We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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‘No to badness’ Alice Bachini has posted an interesting reply to my recent article called The world is a messy place. Alice writes in When is violence OK?:
Bashing people for the purpose of communicating something moral might sound like an oxymoron, but I don’t think it is. I think the idea “No to badness!” is expressed usefully, and anyway, sometimes the only alternative is between that or “Yes to violence!” in the non-bashing alternative. It might seem generous to absorb the other person’s nastiness by taking it on the chin and walking off in silence, but unless they interpret this in the right spirit, it’s worse than useless.
I could not agree more!
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Right, now I am starting to get upset. Why can’t I get through to the Libertarian in the Countryside blog. You lot don’t seem to have any problems with it but it just never appears when I follow one of your links.
Is it just me? (Don’t answer that.)
The Blog God must hate you, Mike… the link works just fine for me
Here’s another link. Maybe you need a new computer? There are some lovely titanium ibooks now.
I am very upset that you can’t get through. If you do ever succeed, please let me know and I will give you a Special Honourable Mention blog in appreciation of support rendered.
Mike, it’s a DNS issue. Underscores in hostnames are prohibited as per RFC-952.
Some resolvers will nonetheless handle illegal characters, but to be on the safe side it’s recommended to avoid them. Prospective readers of silent_running.blogspot.com (successor to War Now!) had problems accessing the site when it first started, so in response they dropped the underscore.
Thanks for the tip Dave. I used an online browser emulator and got through no trouble.
As confirmation of my visit I say “I hope your teeth don’t hurt Alice”.
Can I have a special mention now…..please, please, please?
If the violence is necessary, is the best choice among many poor choices, it’s not evil. I’m no expert on “Just War” theory, or its opponents, but insofar as evil is a mix of means & ends & intents, aiming for the greatest good in a given situation can’t quite be evil.
But Ghandi was willing to die for many things, kill for none. To me, if one must kill another to live, such a killing is not quite evil. Certainly regrettable, and probably there were evil precedent actions — and by implication the one you must kill is doing evil.
“No poor, dumb bastard ever won a war, by dying for his country. He won the war by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for HIS country.” (? GCS as Patton) It’s not the soldiers doing the dying and killing that are evil here, on either side. It’s the Nazis that are attempting to impose their wills, aggressively, on those who resist and disagree.
If the definition of evil seems to indicate that necessary self-defense is evil, than the definition is faulty. (Or that form of self-defense isn’t really necessary.)
Very interesting post