From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat Aug 31 2002 - 00:03:16 MDT
Mike Lorrey writes
> > But I don't think that Roosevelt believed that a Japanese
> > attack was imminent.
>
> I on the other hand don't mind at all accepting the notion that
> Roosevelt manipulated the situation in order to give the US a
> greater moral mandate to wage war on Japan.
This is one of those *extremely* difficult calls, in my
opinion. It's not dissimilar to whether or not to strike
Iraq. Just how afraid and worried were wise people in
1941 about an Axis takeover of the world? In retrospect,
I don't hold too much against Churchill and Roosevelt for
deciding to wage war against these vicious aggressive
regimes, just (as they memorably said) "to make the world
safe for democracy". (Or was that WWI?) Anyway, you get
the point.
> If I see a guy beating his wife, girlfriend or kid in
> public, I sure as hell am gonna go over there and pester
> him myself to draw his attention away from the wife/girlfriend
> or kid and provoke him into assaulting me, at which time I will
> completely stomp his ass into oblivion. Does this make me evil
> and the guy innocent, as Dan was implying Roosevelt was with
> regards to Japan?
If you see a guy beating his wife, girlfriend or kid, it
may be that the total situation and all the huge amount
of detail at your unconscious command (the time, the place,
the city, the culture, the history of the participants,
the size and armory of the wife-beater, etc., etc.) may
result in your action being commendable by my standards.
And it might also be commendable to mind your own business;
one sort of has to be there, and even then it's a largely
a matter of inclination and opinion.
I can't say what Dan was implying for sure, but I think that
I agree with you that we should go slow on accusing Roosevelt
of any great evil here. At the time people didn't have 20-20
vision (as usual, of course), and the isolationists had a
point: why should the US be the world's policeman? What
interest did we have in wars in China or Ethiopia? My
attitude is that a powerful democracy like the US should
for it's own sake and the world's, establish a benevolent
hegemony when there are Hitlers, Tojos, and Stalins on
the loose. It's even possible that the US should establish
a hegemony *anyway*, like the Romans did. We want peace
and prosperity for everyone (historically speaking), and
we want huge death tolls like in Africa now to subside, and
we want as many people as possible involved in the Singularity.
But we're all guessing, really; just as they had to back in
1941.
> The US was pursing this very Quakerish sort of pacifist isolationism of
> 'too proud to fight' and all that sort of baloney. It was going to take
> a lot more than the deaths of a lot of people that most Americans at
> the time didn't think of as 'just like us' to raise their moral hackles
> enough to accept the responsibility to do what needed to be done.
Sometime you have to play your cards pretty close to your
chest, Mike. Do you recall the famous opening of one of
the Spaghetti westerns where Clint Eastwood rides into town,
notices a man (or some men, it's been a long time) perpetrating
an obvious injustice on someone? In a John Wayne movie, the
protagonist would step in right away. I felt uneasy at
the Eastwood character not doing anything. But you sort of
have to be there: is it really wise to take on a whole town?
Or to police the world?
If our resources are unlimited, as they might be in a singularity,
then yes, always stand up for justice, etc. But it might be a
very bad move in the long run to over-react to atrocities
occurring in the world, even atrocities committed by one's
allies.
> > Why the name calling? Isn't that supposed to be against the
> > rules here? There are extremely well-informed people from
> > all parts of the political spectrum.
>
> There is a limit to tolerance. I notice that if I, for instance, tried
> to deny the existence of the holocaust (which I would never really do),
> the death camps, the ovens, the gas chambers, etc. I would be
> personally attacked, drawn, quartered, and crucified on this list. It
> has been done on this list before.
Here's the meme: name-calling is to be avoided, and one is
to always show some decorous restraint. We all fail from
time to time. We all should try harder to stop.
I have to admit that I don't know exactly what to do when
a holocaust-never-happened type starts posting. It's probably
right to say you disagree in no uncertain terms, and then,
unless you're really into it and enjoy arguing with him,
just ignore something so pointless.
Still the meme is: we don't tell him that he's a stupid
clueless fool even if that appears to be the truth.
> The same thing is being done today by the exact same people with
> regards to the US war on terrorism. They are playing the same 'too
> proud to fight' card that their forefathers played during WWI and WWII
> in promoting their pacifistic isolationism.
>
> I refuse to accept or tolerate such behavior. It is utter moral
> cowardice and ethical bankruptcy.
That's just too strong, period. You can denounce the behavior
in a lot of ways, but the truth is that these people's *values*
differ from yours in ways that are not ethically bankrupt, nor
cowardly. Many see the US as the bad guys---that's just their
view of history and their feelings on the issues. Many fail to
agree with you and me that the Western democracies almost always
have held the moral high ground. So this perception on their
part totally affects their thinking, and in a way that doesn't
directly relate to morals or ethics.
> I have a constitution I believe in, not a country.
Interesting. It looks like I'm just a throwback to
the 18th century. My feelings are (or were) like those
of John Adams and George Washington; my instincts are
for my country (or collective, I guess, if I'd been
born you-know-where).
> The US of 1941 reflected the values of that constitution
> a hell of a lot better in some respects than the US of
> today. It's better in some respects today than it was
> then, but I think there has been a net degradation.
I guess that you and Dan would agree on that.
Lee
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