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J. Goard's avatar

One wise person's moral summary of WWII:

The windiest militant trash

Important Persons shout

Is not so crude as our wish:

What mad Nijinsky wrote

About Diaghilev

Is true of the normal heart;

For the error bred in the bone

Of each woman and each man

Craves what it cannot have,

Not universal love

But to be loved alone.

-- Auden, "September 1, 1939"

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Archibald Stein's avatar

It is my understanding that the Madeline Albright thing is BS. The estimated death toll was a lie by the Iraqi government. Maybe the claim that the death toll is a lie is itself a lie, I don't know.

The quote comes from Albright being asked a yes or no question, for which either answer would be hugely controversial. There's an argument to be made that this wasn't a fair way to explore the topic by the interviewer.

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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

The sentiment is the same, even if the number is wrong. And the later estimates were still in the hundreds of thousands.

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polenta's avatar

"if Putin had to witness the Ukrainian families blown apart by bombs, if he had to explain his decision to authorize them, he would be unable to do so."

Putin's soldiers torture by hand. Do you doubt that Putin could do the same?

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Bentham's Bulldog's avatar

No, I claim he would be unable to convincingly defend his grisly actions.

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Isha Yiras Hashem's avatar

First time I've been able to read one of your posts all the way through.

Trying to take verses from a Biblical perspective and translate them to modern times is a dangerous proposition. I suspect that, if you sincerely believed that killing one person would destroy factory farming forever, it would be within your Overton Window to consider doing so.

The Canaanites, for example, sacrificed children more brutally than the Aztecs or Mayans.

It is quite easy to sit on the other end of a keyboard and criticize other people, as you yourself demonstrate. And as you point out, it's very possible that if you were there, you would be convinced.

And objective morality is, ultimately, a form of religion. So I find your post interesting, but ultimately unconvincing

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Connor Jennings's avatar

Evil tends not to be done by hordes of monsters, but by otherwise normal people being manipulated by evil ideas

Good read 👍

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