Monday, November 23, 2015

Four from Herschel Smith.

Ethical Questions In Warfare
Mike’s question is a good one, but folks, this is only the beginning. You’d better seek for clarity of thought and a strong moral compass.
Muslim Migration Or Invasion?
Legal Concealed Carrier Gets Arrested At Gunpoint In Texas For Being A Legal Concealed Carrier
Ammunition Revival

1 comment:

Chiu ChunLing said...

"The goal is to “stay between the ditches” in our decisions."

LolWut? That sounds a lot like an attempt to colonize "no man's land" to me. Anyone have any idea how else to interpret that? Google says it means to stay on the road...but in my experience there's often a lot between two ditches that isn't road, at least some of which is worse than running into either ditch.

I'm going to finesse a point and say that I personally would never target an infant for any reason whatsoever. But that doesn't mean I won't kill an infant for no better reason than because it happens to be too close to a critical target for me to avoid it. And if the reason that infant is that near the target is because the parents are Muslim (which is all too frequently the case), then I am indeed killing an infant because the parents are Muslim, but not only or essentially because the parents are Muslim.

To say I won't would either depend on the claim that I'll permit enemies evil enough to use infant shields to win every contest (and I certainly won't permit that) or that my actions which result in people dying doesn't count as killing anyone if I didn't directly target...and I can't tolerate that degree of hypocrisy.

Closing our borders to Sharia advocates will mean some children die because their parents are Muslim and will only move to a "safe" country if it furthers the cause of Jihad. I could argue that this doesn't mean I killed them...but I won't bother. Because someone has to take responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of decisions like that, and I can foresee the consequence, and I'm still advocating that decision. If the borders actually end up closed to Sharia proponents, then some children will die as a result, and I knew that and pushed to close the borders to Sharia anyway.

If someone held your head underwater until you drowned, I wouldn't let them get away with claiming the water killed you. If someone shot you with a handgun, I wouldn't let them get away with claiming the bullet did it. Both those claims are factual, but they are not morally true. If I manage to get the borders closed to stealth Jihadists, I have to take some responsibility for the foreseeable deaths...including the children and even infants. I guess if I somehow closed the borders by my lonesome, I'd have to take nearly full responsibility. That wouldn't stop me from doing just that if I could.

I'm not a Calvinist. I believe that there is such a thing as innocent life, and it's worth killing and dying to protect. But I don't believe there is a neat correspondence between innocence and circumstance such that you never need to kill any innocents to protect other innocents. I can forecast the results of action...I can also forecast the results of different actions or of inaction. I see dead innocents down every path I've forecast. If you show me a path where no innocents have to die, I'll take it...but all the people who've ever claimed there was such a path have turned out to be so utterly delusional as to qualify as suffering a psychotic break with reality.