marshall wrote:
MarketAndChurch wrote:
it is a left wing impulse to say that morality is all relative and draw moral equivalents.... they have their suicide bombers, we have our abortion clinic bombers, its all relative, we shouldn't judge. The terrorists are weak, and fighting the powers that be, and the Left also identify's with that as well. There is no objective morality, the weak, the poor, the powerless are to be admired and the strong, the rich, and the powerful criticized. That is how the left everywhere divide the world. One mans terrorist is another mans freedom fighter is never said about the US military. The left never shrug at the negative accusations thrown at our military, and use that line. So for them, it is only true about terrorists, and secondly, those terrorists are freedom fighters. The question they do love to ask is "What did we do to deserve this?" It is an interesting question, mainly because I have yet to understand the motivations behind it. If anyone knows, feel free to enlighten me.
The right's "my country right or wrong" attitude looks a lot like moral relativism. Only the right doesn't see their own hypocrisy. The right must be certain in it's absolute moral righteousness because to ask questions is to portray weakness. Moral uncertainty is the enemy of the right. It is safer to assume your country only acts for noble causes and be wrong than to have less than 100% moral clarity and portray vulnerability. The right operates on the principles of fear, loyalty, and blind deference to those they see as their protectors. These are the same moral codes street gangs operate on. Loyalty to the home team trumps everything else.
Also, to the right, trying to understand the psychological motives of the enemy is too dangerous because it threatens moral clarity. Nevermind that understanding the motives of terrorists might help us better combat them on the ideological front. Nope, it's better to just assume they are cartoonish simple minded monsters with no motive other than pure evil. Then we can justify bombing them into the stone age, civilian casualties be damned.
But you see, that's where you have to ask whether claims are true or not, and debate them. I think Vietnam was moral. South Korea was moral. WW2 was moral. The Cold War was moral. Kosovo was moral. Desert Storm was moral. The Iraq war was moral. And if we disagree, then we can debate them. When the right says those actions are moral, it is not because they fear moral uncertainty or do not want to be portrayed as weak on those issues. It is because they actually believe in those positions, and you should not excuse that just because you cannot possibly imagine someone taking those positions. That is the Left's problem: Not taking the Right seriously. They think someone either has to be misinformed, stupid, or has bad intentions to hold the positions that the Right does, thus barring the Left-winger from taking someone who holds those positions in a serious light.
Loyalty is a normal social demand of any human movement. Where does any left wing group break from Leftism's Race, Gender, and Class trinity? When they do, they are corrected by the left as an immoral movement, and distance themselves from it.
On the right, we see you bombing a bunch of people, inciting hateful policies and behaviors against women, minorities, gays, and instituting a theocratic state that is hostile to personal freedom, and we don't care what you think, because we could give 2-sh**'s about intentions. The road to hell has been paved by good intentions, so it is something we cannot preoccupy ourselves with. When you behave an indecent manner, especially by killing the innocent, you may have had the most beautiful intentions, as Mao had to collectivize proletariat forces for a better future, but none of it matters in the final analysis if it does not produce good. We ask what does good... you ask what sounds good, what feels good, what means good. The questions we ask are determined by our values, and we have completely different values.
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It is not up to you to finish the task, nor are you free to desist from trying.
05 Nov 2012, 10:06 am
. You caught everyone *completely* by surprise with that statement.
