Principle vs Expediency


2ndRateMind
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So, the sultan of Brunei has decided to implement laws that require those found guilty of adultery or homosexual acts to be stoned to death.

Let's take this gradually:

Q1) Should people be sanctioned for who they are or whoever they love?

Q2) Should that sanction involve the death penalty?

Q3) Should that death penalty be imposed in such a medieval, barbaric fashion?

Q4) Should the west continue to trade with Brunei, whilst such socially regressive policies are enforced by the state?

Q5) Or are our much vaunted western values to be purchased away at the prospective price of merely this potentially profitable trade deal, or that?

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

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53 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

So, the sultan of Brunei has decided to implement laws that require those found guilty of adultery or homosexual acts to be stoned to death.

Let's take this gradually:

Q1) Should people be sanctioned for who they are or whoever they love?

Q2) Should that sanction involve the death penalty?

Q3) Should that death penalty be imposed in such a medieval, barbaric fashion?

Q4) Should the west continue to trade with Brunei, whilst such socially regressive policies are enforced by the state?

Q5) Or are our much vaunted western values to be purchased at the prospective price of merely this potentially profitable trade deal, or that?

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

1.  When you say “sanctioned” I interpret that as a general term implying disagreement, condemnation or opprobrium; not merely punishment under a government’s criminal code.  And in that sense I reply:  In some cases, sure.  Exhibit 1:  pedophilia.  Exhibit 2:  adulterers.  There is noting innately uncontrollable or self-justifying about the feeling we call romantic “love”.  That feeling is a choice—or at least, a condition that results from a number of choices.  It can be cultivated, and it can be destroyed.  (Sexual attraction may not be so easily eradicated, but we manage it every day—else most men would be serial rapists.)

2.  For the mere feeling of “love” (or even just attraction), no.  For some types of conduct that the actor might justify as being an outgrowth of the “love” that he felt:  perhaps in some cases (recidivist rapists and domestic violence perpetrators, for example).  Again:  there’s nothing inherently justifying about romantic love or about the deeds done in love’s name.

But in the context of your question:  as a matter of civil law, I don’t think the death penalty is an appropriate punishment either for people who experience same-sex attraction, or for people who indulge in gay sexual encounters with consenting adults.  

3.  To the extent that the death penalty is applied at all in modern times, I’d prefer it be done in the most pain-free manner possible; because I think the point of the death penalty isn’t vengeance or “making the guy suffer”; the point is that as a society we have to end a person’s existence because the inherent value of the person’s life is outweighed by the threat they pose to society and/or the unlikelihood of successful rehabilitation because the the person is so irredeemably bad.  It’s a penalty that should be executed with sorrow, not with relish; and to the degree that modern science allows us to make it a pain-free experience we should do that.

4.  I don’t know.  My instinct is towards free trade; my takeaway from college economics is that by not trading with countries run by dictators you usually accomplish little except increase the economic suffering of the folks unlucky enough to live under that dictator’s rule.  Maybe if a clear-headed analysis suggests that economic sanctions might actually work in a particular case, and economists/politicians can articulate a basis for why it would work in this context when it usually doesn’t work elsewhere, but . . . I’m suspicious.  

5.  The idea that our “much-vaunted Western values”’can and should be exported to culturally dissimilar countries that don’t want them, is rather a new idea; and something that burned us Yanks pretty deeply right around 2003-ish.  It seems to me that you Brits should know better, too—how many former Crown holdings degenerated into dysfunctional crap-shows once Her Majesty’s administrators left those countries to themselves?

Other countries will do what they will do; and our own foreign and trade policies will be most successful when they focus on our own interests.  To be the extent that we can advance our own material interests by simultaneously advancing those of our neighbors—great; but remaking other societies in our own image is probably tilting at windmills.

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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54 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Let's ask the proper question here:

Q1) Should people be sanctioned for who they are or whoever they love have sex with?

Well...should they?

What about relatives? Animals? Children? And so forth?

55 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Q2) Should that sanction involve the death penalty?

It's actually an interesting question. I can't say I believe one way or the other. But I do think the question, itself, is interesting.

It certainly was given from God at certain times that it absolutely should. But our current church leaders are teaching tolerance and equity in the law. So it kind of depends on how one approaches it. If the question is should we vote into law in our day to kill all gays...clearly not.

58 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Q3) Should that death penalty be imposed in such a medieval, barbaric fashion?

Barbarism is in the eye of the beholder. Stoning was, indeed, commanded by God at times. So is God "barbaric"?

I'd say the answer to this is -- if God commands. Re the point about our current leader's directions, God clearly does not command so in our day. So no.

1 hour ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Q4) Should the west continue to trade with Brunei, whilst such socially regressive policies are enforced by the state?

The fact that you're referring to the policy as "socially regressive" implies that a pro homosexual society has made "progress". I think, therefore, the question is flawed.

1 hour ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Q5) Or are our much vaunted western values to be purchased at the prospective price of merely this potentially profitable trade deal, or that?

I think someone is confused on which western ideals are actually valuable.

But... yeah...your questions are interesting even though there's some confusion in the underlying thinking.

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1 hour ago, 2ndRateMind said:

So, the sultan of Brunei has decided to implement laws that require those found guilty of adultery or homosexual acts to be stoned to death.

Let's take this gradually:

Q1) Should people be sanctioned for who they are or whoever they love?

Q2) Should that sanction involve the death penalty?

Q3) Should that death penalty be imposed in such a medieval, barbaric fashion?

Q4) Should the west continue to trade with Brunei, whilst such socially regressive policies are enforced by the state?

Q5) Or are our much vaunted western values to be purchased at the prospective price of merely this potentially profitable trade deal, or that?

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

Q1) No. 

Q2) No

Q3) No

Q4) No

Q5) Agnostic. 

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17 minutes ago, Just_A_Guy said:

To the extent that the death penalty is applied at all in modern times, I’d prefer it be done in the most pain-free manner possible; because I think the point of the death penalty isn’t vengeance or “making the guy suffer”;

This is interesting...but I'm not sure it's in line with the Judeo-Christian (meaning God-given) idea of the death penalty. When God kills or commands killing it is often, very much, punitive and to cause suffering.

It's somewhat difficult to consider with modern sensibilities, of course, because we are, on the whole, squeamish about death -- even with animals we consume. We're separated from the death involved in the meat we eat.

But there is a certain side of me that thinks: If something warrants the death penalty (as in some rapey, serial killing, necrophilia type individual) -- well... I can't help but feel said individual deserves what's coming to them be it excessively painful or not.

I also tend to think that the trauma of being put to death is significantly more tortuous than the actual pain one might have being shot, hung, stoned, or drawn and quartered.

I'm only suggesting this by way of theory though. From a certain perspective, I'm almost anti death penalty. But that's not because I think the death penalty, even via painful methods, is wrong. It's more related to the fact that our system is messed up, there are too many instances of wrongful condemnations, it's actually cheaper to keep them in prison for life, and there are things we can learn by studying the living psychology of individuals, etc., etc.

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39 minutes ago, The Folk Prophet said:

This is interesting...but I'm not sure it's in line with the Judeo-Christian (meaning God-given) idea of the death penalty. When God kills or commands killing it is often, very much, punitive and to cause suffering.

It's somewhat difficult to consider with modern sensibilities, of course, because we are, on the whole, squeamish about death -- even with animals we consume. We're separated from the death involved in the meat we eat.

But there is a certain side of me that thinks: If something warrants the death penalty (as in some rapey, serial killing, necrophilia type individual) -- well... I can't help but feel said individual deserves what's coming to them be it excessively painful or not.

I also tend to think that the trauma of being put to death is significantly more tortuous than the actual pain one might have being shot, hung, stoned, or drawn and quartered.

I'm only suggesting this by way of theory though. From a certain perspective, I'm almost anti death penalty. But that's not because I think the death penalty, even via painful methods, is wrong. It's more related to the fact that our system is messed up, there are too many instances of wrongful condemnations, it's actually cheaper to keep them in prison for life, and there are things we can learn by studying the living psychology of individuals, etc., etc.

Very good points.  Note that I said it shouldn’t entail vengeance; I didn’t say (and don’t believe) that there should be no punitive aspect.  But frankly, I think death itself is punishment enough.  

But yeah, one hole in my paradigm is that the punishment of stoning, which we believe to have been divinely ordained at least for a particular place and time (Mosaic law and all), was not (one presumes) the most pain-free method of execution even in Mosaic times.  What, one wonders, was the underlying basis for having the method be stoning rather than beheading?  Was it the communal nature of the punishment—the fact that the community as a whole had to rise up and join in an act condemning the sinner and the sin?  Or was it similar to firing squads in the 20th century—the idea that no one person would know for sure that it was his stone/bullet that had actually caused the death?  

Or did God indeed just want the death to be a horrific one?

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2 hours ago, The Folk Prophet said:
3 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Q4) Should the west continue to trade with Brunei, whilst such socially regressive policies are enforced by the state?

The fact that you're referring to the policy as "socially regressive" implies that a pro homosexual society has made "progress". I think, therefore, the question is flawed.

Hmmm. To be pro-tolerance does not necessarily imply being pro-homosexual. Any more than being pro-tolerance implies being pro-pacifist and pro-Quaker or pro-Amish. As for social regression, then yes, I do think that humanity has made social progress in the last 4000 years or so since the Bible first began to be written, and I do think we should recognise and nurture that progress, and use our best endeavours to seek to extend it as widely and deeply as we can. 

Or do you think that morals and mores of a primitive bronze age tribe (the Jews) should continue to apply to us today, without investigation and criticism?

Best wishes, 2RM.

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35 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Hmmm. To be pro-tolerance does not necessarily imply being pro-homosexual. Any more than being pro-tolerance implies being pro-pacifist and pro-Quaker or pro-Amish. As for social regression, then yes, I do think that humanity has made progress in the last 4000 years or so since the Bible first began to be written, and I do think we should recognise and nurture that progress, and use our best endeavours to seek to extend it as widely and deeply as we can. 

Best wishes, 2RM.

I daresay what threw TFP was that you talked about “socially regressive policies being enforced by the state”.  Tolerance is itself a state action (or lack of action), so the “socially regressive policy” you seemed to be describing was not the absence of tolerance generally but the specific notion that gay sex is morally wrong and/or socially undesirable.  

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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I just wanted to say, at this point, how grateful I am for all your thoughtful answers. I agree with some of them, and disagree with others, but I am appreciative, either way, of your engagement on this topic. I hope to get around to responding to the more salient points you have raised, in due course.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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6 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

So, the sultan of Brunei has decided to implement laws that require those found guilty of adultery or homosexual acts to be stoned to death.

Let's take this gradually:

Q1) Should people be sanctioned for who they are or whoever they love?

Q2) Should that sanction involve the death penalty?

Q3) Should that death penalty be imposed in such a medieval, barbaric fashion?

Q4) Should the west continue to trade with Brunei, whilst such socially regressive policies are enforced by the state?

Q5) Or are our much vaunted western values to be purchased away at the prospective price of merely this potentially profitable trade deal, or that?

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

Brunei is a sovereign nation, so whatever their Sultan decides to do is certainly n ot up to us.  If you don't like their laws, don't go there.  If you do go there and you break their laws, expect to be treated no different than their own citizens.

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6 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

To be pro-tolerance does not necessarily imply being pro-homosexual.

Kind of depends on what one is meaning by "pro". Tolerance for homosexuality is certainly a form of being supportive of certain aspects of it. Inherent in the concept, "live and let live", is the idea, "let live". Letting those engaged in sin live in sin without consequence of any sort is tolerant, yes. But is it always good to do so? I'm not so libertarian minded as that.

I remain unconvinced that a society that is completely tolerant of evil has made "progress".

Clearly there is balance to be had. And I'm not suggesting where that balance is. But I don't think casting the balance entirely to the side of tolerance is de facto progress. In fact I'm quite sure it is not.

6 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

I do think we should recognise and nurture that progress

I agree in things that are, actually, progress. What I typically see, however, is a bunch of imperfect, short-sighted mortals presuming they know better than God and calling it progress.

6 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

Or do you think that morals and mores of a primitive bronze age tribe (the Jews) should continue to apply to us today, without investigation and criticism?

I think that directives given by the Lord are irrelevant to how primitive a culture is and/or what age they are given. And I think the only investigation of these matter that counts is the investigation that leads us to listen to the prophets and apostles and the Holy Spirit. Criticizing ancient directives from the Lord has no value and a great deal of detriment.

 

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I will add this to my prior response:  I would put severe limitations on any notion that humanity has really “progressed” in the last four millennia.  Yes, the widespread acceptance of Judeo-Christian mores and their Enlightenment outgrowths has left us collectively better off and fostered a degree of stability that has allowed for unparalleled technological advances, creating a sort of cycle of apparently ever-increasing ease and (arguably) happiness.

But, that cycle is not self-perpetuating.  Human nature has not fundamentally changed.  Individuals still struggle to balance avarice and cruelty with compassion and generosity, just as they did in Moses’ times.  And societies where people are routinely taking each other’s stuff, killing children, passing women around (with or without their consent), not planning beyond the short term, and/or generally letting their day-to-day decisions be governed primarily by their genitalia, will inevitably crumble in the face of societies whose moral codes foster a more stable way of living.  

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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16 hours ago, anatess2 said:

One word:  Sovereignty 

I don't see how trade or other sanctions infringe sovereignty. It is merely an indication that the West finds it unacceptable to stone people to death for their petty failings and failures. As if you, or I, or the sultan of Brunei do not have petty failings and failures, ourselves.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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21 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

1.  When you say “sanctioned” I interpret that as a general term implying disagreement, condemnation or opprobrium; not merely punishment under a government’s criminal code.  And in that sense I reply:  In some cases, sure.  Exhibit 1:  pedophilia.  Exhibit 2:  adulterers.  There is noting innately uncontrollable or self-justifying about the feeling we call romantic “love”.  ... remaking other societies in our own image is probably tilting at windmills.

Agreed, mostly, but with some reservations. For example, if one thinks morality to be an objective thing, and that some nation state is behaving immorally, is it not simply right and just and good to apply what pressure one can to adjust their objectionable policies?

And I am not at all sure, either, that the concatenation of paedophilia with adultery or homosexuality is helpful. They are quite separate issues, and should be tackled in quite separate ways, that do not include stoning the guilty to death, but, maybe, as God redeemed us sinners through Jesus, us redeeming sorry sexual offenders through enlightened prison programs that address directly the crime and the cause of the crime. But if a society democratically decides no crime is committed, then obviously no civil redemption is necessary.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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20 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

Very good points.  Note that I said it shouldn’t entail vengeance; I didn’t say (and don’t believe) that there should be no punitive aspect.  But frankly, I think death itself is punishment enough.  

But yeah, one hole in my paradigm is that the punishment of stoning, which we believe to have been divinely ordained at least for a particular place and time (Mosaic law and all), was not (one presumes) the most pain-free method of execution even in Mosaic times.  What, one wonders, was the underlying basis for having the method be stoning rather than beheading?  Was it the communal nature of the punishment—the fact that the community as a whole had to rise up and join in an act condemning the sinner and the sin?  Or was it similar to firing squads in the 20th century—the idea that no one person would know for sure that it was his stone/bullet that had actually caused the death?  

Or did God indeed just want the death to be a horrific one?

I can't believe that. The idea that the loving Father of humanity would want petty sexual misdemeanours punished horrifically is an impossible contradiction of His nature, for me. Whereas I can believe that humanity has made social and moral progress, converging gradually on what God's Will actually is, rather than what it has been commonly thought to be, and that this has been the underlying story of our history thus far.

Best wishes, 2RM.

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12 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

But, that cycle is not self-perpetuating.  Human nature has not fundamentally changed.  Individuals still struggle to balance avarice and cruelty with compassion and generosity, just as they did in Moses’ times.  And societies where people are routinely taking each other’s stuff, killing children, passing women around (with or without their consent), not planning beyond the short term, and/or generally letting their day-to-day decisions be governed primarily by their genitalia, will inevitably crumble in the face of societies whose moral codes foster a more stable way of living.  

I think that's mostly right, too. I think humanity will always have to choose between the selfish and the selfless. And that choice will always be a difficult, spiritually demanding one. I am not, in this thread, arguing for an absence of morality; quite the opposite. But I do think we have had, and continue to have, a stimulating discussion in progress (and I mean both nationally and internationally, and down the course of history) seeking to arrive at some idea of what morality actually is.

So, for example, in civilised parts of the world at least, we no longer think it acceptable to crucify itinerant rabbis, or keep slaves, or murder each other over which religious sect we belong to, or think domestic violence to be proper, or just think famine to be 'not my problem'. I have great hopes for humanity, and I take much pleasure in keeping current with the affairs of the day, and the progress we make, either directly by the embracing of good, or indirectly from the rejecting of evils.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

Edited by 2ndRateMind
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On 4/6/2019 at 7:05 AM, 2ndRateMind said:

Q4) Should the west continue to trade with Brunei, whilst such socially regressive policies are enforced by the state?

Something that often gets overlooked: When the other guy is doing something you don't like, you only have a certain number of choices.  You can:
- Make him your enemy (you want us to start bombing or something?)
- Ignore him (Worked well for the countries who wanted to "stay out of this Hitler thing".  Oh, wait...)
- Support/protect/ally with/adopt his ways (Doesn't sound like a win in this case)
- Manipulate, use force, painful pressure, leverage, bully tactics, sanctions, etc. (I would say this is how around 95% of the geopolitical change happens)
- Make him your friend.  Trade with him, show him why you're better, export your culture to him and watch the change happen. (Not always appropriate, doesn't always result in a net gain, but jeez, when I put it like that, it doesn't sound quite so horrible, does it?)

Edited by NeuroTypical
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3 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

[1]Agreed, mostly, but with some reservations. For example, if one thinks morality to be an objective thing, and that some nation state is behaving immorally, is it not simply right and just and good to apply what pressure one can to adjust their objectionable policies?

[2]And I am not at all sure, either, that the concatenation of paedophilia with adultery or homosexuality is helpful. They are quite separate issues, and should be tackled in quite separate ways, that do not include stoning the guilty to death, but, maybe, as God redeemed us sinners through Jesus, us redeeming sorry sexual offenders through enlightened prison programs that address directly the crime and the cause of the crime. But if a society democratically decides no crime is committed, then obviously no civil redemption is necessary.

Best wishes, 2RM.

1.  Maybe, but with two caveats.  First, you need to be pretty darned sure it’s going to work; in the face of the historical truth that it usually doesn’t.  And second, you need to be sure you aren’t essentially holding innocent people hostage by applying pressure that will hurt them more than the tyrant you’re trying to pressure.  (And a third caveat is, in this age of moral relativism where most progressives will tell us we can’t know for certain that any aspect of our culture/values is “better than” any other culture’s, we can’t really grant ourselves exceptions for our pet social agendas—be it gay rights, feminism, or any other progressive cause du jour.  Surely you, a Christian, wouldn’t suggest we impose economic sanctions on Saudi Arabia until they convert to Christianity?)

2.  You say that because you think pedophilia is egregiously wrong but that homosexuality and adultery are less so (or not at all).  But your initial question wasn’t about degrees of wrongness per se; it was about whether an action the actor believes to have been motivated in love, should be exempt from sanction (apparently whether that sanction entails legal penalty, or simply social opprobrium).  My point in reply is that “love” is not a blank check to perform immoral acts.  And if we can’t even agree amongst ourselves on whether homosexuality is immoral, then what business do we have trying to impose a “gay sex is fine and dandy” paradigm on foreign nations?

Edited by Just_A_Guy
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4 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

I think that's mostly right, too. I think humanity will always have to choose between the selfish and the selfless. And that choice will always be a difficult, spiritually demanding one. I am not, in this thread, arguing for an absence of morality; quite the opposite. But I do think we have had, and continue to have, a stimulating discussion in progress (and I mean both nationally and internationally, and down the course of history) seeking to arrive at some idea of what morality actually is.

So, for example, in civilised parts of the world at least, we no longer think it acceptable to crucify itinerant rabbis, or keep slaves, or murder each other over which religious sect we belong to, or think domestic violence to be proper, or just think famine to be 'not my problem'. I have great hopes for humanity, and I take much pleasure in keeping current with the affairs of the day, and the progress we make, either directly by the embracing of good, or indirectly from the rejecting of evils.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

This is one of my big philosophical disagreements with progressivism:  it takes an almost narcissistic position, suggesting that our current society is the inevitable culmination of all history, but for—perhaps—a smattering of final “tweaks” that will make things truly perfect; and it assumes that the things we like about the status quo are essentially self-perpetuating.  

The reason we don’t crucify religious or social heretics isn’t that we don’t still want to silence heretics, or that we are now immune from waves of social hysteria that lead us to want to inflict terrible suffering on others.  The reason is that right now we live in a society that has worked very hard to devise and maintain systems of government that simply didn’t give people the power to do all that was in their hearts.    Put a weak government like Weimar Germany in power and give it a decade or two, and it may as well be 1500 again.  

The reason we don’t have slavery is that we don’t need it.  If you’re a conservative like me, you’d point out that the masses can use government to appropriate for themselves the value of the saving and investment and labor and prudence of others.  If you’re a leftist, you’d point out that social systems like capitalism allow the indolent wealthy to take what they want from virtuous workers under color of law.  Either way, though—take those redistributionist institutions away, and you’ll be right back to a primitive state where the strong and/or amoral will be more than happy to take what they want from the weak and/or moral, by any means and with whatever force necessary.  

The reason we don’t murder each other for religion is that a few centuries ago we were blessed with genius ancestors who suggested that we shouldn’t do that; and once they’d had their way for a generation or two a few more geniuses figured out that letting heretics live might be to our mutual economic advantage; and our economic experience then tended to bear that out and make us not care so much about dogma.  When the economy tanks and/or the social order seems otherwise to be in decay, heretics and social outcasts don’t do so well—see, e.g., the recent emboldening of white supremacists in America’s “rust belt” and the rise of what you’d call “far right” groups across Europe.

The reason we pay more attention to domestic violence isn’t that we at one point thought it was OK; we simply didn’t have the social institutions to be very interventionist about it. Part of that was social stability, part was technology . . . And part of that was the fact that until very recently, there was simply no secular government that could be trusted to wield that kind of power over family life in a benevolent manner (some of us would say there still isn’t.  Didn’t your own NHS just put a couple of kids under house arrest until they died, over the objections of their parents, because NHS didn’t want to risk the humiliation of the American health care system curing children that NHS doctors had said were terminal?  Didn’t Venezuela, formerly one of the most stable democracies and strongest economies in Latin America, just get caught rationing health care for political gain?)

If we have progressed so far, why is it still legal across the western world to kill children by literally tearing them apart, limb from limb, until they die—and just so that their “mothers” don’t have to get fat for a couple of months, and so their “fathers” don’t have to pay money for their care and maintenance?  You think we’ve moved behind genocide and holocaust?  We’re in the middle of one right now.  We’ve just trained ourselves not to look.

If Nazi Germany has taught us anything, it’s that no matter how much we pat ourselves on the back for our degree of “civilization”, the sixth century BC century is never more than a decade or two away.  The only difference is that this time we have surgical scalpels, and cyanide gas, and gunpowder, and nukes.

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6 hours ago, 2ndRateMind said:

I don't see how trade or other sanctions infringe sovereignty. It is merely an indication that the West finds it unacceptable to stone people to death for their petty failings and failures. As if you, or I, or the sultan of Brunei do not have petty failings and failures, ourselves.

Best wishes, 2RM.

To say, “my purchase of your products to benefit both our country’s economy (alleviating poverty) is dependent on you adopting my moral principles” is... depriving a country of its sovereignty.

This goes back to our discussion before of Universal Morality.  Until the planet is converted to the One True God following One True Morality, you’re basically just pushing your imperfect morals on another thinking your way is more superior.

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36 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

To say, “my purchase of your products to benefit both our country’s economy (alleviating poverty) is dependent on you adopting my moral principles” is... depriving a country of its sovereignty.

I don't think so. But this is the opposition I suggested in the thread title 'Principle vs Expediency'. You are entirely entitled to your own point of view; it is a tricky subject to tackle. Nevertheless, if some nation is deliberately oppressing it's citizens, I think we have a case to make for ceasing trade until they cease that oppression.

36 minutes ago, anatess2 said:

This goes back to our discussion before of Universal Morality.  Until the planet is converted to the One True God following One True Morality, you’re basically just pushing your imperfect morals on another thinking your way is more superior.

Indeed. I have never denied that my morals are imperfect. I just think that everyone else's are, as well. As to which and whose version of morality is more superior, in terms of being more accurate, well, I find that to be determined by reason, as opposed to revelation. But I am prepared to be persuaded otherwise, if there is any such justification.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

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2 minutes ago, 2ndRateMind said:

I don't think so. But this is the opposition I suggested in the thread title 'Principle vs Expediency'. You are entirely entitled to your own point of view; it is a tricky subject to tackle.

Indeed. I have never denied that my morals are imperfect. I just think that everyone else's are, as well. As to which and whose version of morality is more superior, in terms of being more accurate, well, I find that to be determined by reason. As opposed to revelation. But I am prepared to be persuaded otherwise, if their is any such justification.

Best wishes, 2RM.

 

We’ve had a slew of philosophers gracing history for thousands of years.  And here we are.  Still arguing our “reasons”.

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