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Are there innocents within war?

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Making the best choice available to you does not obliterate the fact that the choice made contains evil as a component.

According to Miss Rand, "Moral perfection is an unbreached rationality -- not the degree of your intelligence, but the full and relentless use of your mind, not the extent of your knowledge, but the acceptance of reason as an absolute." The Lexicon, page 523.

Where is the breach of rationality in making the best choice available to me? If I pretended it was a perfect choice, that would be irrational. If I evaded the nature of the government and coasted along passively, that would be irrational.

But as long as I acknowledge the evil consequences of contributing taxes, and actively oppose those consequences, where is the breach of rationality?

If you are morally perfect for living in the U.S. and devoid of any guilt, why would you need to work to improve the government?  What possible incentive could you have?  You are already morally perfect, there is no need for further effort.  No further gain can come to you by doing it.

There is a great deal to gain by working to improve the government. My rights would be more fully protected and not violated. Vast reams of federal rules and regulations would be lifted from my business. Industrial progress would accelerate and the standard of living would skyrocket. The financial burden of government would go down substantially. The risk of being killed in a counter-attack by a retaliator would be reduced. Edited by AisA
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When did I ever say that the man-made is the metaphysically given?

When you said "you couldn't help it", ala James Taggert, regarding the governments available to you to choose from.

The state of governments as it exists now, is what I meant.

Right. Nowism. (At the moment, I wish I had the research CD-ROM).

I'm arguing against the notion that one is evil for having to, at present, choose between governments that are holding guns to you.
And where do those guns come from?

I'm sorry, but I have to feel guilty for a culture's immorality in order to strive to move the culture?

When did we switch gears into culture? We're talking about governments. Reinserting "government" for "culture" into your question, I would answer: the government's immorality is yours inasmuch as you are the government, which you are, whether you like it or not.

Sure this condition can and should be changed.  And yes, if you do indeed act toward changing this, then you can live guilt free. 

The converse to your statement is: if you do not act toward changing this, then you cannot live guilt free. But merely holding the idea in one's head that something is wrong is not acting. Rejecting the evil in your own mind does nothing -- you have to externalize it, just as your actual physical support of evil is externalized.

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I said I couldn't help it? Quote me? I won't argue in terms of obscure "isms" like nowism. Is it not a fact, a solid fact, that the governments that exist at present all have guns pointed at their citizens? And, suppose you were at the precipice, deliberating between which government to live under, are you going to deny that you must choose suicide or one of those guns? Are you going to say, that, at birth, I have given guns to the government? When a man comes into adulthood, and must choose what he shall do with his life, he has to choose where he's going to live and what government he's going to put up with. Prior to making this choice, he hasn't handed any guns to anyone. Sure, after he chooses, he can and must (for him to be moral) act to oppose the government, but this doesn't erase the very real fact of reality of the world we live in now (and please don't mention nowism and such, just argue against my points).

Are governments not the consequence of culture (where culture means the ideas the predominant amount of people accept)? Aren't governments reflections of the culture of the people they govern?

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The Caimen Islands are tax-free?  There is a Galt's Gulch somewhere?  Anyway, indeed you are recommending suicide, because that is what living isolated by one's self, "living off of the land," would be.  Do you see that you are holding suicide as your moral ideal?

I don't think you're using the term "moral ideal" in proper relation to my statements. I said that I choose to remain here to reap the rewards by taking the risks. I said that I take moral responsibility for those risks. The immoral action is to remain and NOT take responsibility.

Anyone remember the point of this thread? The man living in a totalitarian state and what we need to consider before incurring civilian casualties on the enemy? (i.e. "we don't need to consider them.")

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All of the conversation since the beginning is related to the topic. However, to directly answer it, the only thing I think we should consider regarding civilians is that we do not target them for the sheer sake of killing them. The military should be targeted in that way, but civilians should only be killed when it would hurt our cause not to. I don't think we should be in the practice of bombing villages that are not hindering us. To do so would be genocide.

Edited by Moose
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Obviously it would depend on context, but if any civilian or group of civilians is an asset to our enemy, they are valid targets. If their status as assets to the enemy can be changed without additional cost to us, then we should do that. At least, Sun Tsu would say so. The specific question of whether they should be targeted is purely strategic; morally, they are valid targets.

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I don't think that a village out in the middle of nowhere of pea farmers who are hardly even aware that there is a war going on should be considered morally valid targets. If you kill them, you're killing someone just for the sake of killing someone. Not only are you violating the right to life of people whose existence and geographical location are not hindering your war effort, it could actually hurt your effort if you decide to kill them, in that you have to go out of your way to eliminate a nonexistant threat.

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I don't think that a village out in the middle of nowhere of pea farmers who are hardly even aware that there is a war going on should be considered morally valid targets.  If you kill them, you're killing someone just for the sake of killing someone.  Not only are you violating the right to life of people whose existence and geographical location are not hindering your war effort, it could actually hurt your effort if you decide to kill them, in that you have to go out of your way to eliminate a nonexistant threat.

A total non sequitur to my statement. :dough:

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Obviously it would depend on context, but if any civilian or group of civilians is an asset to our enemy, they are valid targets..... The specific question of whether they should be targeted is purely strategic; morally, they are valid targets.

I agree with you. In fact, that was essentially the situation in WWII with both the Japanese and the German people. Our military made the correct strategic decision to firebomb places like Tokyo and Dresden and to then use nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Did these actions result in the deaths of thousands or even tens of thousands of individuals (children for example) who bore little or no responsibility for the actions of their governments? It seems they did. However, given the context of the situation in which we were fighting as well as the nature of the enemy, our armed forces were both strategically and morally justified in taking those actions.

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Holy massive context-dropping, Batman!  Nations are not individuals.

If person A fires a gun at person B and innocent bystander C is killed, then one one does not condemn the whole nation in which person A lives.  You cannot apply principles from interactions amongst individuals to nations while dropping the context of the definition of "nation", and all that it implies.

Uh, where did you get that point? I wasn't making it.

What I was asking was, is a person(individual) who is held hostage, by a criminal or by a goverment, guilty of the things he is forced to do?

And does the person who is the victim of those crimes have a right to defend himself?

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What I was asking was, is a person(individual) who is held hostage, by a criminal or by a goverment, guilty of the things he is forced to do?

If someone has a gun pointed at your head and orders you to kill another person, the moral responsibility for the murder lies with the one giving the orders. I think we've pretty well established that.

However, what about during times of war when some soldiers who participated in war crimes or attrocities have claimed that they were just following orders and had no other option? Is this a legitimate defense of their actions?

And does the person who is the victim of those crimes have a right to defend himself?

Sure he does. Why wouldn't he?

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Why don't they come to America?  When deciding to leave Iran and seek the freedom of persuing happiness, why choose any nation over this one?

How dissatisified can one be because they were denied entry by a country like France?  Hell, that might even be a blessing :thumbsup:

Being denied entry into France will not be a blessing if you are from a country like Iran, Cuba or North Korea and you've already been denied entry to America.

Also a person who desperately seeks to escape a totalitarian country never has the luxury of "choosing" a country. [There are people who have escaped North Korea and live in China as illegal immigrants !]

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Ok, from most Objectivist essays I've read, in war, its ok to kill a lot of civillians to defeat a tyrant or whatnot.

Ok, I sorta agree with this. I'd have have Joe Schmoe die than a US Marine.

However, I saw this article on lew rockwell, and (ok bear with me please)

When one timorous questioner raises the issue of how Mr. Brook reconciles such a view with the central doctrine of individualism, which is that all people are endowed with inalienable rights, Brook brushes this aside with an impatient wave of his hand and declares that all enemy civilians are legitimate targets. The reason is because your government represents you, whether you like it or not.

So much for the idea of individualism.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/raimondo1.html

No matter with the rest of the article for now, thats what made me curious.

Is it ok to kill civillians in an attempt to depose a dictator?

I mean, the reason we are deposing a tyrant is because he does not represent the will of his people, but his interests, and he oppresses others through collectivism.

So, to liberate people from collectivity and to bring them individual rights, its ok to bomb them (thus nullifying the individual rights cause) to save the lives of our soldiers?

<_<

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We aren't the ones violating their rights, their government is because they forced us into the situation.

The government we have invaded or our government for going to war.

If it is the former, what kind of excuse is "He did it, so we should do it too!"

Wouldn't that be collectivism?

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Objectivism doesn't say that men have inalienable rights. It says that men have rights by their nature. Inalienable comes out of the Declaration of Independance.

It is, in fact, these very rights that gives a man or a country the right to defend himself against an attacker. As I said on D'Anconia online: it is a sad fact of reality that bombs cannot read minds and choose the innocent from the guilty. The truly innocent man understands what war is and will not begrudge an attacked country the right to defend itself even if it means his danger and death. As for those who neither know nor care to know what the war is about, they have no claim to the title "innocent."

Philosophy will tell you whether or not it's wise to fight. When and where and by what methods is a question for military science. In a war, you don't fight for a draw, or concessions, or a withdrawel. You fight to win. Against an aggressor, either you win, or you've lost. Period. And sometimes, in order to win, you have to put the fear of god into their souls.

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So, to liberate people from collectivity and to bring them individual rights, its ok to bomb them (thus nullifying the individual rights cause) to save the lives of our soldiers?

:confused:

Their individual rights have already been ignored. We're not morally responsible if they are innocent and die while trying to overthrow their government, their government is responsible. Just as a criminal is to blame if anyone gets hurt in a police chase, so too are the leaders of an illigitimate regime.

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What's going on here? It's wrong to kill civilians, because you don't know if that civilian is for or against the war. And you want to kill him because he wasn't able to stop the war or leave the country? And say then, that this is moral.

Condemning a man for the idiocy of the state he lives is on the same moral level as taking money from the productive to give to the looter. You make the good suffer for the idiocy of evil. Why make one man suffer for the idiocy of his environment. Isn't this what objectivist ethics is all about? That you are only responsible for your own life?

The problem is that a government does NOT represent the entire nation. If the winning party gets 40% this is a major breakthrough! That means that 60% didn't want them and that many of the 40% could have just picked the lesser evil. Do you leave your country everytime your favourite party isn't voted? Besides, where do you go?

I admit that a war is way more extreme than a higher tax, but it doesn't differ in principle.

Edited by Felix
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What's going on here? It's wrong to kill civilians, because you don't know if that civilian is for or against the war.

If Iran threatens the United States with a nuclear attack (a coming attraction), we have the right to eliminate that threat by destroying all of their nuclear research and production facilities, their missile sites, all of their military, all of their government, etc. We are not obligated to poll all the Iranians in and around those facilities and somehow insure that those who claim to oppose the regime are not harmed.

We desperately need to rid ourselves of the notion that we are responsible for the safety of foreign civilians in any war we wage. This notion permits any attacker to hide in or around "innocent civilians" and effectively negates our right to use retaliatory force. The moral responsibility for the death of civilians rests with the aggressor; it rests with the government that initiates force in the form of an attack or in the form of a threatened attack. No responsibility attaches to the nation that is protecting itself from that threat.

This is not to say that we should go out of our way to kill civilians when such killing does not advance the goal of eliminating the threat. But the goal must be to eliminate the threat with as little loss of American life as possible. What happens to civilians is not our concern.

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What's going on here? It's wrong to kill civilians, because you don't know if that civilian is for or against the war.

But you're forgetting one thing, in a dictatorship a civilians choice doesn't matter; what matters is what the dictatorship wants.The dictatorship is going to force that civilian to sustain the government and the war whether that civilian wants to or not, which makes him a legitimate target.

Is it better to NOT kill civilians if you can and bring them to your side? Yes, but that wont always be possible.

During WWII, the Nazis had a huge factory that produced V-2 rockets that they used to rain death down upon Great Britain, and they used Jewish slave labour to produce those rockets.

If the U.S. had found that factory full of innocent civilians who DON'T support nazism but are forced to help the Nazis. It would have been perfectly moral to utterly obliterate that factory and kill everyone inside in order to protect OUR people.

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If the U.S. had found that factory full of innocent civilians who DON'T support nazism but are forced to help the Nazis. It would have been perfectly moral to utterly obliterate that factory and kill everyone inside in order to protect OUR people.

And to accelerate the defeat of the Nazis, which would prevent any more slave labor and death.

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If the U.S. had found that factory full of innocent civilians who DON'T support nazism but are forced to help the Nazis. It would have been perfectly moral to utterly obliterate that factory and kill everyone inside in order to protect OUR people.

That makes no sense whatsoever. They are not innocent of acting to harm Americans, are they? Where in the world do you get the idea they are innocent? They are building bombs that blow up the Allies, and they know it. There is no bloody way in this universe they are innocent. Read Omninous Parallels.

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That makes no sense whatsoever.  They are not innocent of acting to harm Americans, are they?  Where in the world do you get the idea they are innocent? They are building bombs that blow up the Allies,  and they know it.  There is no bloody way in this universe they are innocent.   Read Omninous Parallels.

So if I put a gun to your head and tell you to give me all your money or ill blow your brains out, is that money ACTUALLY my property now since you made the CHOICE to give it to me?

And if I use that money to commit more crimes, should you be arrested for choosing to help a criminal?

If people in concentration camps are not innocent, does that mean we should have rounded up all the Death Camp survivers and arrested them for helping the Nazis?

Is the only moral choice death?

Edited by Al Kufr
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So if I put a gun to your head and tell you to give me all your money or ill blow your brains out, is that money ACTUALLY my property now since you made the CHOICE  to give it to me?

That's not what happened in Nazi Germany. That's not how Germany became what it was. Space aliens did not fall from the sky and suddenly hold the entire country hostage. Give me a break.

And if you think that the ONLY reason I pay my taxes (or anyone else pays their taxes) is because I will go to jail if I don't, then you're crazy. I pay taxes because that's the system here, and I benefit from this system. Yea, taxes are wrong, but the big picture is that the possibility for my life to be happy and prosperous is made possible by it and that is the main reason I pay.

And the same reasoning is used by everyone else here, and all those who made Nazi Germany possible, and every other nation in the world. They all think that their nation is their best option for happiness. Are they not responsible for choosing to participate in an immoral system because the system they chose is immoral?

If  people in  concentration camps are not innocent, does that mean we should have rounded up all the Death Camp survivers and arrested them for helping the Nazis?

Just checking, we're talking about Nazi Germany, right? No one building bombs had a gun to their head. The only innocent people were in concentration camps, and they weren't building any weapons.

If the vast majority of people are as brainwashed as you, thinking that Germans were all held at gunpoint while they worked and no one wanted to do it, then we are sadly doomed to repeat it. Read Omninous Parallels.

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