Wolfe Heretic?

Paul B · 18 Jul 2008, 19:38 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: pb.stuff at gmail.com (Paul B)
Date: Fri, 18 Jul 2008 15:38:50 -0400
Subject: (urth) Wolfe Heretic?
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On Fri, Jul 18, 2008 at 3:16 PM, Thomas Bitterman <tom at bitterman.net> wrote:

>
> I never said that self-defense was unjust (or just), simply that your maxim
> implies that self-defense is unjust.
>
>
What on earth are you talking about?  I said "It is not a sensible moral
response to say that injustice following other injustice is somehow more
just", along with "Conquest is unjust".
Following simple logic, we can get "conquest following other conquests is
not somehow more just".  Self-defense isn't an attack, and reconquest (as I
pointed out) isn't a conquest.
Your logical proof for the above assertion is not only absent, but hard to
imagine.


> The analogy I was after was this:
> - country A conquers country B
> - unrelated country C conquers country B, thus wresting it from country A
>
> In WW2 we could have A=Germany, B=France, C=United States, whereas in the
> Crusades we could have A=Muslims, B=Holy Land, C=Christians.  The big
> difference being that the U.S. gave France back to the French, while the
> Christians looked to set up their own kingdoms.  Of course, at that point
> there were not really all that many "natives" to hand over the Holy Land to,
> so the parallel becomes inexact.
>

Right.  Conquest=unjust.  The western allies gave Europe back to the
Europeans (except the parts needing "re-education"), and were therefore
just.  The Christians made their own kingdoms on captured land.

>
> My imagination rocks!
>
> What you said, originally, was, "Except maybe the crusades (I'm sure it
> didn't seem just to those who'd been living in the Levant previous). "  To
> which my (summarized) reply was, "Conquerors have no reason to feel they are
> being treated unjustly when they are in turn conquered".
>

Your imagination is poor, as is your apparent grasp of moral reasoning.
Even the above, questionable as it is, doesn't suggest what you said about
"big bad Christians" - an attempt to pass off the criticism as a stereotype.

If conquest is wrong uniformly, the morality of the conquered doesn't
matter.  If, on the other hand, conquest (not just an attack, but seizure!)
can be justified by anyone depending solely on the perceived (because where
are you going to get the objective?) morality of the target, then you can't
have a rights-based society.  Or a decent one, for that matter.


> To come back to Wolfe, perhaps the Hieros have a right to drown Urth.  The
> analogy is to a causus belli - what humanity did to them in the past was so
> horrible that they are justified in their present actions.
>

An eye for an eye!  That's advanced moral reasoning.


> Or, alternatively, that at some point humanity entered into an agreement
> with them, knowing the possible consequences, and we are still bound by that
> agreement.
>

Pure speculation.  You'd think that Apheta might have mentioned that instead
of the rationale she _did_ give.
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