beyond the pale
http://www.halfsigma.com/2007/09/liberal…
Liberal morality is very strange
Here’s a quote from a NY Times Magazine article about Justice John Paul Stevens:
After graduating Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Chicago in 1941, Stevens enlisted in the Navy on Dec. 6, 1941, hours before the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. He later won a bronze star for his service as a cryptographer, after he helped break the code that informed American officials that Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, the commander of the Japanese Navy and architect of the Pearl Harbor attack, was about to travel to the front. Based on the code-breaking of Stevens and others, U.S. pilots, on Roosevelt’s orders, shot down Yamamoto’s plane in April 1943.
Stevens told me he was troubled by the fact that Yamamoto, a highly intelligent officer who had lived in the United States and become friends with American officers, was shot down with so little apparent deliberation or humanitarian consideration. The experience, he said, raised questions in his mind about the fairness of the death penalty. “I was on the desk, on watch, when I got word that they had shot down Yamamoto in the Solomon Islands, and I remember thinking: This is a particular individual they went out to intercept,” he said. “There is a very different notion when you’re thinking about killing an individual, as opposed to killing a soldier in the line of fire.”
I don’t understand Stevens’ point at all. It’s OK to kill conscripts who don’t have any say in their country’s political or military policies, but there’s a moral problem with killing the guy who’s the architect of the enemy battle plans?
Liberal morality is a very alien thing. I feel sorry for the poor Japanese schmucks we had to kill because their leaders, such as Isoroku Yamamoto, decided it was a good idea to go to war against us. But Yamamoto got what was coming to him.
Many leftists, I believe, are very very focused on status hierarchies, and buy into them, and consider – at some level – that people who are not at their own level, or lower, on a status hierarchy are barely people at all.
Witness the fact that one of the few things that you can make fun of people for in “polite” society is being Southern / redneck. Southerner’s don’t speak properly, don’t vote properly, and don’t go to the right Northern (or Western) schools.
I find it entirely unsurprising that a leftist would be more concerned about the death of a fellow member of the Invisible college. Sure, it’s OK to kill Japanese conscripts by the thousands, but to kill a fellow dove, a one-time resident of Washington D.C., and – worst of all! – a Harvard grad, well, that’s simply beyond the pale.
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:06 pm
I think it is more of a problem of killing someone in cold blood. I am surprised that this guy didn’t go beyond the visceral “I can’t kill someone if they aren’t shooting a gun at me”, and twig onto the fact that Yamamoto was busy ordering a whole bunch of other guys to (essentially) shoot guns at him.
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:09 pm
Isn’t “liberal morality” a bit of an oxymoron? :-)
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:16 pm
And all killing the guy does is save the lives of American GIs, who aren’t worth anything anyway. Of course, for some, the connection you have to people of your class around the world has always been stronger national ties.
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:16 pm
sorry, than national ties.
September 24th, 2007 at 2:54 am
I think you’re arguing that the basic idea is the same principle behind feudal nobility cutting down one another’s foot peasantry like wheat, but generally declining to go after one another – they’re sure to be some sort of cousin, after all.
I don’t think that’s what Stevens was thinking, though – I doubt he would have reacted differently had Yamamoto never been to the US. Rather, it’s that he doesn’t make the connection between individual, personal acts and big, impersonal, historical forces. War is like a storm – it happens, and people die. Ordering the killing of a particular individual, though, is personal, and feels different.
It’s the same way that people who would faint in shame if they thought you might even consider them willing to order the cops to beat the hell out of you, a particular person, will vigorously lobby for laws that will inevitably lead to just that. They can’t make the mental connection between “taxes” and “men with guns demanding your money, or else”.
And it’s not a conservative vs. liberal thing, though it may be much less a libertarian thing. I’m in the middle of Larry Kolb’s OVERWORLD right now, and it’s not the first book in which someone of admittedly flexible and pragmatic morality flinches at the idea of snipers targeting specific, individual enemy officers and government officials (in this case, during the Vietman War).
I can understand how some people can’t connect “taxes” and “men with guns”, but I’m really completely, utterly unable to make even a vague connection to the starting point of the chain of reasoning that delcares assassinations of enemy officials – PARTICULARLY heads of state – out of bounds on any grounds other than complete pacifism.
September 24th, 2007 at 7:10 am
[quote comment="84563"]I think you’re arguing that the basic idea is the same principle behind feudal nobility cutting down one another’s foot peasantry like wheat, but generally declining to go after one another – they’re sure to be some sort of cousin, after all.
[/quote]
Exactly.
[quote]
I don’t think that’s what Stevens was thinking, though – I doubt he would have reacted differently had Yamamoto never been to the US. Rather, it’s that he doesn’t make the connection between individual, personal acts and big, impersonal, historical forces. War is like a storm – it happens, and people die. Ordering the killing of a particular individual, though, is personal, and feels different.
[/quote]
That’s a plausible alternative theory.
Perhaps both are true, to some degree.
[quote]
It’s the same way that people who would faint in shame if they thought you might even consider them willing to order the cops to beat the hell out of you, a particular person, will vigorously lobby for laws that will inevitably lead to just that. They can’t make the mental connection between “taxes” and “men with guns demanding your money, or else”.
[/quote]
Excellent point.
[quote]
I can understand how some people can’t connect “taxes” and “men with guns”, but I’m really completely, utterly unable to make even a vague connection to the starting point of the chain of reasoning that delcares assassinations of enemy officials – PARTICULARLY heads of state – out of bounds on any grounds other than complete pacifism.[/quote]
Agreed – I think that the most moral form of war is killing the enemy from the top down, even if it takes far more work to do it.