99 lines
6.7 KiB
Plaintext
99 lines
6.7 KiB
Plaintext
Just desserts
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<p>There comes to us from Iraq the news that a terrorist group<br />
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calling itself Sword of Truth has kidnapped four people from a group<br />
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called Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) and has threatened to kill<br />
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them unless some demands for the release of certain terrorists from<br />
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Iraqi jails are met. What makes this interesting is that CPT exists<br />
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to oppose the U.S. occupation; that is, they are in effect (if not by<br />
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intention) allies of the terrorists threatening them.</p>
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<p>When I first learned this, my first gut reaction was to think “Ha!<br />
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Off with their heads!” My second reaction was to feel ashamed of my first<br />
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reaction. How have things come to such a pass that I find myself<br />
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rooting for terrorists to kill Westerners?</p>
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<p><span id="more-237"></span></p>
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<p>I had to think about that for a while. I’m with the hawk side on<br />
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the Iraq war, but reluctantly; I am all too aware of the long-term<br />
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risks of violence as a method, even when we adopt it under stress of<br />
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necessity and for defensive reasons. One of the risks is that we may<br />
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come to love violence and embrace it too readily. Was this happening<br />
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to me?</p>
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<p>Time for some what-if scenarios and ethical analysis.</p>
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<p>There are two features of this mess that make it different<br />
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from a “normal” hostage situation. One of these is that I consider<br />
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the members of CPT my enemies, because I consider them enemies of my<br />
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civilization and my country.</p>
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<p>Note that I did <em>not</em> say ‘enemies of my government’. That they<br />
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undoubtedly are, but I’m not real fond of my government. I do not in<br />
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general feel any desire for its enemies to die, unless they pose a threat<br />
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to my civilization and my country. My country is not its government; my<br />
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country is my neighbors, and their neighbors, and everybody who identifies<br />
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with the American vision of freedom.</p>
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<p>“But…” some of you will say, “peace groups like the CPT aren’t<br />
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your enemy. Or at least, they don’t intend to be.”</p>
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<p>It’s not at all clear to me that groups like the CPT don’t intend<br />
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to be enemies of my country. So much of the soi-disant “peace”<br />
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movement is <a href='http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=8'>run by<br />
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unreconstructed Stalinists and Maoists</a> that these days I tend to<br />
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presume any so-called “peace activist” group is just another one of their<br />
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fronts. I don’t think that assumption has yet turned out to be<br />
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wrong.</p>
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<p>But even if that’s a wrong assumption in this case, CPT’s<br />
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intentions matter much less to me than their effects. David Duke, Noam<br />
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Chomsky, Pat Robertson, and Michael Moore would certainly deny being<br />
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enemies of my country, but the effect of their speech and actions is<br />
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to suck up to totalitarianisms of all kinds and give aid and comfort<br />
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to people like Osama bin Laden who <em>are</em> unequivocally enemies of my<br />
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country. That makes them the enemy, too.</p>
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<p>(Oh, boy, there’s a fantasy. David Duke, Noam Chomsky, Pat<br />
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Robertson, and Michael Moore chopping each other to pieces with<br />
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Sword-of-Truth scimitars in a Rabid-Right-vs.-Loony-Left deathmatch.<br />
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I wish I could sell tickets.)</p>
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<p>This is sufficient to explain why the thought of those four CPT people<br />
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being executed doesn’t bother me. In general, I don’t mind when my<br />
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enemies kill each other. It saves my friends the trouble — and,<br />
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more importantly, relieves us of the moral burden of killing. I suppose<br />
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I would consider it a better outcome if the CPT crew killed the terrorists,<br />
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who are on the whole more dangerous; and the best outcome of all would<br />
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be if CPT and the “Sword of Truth” gang managed to kill each other.<br />
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But if only the CPT people get whacked, they’re no loss.</p>
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<p>But my gut reaction was stronger than that. The thought that these CPT<br />
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people might die didn’t just leave me indifferent, it filled me with<br />
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satisfaction. I had to meditate for a while to understand why. I did<br />
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finally get it.</p>
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<p>I like it when villains or dangerous idiots are killed by their own folly.<br />
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That seems just to me. More importantly, it’s how other people learn not<br />
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to be that way. It’s evolution in action; it improves the meme pool,<br />
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or the gene pool, or both.</p>
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<p>This is actually one of my gut reasons for favoring drug legalization,<br />
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though I’d never thought it through quite so far before. I don’t think we<br />
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have enough selective pressures against idiocy any more; I’d like<br />
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idiots to have more chances to kill themselves, ideally before they get<br />
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old enough to vote or reproduce. Not because I relish their deaths,<br />
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but because I want to live in a future with fewer idiots in it.</p>
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</p>
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<p>(By the way, I’m using “idiot” in its original sense here. To the<br />
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ancient Greeks, an “idiot” was a person too closed in on himself to be<br />
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a net plus to his neighbors and his society. Distinctions beetween<br />
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mental impairments, communicative defects like deaf-muteness, or<br />
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insanity were not clear and not considered important; the important<br />
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question was whether the ‘idiotes’ (private person) was capable of<br />
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discharging the responsibilities of a citizen in the agora.)</p>
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<p>If the CPT people aren’t villains, they’re idiots. Idiocy is the<br />
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least it takes to ally yourself with terrorists against Western<br />
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civilization. — not because the West is the fount of all virtue,<br />
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but because, whatever the West’s flaws, Islamofascism is incomparably<br />
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worse. The death of those four CPT people would at least diminish by<br />
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four the number of dangerous idiots in the world; therefore, it’s a<br />
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good thing.</p>
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<p>I checked this line of thinking by asking myself how my evaluation<br />
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would change if drug intervention (say) could make idiots into<br />
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non-idiots. In that case it would still be a good outcome for<br />
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villains to off themselves, but there wouldn’t actually be any point<br />
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in selecting against idiocy. Idiocy would become like<br />
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nearsightedness, a defect too easily correctable to bother being<br />
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eugenic about.</p>
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<p>I felt much better once I thought all this through. I don’t want<br />
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to become the kind of person who takes joy in the death of other<br />
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people; but if rooting for a future with fewer idiots in it is wrong,<br />
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I don’t want to be right.</p>
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