Kind of like matter and antimatter, agreed. Ian Welsh:
...The question, of course, implicitly suggests that compromise, a middle - a connsensus is good and that extremes are bad.
It's a common question, and here's how I answered it.
I don't have anything to say to people who think that torture is acceptable.
I don't even have anything to say, beyond heaping moral opprobrium, on those who want to "debate" whether or not torture is acceptable. I don't have anything to say, nor am I interested in talking to people who believe in "free speech zones". I don't have anything to say to people who think it's acceptable to abrogate the fourth amendment by allowing the government to spy on citizens without a warrant from a judge based on probable cause and listing specifically what they're looking for. I don't have any time for people who want to argue that invading another country that didn't threaten the US, and selling that invasion based on lies was acceptable. These people aren't "misguided", they are evil. There is no point of connection. There is no middle where we can meet and discuss because everything they stand for, I abhor (and I daresay the reverse is true). They are authoritarians who want to see their government kill, maim and torture in their name. They want to destroy the parts of the US constitution they disagree with. They are fundamentally against the tenets of western civilization that have grown up, not just over the last 50 years, the last hundred years, but pretty much the last thousand years. It's not just that they want to end the seperation of church and state, or limit free speech - they want to end habeas corpus, a right that in various forms goes back about a thousand years.
There's nothing to say such people. There is no point where you can debate. To even debate something like "should we torture" is amazing to me - how have we come to have this conversation? How is it that the side arguing for torture isn't consigned to the "too crazy to even listen to" camp? Why are we arguing about whether Habeas Corpus should be reinstated?
Could it be because even though we have the People, the Old Ones have the dollars, and can buy the air time?
1 comment:
It seems the real problem is to create a framework for philosophy that is more interested in actual answers than in endless debate.
That too flies in the face of thousands of years of scribble, yet it must be done.
We have to *actually* "believe" in stuff if we're not to become locked in chatter and wordplay.
Its one thing to command "Thou shalt not kill", but quite another to evolve humans who simply cannot kill.
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