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6187ba4
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I absolutely refuse to associate myself with anyone who cannot discern the essential night-and-day difference between theocratic fascism and liberal secular democracy, even less do I want to engage with those who are incapable of recognizing the basic moral distinction between premeditated mass murder and unintentional killing.
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collateral-damage
false-equivalence
moral-equivalence
war-on-terror
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Christopher Hitchens |
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c830267
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"Nothing in Chomsky's account acknowledges the difference between intending to kill a child, because of the effect you hope to produce on its parents (we call this "terrorism"), and inadvertently killing a child in an attempt to capture or kill an avowed child murderer (we call this "collateral damage"). In both cases a child has died, and in both cases it is a tragedy. But the ethical status of the perpetrators, be they individuals or states, could not be more distinct... For Chomsky, intentions do not seem to matter. Body count is all."
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collateral-damage
noam-chomsky
moral-equivalence
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Sam Harris |
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808f52c
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The point of protesting about 'moral equivalence' is surely not to blur moral choices on 'our side'. Is it?
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morality
moral-equivalence
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Christopher Hitchens |
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d305861
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Perhaps vaguely aware that his movie so completely lacks gravitas, Moore concludes with a sonorous reading of some words from George Orwell. The words are taken from and consist of a third-person analysis of a hypothetical, endless and contrived war between three superpowers. The clear intention, as clumsily excerpted like this (...), is to suggest that there is no moral distinction between the United States, the Taliban and the Ba'ath Party, and that the war against is about nothing. If Moore had studied a bit more, or at all, he could have read Orwell really saying, and in his own voice, the following: And that's just from Orwell's in May 1945. A short word of advice: In general, it's highly unwise to quote Orwell if you are already way out of your depth on the question of moral equivalence. It's also incautious to remind people of Orwell if you are engaged in a sophomoric celluloid rewriting of recent history.
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farenheit-9-11
michael-moore
pacificism
moral-equivalence
george-orwell
film
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Christopher Hitchens |