understandings - what is murder, rape, psychopathy etc, and are they universals?
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