You "fought for my freedoms"? which ones?

Great Debates
61

**

No. He’s not. It’s not a morally relativistic ethical decision or whatever bullshit rationalization you want to call it. It’s simpler than that. If you live in this country, enjoy it’s freedoms and advantages, than it is a part of the basic societal contract that you do your duty when you are called upon to do it.

If you fail to do so, you’re not a man. You’re not even a dog. You are the same as a person who would run and leave his children in danger. You are the same as a person who would cower and hide while others fight and die on your behalf.

I consider it contemptible.

It has nothing to do with cowardice. Lots of cowards go to war. It has to do with character. If a man feels that he cannot ethically fight for his country than the path a man of character takes is the same path Ali and Thoreau take. You stand up to the government. You object, and you take your punishment.

There is no ethic in enjoying the fruits of society by evading and lying so that you don’t have to bear your share of the costs.

Fair enough. And some did. And, they paid the price. Others hid or went to Canada or claimed diseases and exemptions and let other people fight for them.

You cannot both claim the ethical highground by objecting to the war while at the same time lying or running to avoid your duty and the consequences of your decision.

I think I know my father a little bit better than you do. He respected people who stood up for what they believed in.

The key point is the standing up. If you are unwilling to stand up for what you beleive in your beliefs don’t matter, and neither do you.

So, I think I understand quite clearly his respect for those who disagreed but stood up for their beliefs, and I’m pretty damn certain about his contempt for those who wouldn’t and didn’t.

Someone who objects to the war but hides, lies, or runs to avoid the negative consequences of both war and his personal beliefs has no ethos.

The ethics of self-interest are not ethics at all.

62

Gee…all this time I thought it was normal to think of myself and family first. Oh, HORRORS, I’m a sinner in a sea of Saints!!! :smack:

63

I call it “respect for people who make ethical decisions with which you disagree.” I won’t spit on soldiers and call them babykillers, even though I think it’s murderously wrong to fight in an unjust war. And I won’t respect people who call a decision to avoid an unjust war “contemptible.”

Nobody has any duty to fight in an unjust war. Talk about duty is immaterial. If anything, every individual has a duty not to fight an unjust war.

But I understand that you’ve got a kickass armchair from which you can soldier, so maybe I should be more understanding.

Daniel

64

D’oh! Naturally, that was me and not burundi snarking at Scylla for his holier-than-thou attitude.

Daniel

65

**

Evading one’s responsibilities is not an ethical decision. It is one that demonstrates a lack of ethics.

**

You’re doing a marvelous job of evading the central issue. Here it is again:

If a person enjoys the benefits and freedoms of a society he is ethically responsible to uphold them.

If he is called upon to fight in a war there are three and only three ways in which he might ethically respond.

  1. He may decide that the war is just and fight willingly.

  2. He may decide the war is unjust, or not know if it is just or not but feel that as a member of society it is his duty to go.

  3. He may feel sure that the war is unjust, engage in civil disobedience and openly reject the call to arms, accepting the penalties for his ethical decision.

Lying or misrepresenting or evading in order to escape one’s responsibilities while still enjoying the liberties and freedoms of society which you have not earned and refused to pay for is not an ethical decision. It is lying and stealing.

It is lying and stealing from every person who fought or died for this country.

It is lying and stealing from every person who refused to serve under ethical grounds and accepted the penalties for their decision.
You keep refusing to address this issue. There are no ethics in simple avoidance, in lying or manipulating in order to escape your responsibilities without penalty.

I have nothing but contempt for it, be it a draft dodger, or a man who cheats on his taxes, or a father who refuses to pay child support.

There are no ethics in evading responsibilty.

66

Well, I think that moving to Canada to avoid the draft was an ethical thing to do, if you were against the war and/or the draft. If you don’t want to fulfill your “duty” as an American, then move somewhere else, if you will.

Which got me thinking about a scenario (sorry for the tangent):

Let’s say you’re drafted, and you show up at the induction and tell them “I’m against this war and the draft, but I’m reporting because it’s the law. Go ahead and induct me, but my heart’s not in it, therefore I wouldn’t be an effective soldier or support person. You still want me, Uncle Sam?”

I’m sure this type of thing happened back in those days. So what happened to those folks? Did they get jailed? Released from obligation? Made to work in a hospital or something?

67

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Scylla *

. If you live in this country, enjoy it’s freedoms and advantages, than it is a part of the basic societal contract that you do your duty when you are called upon to do it.

If you fail to do so, you’re not a man. You’re not even a dog. You are the same as a person who would run and leave his children in danger. You are the same as a person who would cower and hide while others fight and die on your behalf.

I consider it contemptible.

This is not the most asinine, emotionally insensitive, and confrontational statement I have ever encountered. But it’s gaining on the others.

How utterly inane to believe that just because the “government of the day”'s policy is such and such, that the populace should blindy follow that policy and go to war (or whatever) like unthinking sheep.

Does the writer of that truly astonishing comment really believe that the government in power (be it Johnson’s, Nixon’s, Reagan’s, Clinton’s or Bush’s IS the United States? I certainly hope not.

I shudder to think what kind of a country we would have today if in our history we would not have doggedly “stalked” and questioned and many times prostested against each of our 43 “governments”. There are numerous examples. Some that come quickly to mind are: slavery, women’s suffrage, civil rights/segregation. the House Unamerican Activitis Committee hearings led by Joseph McCarthy etc. ]

Scylla would have made a good German back in the 1930’s and 40’s. According to his philosophy of the social contract between the people and their country…he would of “just followed orders”

68

I agree. But if a war does not uphold the benefits of a society, then a person is not responsible to fight in the war. If there’s a group of people in the society who threaten the person with harm if she doesn’t fight in the war, they’re behaving unethically, and they’ve forfeited the right to her honesty.

She’s not shirking responsibility: there’s no responsibility here to shirk. There’s no such thing as a responsibility to fight in an unjust war.

There may be a responsibility to protest an unjust war, FWIW, my father was active in the antiwar movement, and did a tour in the Peace Corps.

But the responsibility to protest an unjust war does not derive from membership in any given society: it is a responsibility shared by all human beings.

And Thoreau is a silly example of someone who accepted the responsibility of protesting an unjust war. Read a bit more about him, and you’ll find out that, while well-intentioned, he was a well-off mama’s boy who hardly suffered for his beliefs.

Daniel

69

No offense Scylla, but when I hear righteous raging about our duty to risk our lives for our country, it generally seems to be coming from someone who hasn’t done it themselves. Citing your father’s service and then telling us how you think he feels (coincidentally mirroring your own views) is a little half-assed.

Both of my grandfathers fought in WWII (one was at Normandy, the other was in the Pacific), and I never heard either one of them make the kind of judgements you’re making. Frankly, I don’t know how they felt about it. I wish I’d asked them. I won’t presume to speak for them.

70

I just want to comment on this surreal interpretation of ethics.

John says, “You know, poor old Hnom hasn’t done anything to me [the war is unjust], but I live in a society in which I have a color television and free public libraries, and that society tells me I should go kill poor old Hnom, so I guess I’ll go shoot him.” And John is behaving ethically?

I just don’t see it.
Daniel

71

Whether or not a given war is ethical is an entirely different discussion than how one discharges one’s duty to society. I accept that an individual in a society may decide that a given action is so unethical that his higher duty is to refuse to take part in it.

This is the important part, Dan. Honesty is not something you owe to another person. Ethics are not something you owe to society. These are things that you owe to yourself.

Because one believes a war is unjust does not allow or excuse that person’s unethical behavior.

Honesty is not something you give to society or to somebody else, it is something you give to yourself.

This person is shirking several responsibilities. First there is the responsibility to the society he is a part of. You seem to agree that we are responsible to society and the people in it.

This person has acted unethically and through that person’s failure they have damaged those soldiers who did not evade or lie and are now fighting and dying in this person’s place.

This person has damaged those people who believed the war was unethical and refused to fight, yet who stood up to society and accepted the consequences of their actions and had the courage of their convictions. He should be in jail with them.

A person who says “I am prepared to discharge my duties to my country, but I refuse to serve because I will not fight in an unjust war,” and accepts the consequences of that statement, has acted ethically.

A person who runs or hides or lies in order to evade their responsibilities and the consequences of their own actions has not.

They have demeaned themselves. They have damaged the society that they refuse to help, those who protest in good faith, and those who serve.

As I said earlier, they are contemptible, as all people who evade their responsibilites and refuse to accept the consequences of their own actions are contemptible.

[/quote]
There may be a responsibility to protest an unjust war, FWIW, my father was active in the antiwar movement, and did a tour in the Peace Corps.
[/quote]

The way to protest the war is to be a conscientious objector. You show up at the draft board when you are supposed to. You don’t lie. You don’t misrepresent, and you don’t evade. You say “The war is unjust and I refuse to fight, and will not serve.”

By doing so, you are recognizing that you have a debt to the society of which you are a part. You have made a protest that matters.

What does “protest” mean anyway? It’s like “denounce,” or “renounce.” They are empty words, signifying nothing but an unwillingness to engage in meaningful action. It’s saying “I don’t like this, but I’m not willing to do anything but complain.”

Protesting means nothing. Resistance is meaningful. Going to jail for your beliefs is resistance. Partying against the war as a protest is a joke.

**

I’ll bet I know a lot more about Thoreau than you do. Whether or not you consider him a hyprocrite is a moot Ad Hominem. It has nothing to do with the validity of the arguments he put forth in “Civil Disobediance.”

72

I don’t consider Thoreau to be a hypocrite; that’s not what I said.

I don’t agree that anyone has any responsibility to society; I don’t believe in a collectivist ethics. We have moral duties toward other human beings, whether or not the are subjects of any particular state.

Honesty is not something I owe to myself; I have no idea what that would mean. Honesty is a means of not inhibiting other peoples’ freedom: if I tell you the truth as I understand it, I do not impinge on your ability to make free, informed decisions. But if you’re already impinging on my ability to make free, informed decisions (e.g., threatening to throw me in prison if I don’t kill on your behalf), then you’ve forfeited your right to honest dealings from me.

If I lie and don’t go kill on your behalf, then I’m not violating some responsibility to other soldiers. By killing on your behalf, they’re violating their responsibility toward the people they’re killing. If you’ve forced them to kill on your behalf, then you’re violating your responsibilities toward the people they’re killing, too.

The Good of the State doesn’t trump the Good of the Individual, and when people acting under the guise of a state engage in unethical action, they’re individuals acting unethically.

Once more: there is no debt, no duty, no responsibility to “society.” THere is only debt, duty, responsibility toward other individuals.

Before you can convince me otherwise, you’ll need to show me that society is a moral agent and a moral subject.

Daniel

73

Dan:

Earlier I said: “If a person enjoys the benefits and freedoms of a society he is ethically responsible to uphold them.”

You quoted me and said: “I agree.”

Now you say you don’t recognize the ethics of collectivism.

Which is it?

74

I see what you’re saying. I was unclear and should have elaborated:

If a group of people is engaging in a set of activities that promote freedom, then a person who benefits from those specific activities should assist in them when asked. An individual who benefits from a group’s activities in other ways should, if asked by members of the group to assist in obtaining those benefits, either (if feasible) opt out of those benefits, or help obtain them.

Fighting in an unjust war like Vietnam doesn’t fit under these criteria. It didn’t promote freedom, so no individual needs to assist in it. And it didn’t provide other benefits to generic members of the public (by which I mean, people who didn’t work for Boeing, the Pentagon, etc.), and so generic individuals didn’t need to opt out of the nonexistent benefits if they chose not to fight.

If, for example, I go to the public library every day, then I should pay library taxes. If I drive on public streets, then I should pay road taxes. But if I live as the subject of a state that doesn’t restrict my freedoms too much, I don’t owe that state anything – and I have a positive duty NOT to go kill other people on behalf of that state.

Normally, I have a positive duty not to lie to the people who comprise the state: to do otherwise is to restrict their freedom of decision. But if those people threaten to restrict my own freedoms, then I have every right to defend myself against that threat in a commensurate manner. Lying to them to deflect their threats is certainly commensurate.

Daniel

75

**

No autopsy, no foul.

I think it goes farther, but I’ll provisionally agree with you, so far.

**

You know, I do talk to my father about it, and while growing up, most of my father’s close friends were veterans. I can understand people having difficulty with the conditions that led to the Vietnam war, and questioning those, but there is little doubt that our soldiers were fighting for freedom. Lest you forget, we were fighting alongside Vietnamese soldiers who were fighting for a Democratic State. Not only did our Vietnamese allies want us there, they were depending on us to help them secure their freedom, against the Communists.

If you mean that we were not fighting for our own freedom than I would disagree. We promote our own freedom by helping to secure it for others.

It goes further than that. As a part of society, you pay taxes that do not directly benefit you, but rather benefit society as a whole of which you are a part. To use your library tax example, not everybody who pays library taxes may necessarily use the library. But, they still pay the taxes because the are a part of a society that has determined that a library is worth funding. Similarly you may drive on a road all day long, but pay only a small part of road taxes. Your disproportionate use of the roads is funded by those who use the roads rarely if not at all, and others’ disproportionate use of the library may be funded by you in turn. As a member of society who enjoys it’s benefits you are responsible for upholding even those benefits that you do not personally make use of, and even those that you may disagree with.

Let me ask you this: According to this previous statement let us say that you witness a horrible murder. The police question you, yet you know that if you answer truthfully you will be subpoened and required to testify in a court of law. You freedoms will be restricted by this requirement and as a key witness you may be held in protective custody.

Therefore you believe that it would be ok to lie to the police and say that you saw nothing in order to avoid the restrictions of freedom that your mandatory testimony would entail.

Is this a substantially correct interpretation of your ethical stance?

76

Scylla, that’s not a correct interpretation of my position. In the case of the murder, by lying to the police, I’m aiding a murderer in her escape. By aiding a murderer, I am causing indirect harm to lots of people: both to any future victims of the murderer, and to any victims of any other murderer who is emboldened by the first murderer’s escape. Such a lie is harmful.

If I lie in order to escape an unjust war, I am avoiding harm to the people whom I might otherwise end up killing, and to people who might be killed if the war goes on for longer because it’s got one more soldier. I could avoid harming more people if I worked actively and passionately against the unjust war, either through civil disobedience or guerilla action, it’s true – but in any case I’m acting more ethically by lying than I would be by killing someone in an unjust war.

I do not believe that Vietnam was a war on behalf of freedom. South Vietnam was not a democratic government except by the most bizarre stretch of the term. But I also don’t think this thread is the place to debate whether Vietnam was a just war. Stipulating that it’s unjust, I think anyone who avoided killing people in it was acting more ethically than anyone who participated in it. Those who worked actively against the war effort were acting even more ethically than those who neither aided nor hindered it; but the real obligation people had was not to fight in the war at all.

Nevertheless, I am just barely humble enough to recognize that I’m not the arbiter of ethics; I passionately believe that the war was evil, but I cannot be sure of that. I believe that other people can legitimately arrive at different ethical conclusions. And even though I might have to work against those people, that won’t stop me from respecting their decisionmaking. That’s why I don’t hold soldiers in contempt.

Daniel

77

US soldiers fought wars to liberate people from Soviet domination so that they could live under US domination. Judging from their experience, most of them preferred Soviet domination. We murdered 3 million Vietnamese to liberate them from Communism. In a Buddhist sense, they are liberated because their spirit is no longer trapped in a material body. Now we are about to murder millions of Iraqis to liberate them from Saddam Hussein. Being Arabs, they will be grateful to us for sending them to paradise and liberating them from their suffering in the stinking oil-soaked desert. We will also liberate them from their oil, land, and water. They won’t need it in paradise.

But the joke is on the US military. During the cold war they went around the world battling communism and socialism. In doing so they were living under a system of blind obedience to central authority, low pay, free health care, subsidized rent and food, etc. In other words, they were living under a communist system. Ha ha, I think that is really funny.

I also laugh everytime I hear a military type talk about freedom, when they have no freedom in the military. Anybody who would so readily give up his or her freedom obviously never had it in the first place. The military going around the world defending freedom is like a bunch of blind people extolling the virtues of sight while jabbing hot needles into everyone’s eyes.

Life is a grand comedy.

78

I would like to remind you that during World War II the Germans had superior tanks, planes, solders and about everything else. What the US had was a lot of willing workers and assembly lines to outproduce Germany in tanks, planes and such. Were it not for the people who worked 12-16 hour days building these things we would have lost the war. Don’t for one moment think the people in the background weren’t fighting for your freedoms. I saw it, I know. In one case Liberty ships, large cargo vessels were built at the rate of 1 every 10 days, in one case a ship was built in 5 days. Some of these ships were given flight decks and became baby aircraft carriers. In all 1700 of these ships were built during the war, along with 60,000+ aircraft, etc. Don’t ever discount the man behind the scenes, without him we would have lost.

Love
Leroy

79

You may well be correct that Grenada was “a little speck of an island nobody had ever heard of,” but if so, it’s only because “nobody” was paying attention.

In March of 1983 President Reagan went on national television and warned: “the new airport being built in Grenada is intended as a military facility for the Russians and Cubans. It would have a 10,000-foot runway………although “Grenada doesn’t even have an air force. Who is it intended for? … The rapid build-up of Grenada’s military potential is unrelated to any conceivable threat. … The Soviet-Cuban militarization of Grenada … can only be seen as a power projection into the region.”
He also displayed aerial photos of the construction site.
New York Times, 3/26/83

One month later, on April 10, the Beirut bombing occurred.

Six months later, on October 4, there was a Marxist military coup on Grenada accompanied by the murder of Prime Minister Maurice Bishop.

Six days after that, on October 10, the US invaded.

Reagan certainly could have been influenced by Beirut, but you’ll forgive me if I remain unconvinced.

80

**

So a lie is bad when it harms others?

**

I doubt that you wish to argue that t he ends justify the means, but that looks to be what you are doing, i.e that it is ok to engage in unethical behavior for ethical ends, like lying to a draft board to avoid and unjust war. The fact is that this lie also does harm. By avoiding the draft, the draft board goes and inducts the next person in line. He goes to war and fights and dies in the place of the person that lied. No good has been done. There is not “one less soldier fighting” as you would like to believe. No fewer people are subject to war. If you dodge the draft, you have harmed the person who is forced to serve in your place.

You have also harmed those conscientious objectors who have accepted the penalty of refusal. Their cause has been undermined, by your selfish motivations.

You have also harmed the society. You have received it’s benefits, but you have both refused to either fight, or actively disobey and effect change. No fewer people die, or are subject to war. In fact the potential for a moral man to make a difference in that war and act compassionately is gone.

Of all the possible choices one can make who objects to a war, lying, running and avoiding your responsibility is the lowest most contemptible choice.

One could serve, one could object, one could serve as a medic, running away and lying serves only oneself is a poor way to discharge responsibility. I feel comfortable dismissing higher motives in one who would rationalize such a low and contemptible action.

Be a medic. Object conscientiously. Lying for your own self-interest so you can party at Woodstock and pretend that it means your acting ethically is the most transparent of rationalizations.

It’s like the library. You may not like the library, but society as a whole has deemed it necessary. As a member of society you are required to pay taxes to support it. You don’t get to pick and choose what you get to support. You contribute to the whole.

It’s the same with war. If our society decides to fight, you don’t get to pick and choose and say “I want to continue to enjoy all the good things my society offers, but I’m not going to fight in the war.” You either go to war, or, if you are so sure that the war is wrong, you go to jail and object conscientiously. That’s having the courage of your convictions. That’s acting ethically. Making others serve in your place so that you can hang out with girls, drink booze, do drugs, listen to rock and roll, and call it an ethical protest is fooling nobody. Making somebody else fight and die in your place is not ethical behavior. Accepting the benefits of society without its responsibilities is not ethical behavior. Running hiding and lying is not ethical behavior.

**

Moral relativism is a convenient tool of rationalization. Good ethics aren’t so malleable.

Ethics are what you do that’s not in your best interests. Ethics occur when you accept the consequences of your actions, when you have the courage of your convictions.

If we wish to use your “do less harm” criteria for ethics, the war protest wasn’t exactly a good thing. We had the ability to win in Vietnam. We didn’t use that ability in part because of the unpopularity of the war.

Our soldiers in Vietnam fulfilled their ethical responsibility by going. Our society failed them by not supporting them.

So I have quite a bit of contempt for the anti-war protesters of the sixties that harmed our soldiers, those scum who had neither the courage to fulfill their duty nor the conviction to accept the consequences for their beliefs.