Comments Which Conservatives Block From Their Blogs For December 17, 2014

Dec 16

To Erick Erickson and his disapproval of the release of the CIA Torture Report and his calling criticism of our use of torture moral equivalency. This appeared in the Red State blog

It seems that this article is really contesting moral equivalence which is simply equating similar or the same actions done by one's opponents with those done by one's own group. We should note that with waterboarding, we found the Japanese guilty of torture for using it though one of the reasons why they used it was to get 'useful information.' However, according to this article, suggesting that waterboarding is torture when we use it merits scorn according to this article. As Dick Cheney noted, the Japanese did far more than use waterboarding. But as the CIA report documented, so have we.

We should note that the more one rejects moral equivalencies, the more one is embracing moral relativity. And the starting point for this kind of moral relativity is the assumption of one's group's own innocence. And to further the claim that moral relevance is being embraced here, all one has to do is look at the grounds for which this article seems to smile on our use of waterboarding. According to the article, our use of waterboarding is ok because it has popular support. Of course, if we were to suggest that same-sex marriage is now ok because the majority of the people support it, then we would be accused of abandoning our morals or embracing moral relativity.

In the end, tribalism reigns here for what is right and wrong depends on who does what to whom.

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To Elise Hilton and her blogpost on working conditions for some of the Chinese people. This appeared on the Acton Blog.

Certainly the descriptions of what some laborers must endure is simply horrible. But there is one characteristic of this labor that was not fully mentioned. What these laborers produce becomes part of the global economy.

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To Elise Hilton and her blogpost on Entrepreneurs and the effect they have on the Globally economy. This appeared in the Acton blog

There is no doubt that individuals can produce positive results for others in today's economy.  But what we need to do is to gain an overall, multi-perspective view of the Global economy. And from what we know, the Global Economy is creating growing wealth disparity, employing sweatshop, trafficked, and slave labor, making smaller nations into Hunger Games like districts, weakening national sovereignty of many nations by transferring control of national economies into the hands of outside investors, and is hurting the environment.  With that in mind, we might want to ask if reports of benefits created by entrepreneurs are here to distract us.

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To Joe Carter and his blogpost on the current decline of war in the world. This appeared in the Acton Blog.

Another way to look at this is to realize what we are comparing today's situation with. We are comparing conflicts today with 2 world wars among other conflicts. In addition, the "civilized" nations cannot engage in the same kind of warfare against other civilized nations because of the possible use of nuclear weapons.

But before we give thanks for our chickens before they hatch, we should note two things. First, what was done on the battlefields of yesteryear is now being done on economic fronts. We are still relying on conquest rather than cooperation to get our way. Second, with the proliferation of WMDs being inevitable and the use of force still a predominant method of how the some, especially the powerful, get their way with much weaker enemies, the use of such weapons in conflict is not a matter of if but of when.