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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (67381)	9/6/2004 1:59:11 PM
From: Rambi	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793955

I don't believe in absolutes. Terrorism would fall very high on my sliding scale of evil, but I can conceive of an extreme situation where an event could push me out of my normal moral framework and terrorism becomes justifiable. That sliding scale of evil has different trigger points for most of us (as individuals, community, country) where consequentiality can overcome the absolute, imo, and then violation of the codes we live by occurs. Certainly Beslan triggers something in me that would allow me to violate my normal Thou shalt not kill almostabsolute. I think I could look in the eyes of those people and shoot them cold. I'm not sure, though, if that means there are no absolutes, or we just decide the hell with the absolute. I saw an article this morning in the Toronto Star that said some of the Beslan terrorists were appalled when they realized that children were the hostages and this "sparked a dispute in which some of the objecting militants were killed by their own comrades". Itr struck me that even though they had crossed the bright line of absolute morality regarding terrorism and murder, they entered yet another sliding scale of terrorist morality with its own nonos. If the absolute fits, wear it?

To: Lane3 who wrote (67381)	9/6/2004 2:42:04 PM
From: carranza2	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 793955

Do you think terrorism is an absolute moral nono? There are a few acts which most moral codes seem to hold reprehensible. Attacks on children, the infirm, schools, bona fide religious structures, and hospitals seem to fit the bill. I certainly can see the next question you will ask coming down the road, and it is a good one: "Would we, as a presumptively moral society, countenance the kinds of acts of terror we see being done against us and our friends if we were as similarly aggrieved as the terrorists claim to be?" I think this is the question you may have wished to ask, since it requires us to think of the outer limits of the kind of conduct in which we are willing to engage. But since I beat you to it, what is your response to my question? vbg