An Asymmetrical Assault on Reality
David Luban
Axiom 1: We are good people.
Axiom 2: Our enemies are bad people.
Axiom 3: Anything that helps good people beat bad people is good.
Corollary 1: Whatever we do to beat our enemies is good.
Corollary 2: Whatever hinders us from doing what we do to beat our enemies is bad.
Theorem 1: Anything that makes us look bad is false. (Proof: If it makes us look bad, it must be false, because, according to Corollary 1, what we do to beat our enemies is good, not bad.)
Corollary 3: It can't be true that the Guantanamo prisoners killed themselves because of how we treated them. (Proof: That would make us look bad. Whatever makes us look bad is false.)
Surprising Corollary 4: Facts that make us look bad are false.
(Proof: Follows directly from Theorem 1.) (Comment: If you thought that facts can't be false, you haven't understood that truth and falsity are moral terms: truth is what good people say, falsity is what bad people say. If bad people state facts, those facts are false.)
Theorem 2: Laws that constrain us are bad. (Proof: Follows directly from Corollary 2.) But ?
Axiom 4: Good people support the rule of law, and that makes the rule of law good.
Corollary 4: We support the rule of law. (Proof: By Axiom 1, we're good people; and by Axiom 4, good people support the rule of law.)
Surprising Theorem 3: Laws that constrain us don't exist. (Proof: By Theorem 2, a law that constrains us would be bad. But by Axiom 4, the rule of law is good. Therefore there cannot be such a thing as a law that constrains us.)
Axiom 5: Anything that anyone uses against us is a weapon of our enemies.
Decisive Theorem: Any international forum or legal argument that might constrain us, or anything that might make us look bad, is a weapon of our enemies.
Axiom 6: We're strong and our enemies are weak.
Corollary 5: Any international forum or legal argument that might constrain us, or anything that might make us look bad, is a weapon of the weak. To put it in other words, it is an act of asymmetric war against us.
QED
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