or why even conservatism tends towards moral relativism in the end, aka liberalism
Steamtable Catholicism got me thinking. I mentioned there that even many of those staunch conservative and tradition-minded Catholics don't care to fully partake of that item known as Catholic Just War Doctrine which, honestly applied, holds that the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was ethically wrong. Has nothing to do with politics per se, one very important principle of the Church's teaching is that you cannot deliberately target innocent civilian populations in time of war, ok. Now I would hazard a guess most modern-day conservatives support Truman's action but the question before the board today is this - would you argue with God? Put another way, let's say when we go before God someday he kindly explains to us that by His Divine Reckoning that particular action was grossly immoral, would we still stubbornly hold to our positions and even argue the point before Him or would we humbly admit our mistake and errors in our moral reasoning? It's a rhetorical, theoretical question and can be applied to any issue under the sun, I'm using this one today because of the vast majorities who still say we did the right thing. The arguments advanced for the bombing all smack of moral relativism, pragmatism and I really need not repeat them here, the salient point being most people don't seem to care but what does God think? Shouldn't the moral compass of a religious and spiritual nation be higher than this?
Would you argue with God? (Honorable mention goes to conservative thinkers Joe Sobran, Pat Buchanan and the late Russell Kirk for opposing the use of the Bomb)
This is a great way to frame the question, Z, I can't argue with you or with God.
ReplyDeleteArgue might be a strong word. I would definitely assert myself on the points of which I believe and know to be just.
ReplyDeleteHaving freewill, I at least owe him that.
I mean doesn't it at least bother us that we could be wrong? Are we this inflexible? & shouldn't pro-lifers in general strive for more consistency? To psychoanalyze this as with everything else maybe with the Bomb some things are so horrible that for our own sanity we have to defend them or else go "crazy" for lack of a better term (wait, we did what again??). This taint on conservatism leaves me disappointed in conservatism when we start thinking like liberals. They use pragmatic and relative standards when it comes to things like abortion and we do the same when it comes to war. All things are relative in the end 'cept God and that is the point of this blog, not liberal pinko commies vs. the rest of us but what is the nature of Ultimate Truth and are we amenable to divine correction?
ReplyDeleteIt's the only way to frame the question Beth. Put another way did the pilot of the Enola Gay, Tibbitts, say before he dropped the Bomb "I think I'm doing the right thing but if I'm not may God forgive me and us". You see this with abortion. People going to these places, packing the parking lots, did a little shopping before, maybe I'll get my hair done after the abortion but isn't anyone at least a little queasy or unsure of themselves?
ReplyDeleteMore specifically on the subject at hand however:
ReplyDeleteIt's just as you said Z..man has to think. But, more importantly, man has to act. He cannot spend countless days merely thinking. Thinking about going out and gathering berries and killing animals or heck even going to work, isn't going to cut it.
Man must act. Once he acts can he then go back and critique whether his actions were just.
In that regard, God has the upper hand so to speak because likely he has the benefit of clarity as to the outcome before the fact.
Well of course we have discussed God's forgiveness, which is so hard for us a humans to comprehend. I truly have to think the people who made the decisions and who carried them out thought with their whole heart that they were doing the right thing, to think otherwise is to think pure evil exists, okay perhaps Osama bin Laden proved that is true anyway. But if they asked for forgiveness, it has been granted to them.
ReplyDeleteYes, Soapie, man must act, but not recklessly.
ReplyDeleteBut man does in fact act recklessly. In a perfect world he would not. In a utopian world he would not. But, in this world, he most certainly does.
ReplyDeleteNow, mind you not all men. It is not until an individual acquires or embraces reason and logic that they begin to act less and less without reckless behavior.
Tis why teenagers make so many stupid judgments in error.
Acting before we think, like today's TV column in the NY Post by Andrea Peyser spewing her usual venom, this time against Paula Abdul whom she almost accuses of a little substance abuse action for her gaffe the other night when the truth turned out to be she often hears songs in rehearsal too so that's how she "heard" that singer sing two songs. Ah yes, recklessness in the journalism world can lead to libel and slander. We need to put far more thought before whatever act we're comtemplating. Re Truman I think it was really a pragmatic decision that he rationalized to "save" lives, I could be wrong but I don't think a spiritual advisor would have told him to do what he did or did he even consult a spiritual advisor? I think it was purely a military decision, no more no less, and as they say "all's fair in love and war", in other words it's often been argued that there's a different morality in place during time of war, not the same morality that governs everyday life. Just my .02.
ReplyDeleteThis is why I always advocate that one focus their attention more on the equation rather than the answer. After a while, I guess your actions (and the proper ones mind you) tend to be sort of involuntary. It's as if you don't even really need to think obsessively about it. You just act. Like Nike's mantra you "just do it."
ReplyDelete(do I need permission to type that??)
I am not sure but I think spiritual advisors for presidents is a rather recent thing, I could be wrong. When it comes to journalism, yes definitely they have an obligation to get their facts straight before they publish anything, I think too often the overlying motivation is to be the first to get the story out, and oh well we can always print a retraction (on page 10) is we need to.
ReplyDeleteAs for typical Americans being reckless or not, Soapie you are correct that it is an ideal not to have recklessness, yet it exists. However, one must be held accountable for their actions, and so their motivation, or what they were thinking prior to their actions, has a lot to do with how they may be punished, or if punished at all.
So why was the second atomic bomb dropped on Nagasaki? Did the Japanese Emperor say "huh, one bomb's all you got? bunch of girlie-men"? The Onion had a great parody of this in their Our Dumbest Century edition. A colonel was asked by a reporter why the second bomb was dropped and he matter-of-factly replied "well, it would have been just lying around anyway." I would add maybe Truman had OCD like gotta bomb again, who knows?
ReplyDeleteThey didn't surrender after the first is what it was I believe. So we dropped the second one in the hopes that they then would. And, indeed they did which was good for us because we didn't have a third one.
ReplyDeleteBut let's say we had an endless supply of nukes, at what point doss it all become immoral, barbaric even to even those who supported The Decision? Is 3 immoral? how 'bout 5? Would wiping out one Japanese city after another have been wrong if they didn't surrender after the second try? I say there is never a moral use for nuclear weapons so my position is known but it's a theoretical question.
ReplyDeleteIt's not totally theoretical, I mean I know some people just think "nuke Iran" and I don't think they are talking figuratively. No, I think many Americans think it would be okay to use nuclear bombs to try to wipe out terrorists, but then again I think the terrorists don't seem to be afraid of us using them, like they know we really won't use them.
ReplyDeleteMaybe the theoretical question is, if someone uses a nuke against us first, is it then okay for us to use them to retaliate?
Yeah, people like Savage are always saying just drop the Big One there but as to the theoretical question you pose the problem here is you're going after terrorists and a nuclear bomb would just have too much collateral damage as opposed to some more traditional, focused weapons which also cause collateral damage but not as much as the Bomb would. We're talking mushroom clouds here and in your scenario if we did that against the terrorists or those countries harboring them and they did it back and so on and so forth you'd have mushrooms all over God's green earth. Ronald Reagan had a word for this during the Cold War, MAD or Mutually Assured Destruction.
ReplyDeletePut it this way, if the atomic bomb were never invented by anybody then terrorists would never be able to get ahold of something that doesn't exist. As if this ain't enough we had our physicist Edward Teller and his work on how to make the nuclear option even worse, known as the hydrogen bomb, and scientist Andrei Sakharov was doing the same thing in the USSR. Maybe we can just go the H-bomb one better and blow up the planet, I'm sure there's some budding egghead out there who can figure it all out when he grows up, parents will be so proud.
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