Conservatives have principles, but these are rather like a cluster of non overlapping positions. The propaganda machine is there to distract them from their inconsistencies by pointing out (or making up) the inconsistencies in others.
I do to some extent buy into Haidt’s argument that Conservatives are hyper-averse to risk in ways that Liberals are not. Although risk is not “risk” in a universal abstract sense but more like “risk of social change”. I do think it extremely difficult to separate the chicken from the egg in these culture identity markers though.
My basic premise though is that Conservatives conflate morality and legality, and it’s why their instincts are to legislate morality, and why they feel so threatened by legal challenges to the conventional moral order underpinned by legal precedent. To be fair, this is not a uniquely American point of view as virtually all conservative societies in the world do the same.
The Soviets existed in the same period, and they just annexed all of their surrounding areas, and murdered tens of millions. The Chinese murdered even more.
Those are atrocious authoritarian regimes. I will agree we’re better than them, because it’s pretty hard to be worse. I don’t agree that we’re inherently more righteous or have a better track record than most of our allies in NATO, for instance. They just reached their peaks in a different era.
I don’t think a modern day Britain, given our military might, would ruthlessly colonize half the world again, for instance (a few Brexiteers aside ;)).
Sure, but there were lots of societies that believed in many of those freedoms for select members of the society. The ancient Greeks believed in free speech rights and voting rights for some people, which means there’s little newin the Constitution.
I agree with that, but it’s irrelevant to the question of the scope of idealism in the original Constitution.
I think that begs the question (were the deaths all caused by anti-US forces the US was trying to stop?) butut doesn’t matter. You must surely agree that many people died as a direct result of US actions. How was it ‘extraordinary consideration’ to kill those people by aggressive war justified by lies?
Yet we’ve explicitly ruled out the notion that people following orders weren’t culpable. Both can be to blame, just as the US can be blamed for the deadly chaos which existed in Iraq. You understand that, as the occupying power, the US was legally responsible for safeguarding the population, right?
No, not at all. Your comparison is nonsensical on its face.
Ukranian colaborators acting under the orders of Nazis are not the same as opponents of the Nazis.
For your comparison to make sense, then the terrorists in Iraq who intentionally targeted civilians would have to be doing so under the orders of the US. They were not.
At this point, you are arguing for something which simply makes no logical sense to me. If it makes sense to you, then there’s no middle ground for us to come to an agreement on. It’s a pointless discussion, because we live in different realities.
It isn’t a comparison. It’s an example that illustrates that more than one party can be culpable.
There might be more point if you would actually respond to the questions I’ve asked you. Specifically, how does killing civilians in an aggressive invasion undertaken on false pretenses constitute extraordinary consideration for civilians? It’s like you’re saying that, other than the whole illegal aggressive war part, we were damned nice to them.
But you’re illustrating something that is entirely immaterial.
I mean, yes, of course more than one party can be culpable… if they collaborate in the act. If you and I both conspire to murder someone, we’re both culpable.
But if you murder someone, and I try to stop you, we’re not both culpable. Only you are culpable.
The Ukranians/Nazis are an example of the first case.
The US/Al’Qaeda are an example of the second.
There is a massive, fundamental difference between the two cases.
The US went to great lengths to AVOID killing civilians. Most of our casualties were taken while defending the civilian population against terrorist forces who were trying to kill them.
To put a number on this, at the end of the combat phase of the Iraq war, the total number of civilians actually killed by the US was only 7000. In a massive war. That’s an incredibly low amount of collateral damage. And that didn’t happen by accident. It happened because the US specifically tried to minimize that damage.
Large swathes of the Middle East and Asia have deep seated multi-generational blood-feuds with the US and its down to what the Americans did to them, not what they did to America.
Not quite sure how some on the friend havent figured out they are aggressors not defenders, and its not just militarily, its cultural imperialisation too.
Hurricane Maria only directly killed ~10 people. I think we can all agree that it was exceptionally humane and just as hurricanes go. The remaining 3000 deaths were the results of the terrorists. Why do you keep blaming the hurricane?
Let me flip one of @scottagibson’s points, because I think it is interesting and certainly relevant.
What role and responsibility does the US have for deaths that were not caused by US forces, but were the result of conditions and actions put in place due to US actions.
Meaning, do you feel the US is responsible for civilian deaths caused by malignant forces that rose due to conditions caused by toppling the existing power structures. Does the US bear responsibility for the effects of choosing to invade a nominally peaceful nation and causing a power vacuum. And how much responsibility does the US bear for the results of that.
Which I find it absolutely fair to compare the end results to the baseline status quo, and judge graded on that. What would the result have been had the US not invaded, and what were they after. That the after effects included creating the conditions in which ISIS was able to rise and expand is absolutely material in evaluating the situation. Though the US did not pull the trigger, or even intentionally make the decisions to kill civilians is balanced against the fact that we made the conditions in which that happened possible.
Taking it further, we then have to evaluate the effects based on what could be reasonably expected based on understanding the status quo, and what plans and measures you have in place afterwards. Then also balance that with the reasons for acting in the first place!
So the end result is that
-The US invaded a nation that was not under internal conflict
+said nation had a history of violent repression and authoritarian tactics
-War was initiated with false pretense
-for personal vendetta reasons
-without a meaningful long term strategy or planning in place for a post regime society
This in turn created
-a power vacuum which led to the rise of violent extremist groups
-multifaceted socio religious conflicts which had been dormant (or at least repressed) to burst out in force
-creating conditions where millions were killed or threatened with violence
+history indicates that some level of such conflicts would likely exist, probably even with state sanction. An order of magnitude (or more) less, but still non zero
+at some uncertain future point he regime would fail, which would have likely led to some violent disruptions
-but without a foreign power bumbling in the mix would likely have taken a different form, and may have led to a more stable balance
So add it up and while the US does not bear full responsibility, it is certainly fool hearty to suggest we have no culpability in any of those many civilian deaths.
We didn’t pull the trigger, but by creating the conditions where that would happen we certainly bear some responsibility.
Good post. “I just lit a match and dropped it into this gasoline-soaked pile of logs. The fire that burned down the city isn’t my fault.” This is precisely why aggression–particularly pre-emptive aggression–is illegal under international law, and why influential Just War philosophers like Michael Walzer suggest intervention toward regime topple should only be carried out in the presence of a very robust internal revolution. Whatever moral standing the U.S. gains because its military only shot twice as many civilians as its own military casualties is mitigated entirely by our military being there in the first place.
They left. Uploaded implanted memories and got the hell off this planet. Try as they might, they could never the code right so they implemented the version with the longest runtime before self destruct inevitably kicks in and hoped that sometime down the line someone would figure out a solution and patch it in. Hasn’t happened.
NGOs, and perhaps subsets of govts like Cuban medical aid, no doubt there are various bits of departments in foreign offices and international aid depts doing the right thing.
I would like to mention I listed the creation of the Home Box Office television series “The Wire” as a positive, but I overlooked the conditions it represents in America, which are integral to the story.
Dude, the US isn’t the country that colonized that region and broke it up into a bunch of random arbitrary states. That’s on Europe.
A thing to keep in mind here too with iraq, is that Hussein killed, on average, over 10k people every year, for 25 years, directly. Not even counting deaths from things like his wars… that’s just civilians that he disappeared, Stalin style.
I think this is an invalid comparison though, because the terrorists in Iraq who murdered civilians weren’t just a force of nature. They weren’t just “hunger” or something. The US absolutely did stay in Iraq, with the explicit purpose of helping the Iraqis rebuild their infrastructure.
The terrorist forces were actual people, with agency. They, in an attempt to harm both the US and the Iraqi people, murdered civilians intentionally. That’s their fault. The US actions in Iraq wouldn’t have resulted in those casualties if those terrorists didn’t actively try to murder civilians.
Even if we ignored the illogical nature of attributing deaths, not to those who committed the murders, but actually the people who were fighting in the defense of those people (Because we all realize that, right? Our men who were in Iraq during that period were actively fighting to defend those civilians from the terrorists), we are left with very bad implications if we accept that line of thinking.
If you accept that, then terrorism becomes the BEST action you can take… because not only to you terrorize a civilian population to try and achieve your political goals, but you are able to, through atrocities, actually associate those atrocities with the people you are fighting against. There’s no reason not to be a terrorist, because you can just be a terrorist while not sacrificing the moral high ground. Sure, you killed civilians, but the other side is responsible too! So whatevs!
Further, there’s the inherent failure in logic which exposes itself when you examine the scenario in anything beyond the most superficial level. If the US can be blamed for terrorists, because of some act we took that the terrorists are reacting to, then you can apply the exact same rationale to associate blame to Hussein himself. He had done all kinds of attrocities prior to our showing up. And hell, he was ACTUALLY murdering Iraqi civilians directly. And then his actions can be attributed to the British, who had carved up the region before him. It never ends. Blame becomes meaningless, because everything is related to everything.
No man, if you murder civilans on purpose, the fault lies with you. Because you didn’t HAVE to do that. Al Qaeda didn’t HAVE to murder Iraqi civilains. Their action does not follow as the required logical response to US actions in the region.
I think it is naïve to ever consider a country, almost any country, “good guys”. Countries are inherently supportive of what is in the best interests of it’s own people and/or business interests.
And somehow using countries that have never had the means to be “bad guys” as examples is comparing apples and oranges.
