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

To: LindyBill who wrote (98492)	2/3/2005 2:16:29 PM
From: LindyBill	Respond to of 793697

Moral And Causal Responsibility (JPS) Teh Conservative Philsopher By JPS A basic move in the Left's arsenal is that of assimilating moral to causal responsibility. This is visible in it's effort to make the U.S. responsible for world terrorism by arguing that the terrorism is the natural end result of U.S. foreign, fiscal, and political policies, decisions, and actions. In a way, the very vulnerability of the causal claim is a clever lure designed to entice us away from the weaker but more important premise. In our haste to challenge and dismiss the causal claim, we are distracted from the far more interesting and far-reaching Left thesis, namely that moral responsibility is nothing other than causal responsibility. Of course, the Left neither states this principle explicitly, nor does it apply it universally. Yet, it is the willingness to make not only causal responsibility, but mere causal involvement, serve as moral responisbility that is a central support of many anti-American Leftwing arguments. As I indicate above, the Left does not apply its principle universally. In fact, it does so selectively. When the U.S. commits acts that putatively lead to terrorist consequences, the U.S. is morally responsible (because causal responsibility is identical to moral responsibility), but when terrorists commit murderous acts, they are not morally responsible (because they are in the grip of causal determination). A prime example of this kind of argument is that the victims of 9/11 "deserved" their fate because of prior U.S. involvements of various kinds on the international scene, but it is far from the only one. For the Left, the world is divided into the (rich, white, male, middle-aged) Responsible (causally and, therefore, morally) and the Victim, who is not morally responsible, since he/she is in the grip the causal forces managed and maintained by the Responsible. theconservativephilosopher.blogspot.com