Are You Morally Bankrupt?

Paul Green points out the moral and ethical problems of supporting a war on terror:

I have a question to ask you. I would then like you to ask it of others, particularly of Christians:

How many innocent people would you be willing to kill – purely to defend yourself?

For example, let’s say you are well armed and an armed robber is shooting at you – but the robber is holding a hostage directly in front of him.

Or, suppose someone is shooting at you from within a crowd. Maybe some in the crowd don’t like you. Let’s push it even further and say that most of them hate you, and sympathize with the attacker. To shoot back, you would be aiming at the attacker, but you know you would also hit others.

I repeat:

How many of them would you be willing to kill, even absolutely and purely in self-defense?

I asked this question of someone fairly high up in military intelligence recently. I had to press the point as he beat around the bush for a while. His (eventual) response? "I’m not sure I know the answer to that question." Well, at least he was thinking about it.

If your own answer is unclear – or anything greater than zero – you have a moral problem. Your hope is in murder to save your own life. The choice is either to face it or to deceive and justify yourself.

much more at link.

I posted a thread earlier today demonstrating that the vast majority of congress approves of expanding the war into Pakistan.

The responses to that thread were few.

You people that support endless war and endless welfare need to wake up to the morality of your decisions.

It takes balls to defend yourself and to be responsible for your own personal welfare.

It takes a wimp to demand other people shoot kids on your behalf.

People that support the war are morally bankrupt AND a bunch of scared children.

Just the end result of the demoralization of America, and the world. Thinking is mostly nonexistent, at least independent thought. Hardly anyone can even fully comprehnd the lies anymore. Morality is, at most, an endangered idea. Whats sad is even the smartest people I know still think its okay to have huge collateral damage in a war with no objective. Completely senseless.

reply to post by time91


You know logical thought is one thing they stay way the hell away from in public schools.

They do not want you thinking too much.

They don't want you to LEARN how to THINK for yourself.

How to use logic and reason to arrive at your own conclusions based on the facts presented.

Free thinking individuals are a serious threat to the system.

No. I'm not. But I'd love to bitchslap a few people around here who are, who don't even see this as an issue for some reason. We all know what the reasons are though. They're cowards or they're greedy. End of story.

reply to post by ~Lucidity


greedy cowards pretty much sums it up.

reply to post by mnemeth1


is this thread closed? I don't see a reply button without replying directly.

If not, yes, we are. I have asked questions like this in church small group settings and found myself staring at people who have completely given up on principle.

First of all my bullets will not stop his bullets [astronomic improbability].

As a bullet-proof vest or barrier would. They would both be a primary desire.

I could yell at the 'hostage' that if they don't kill or at least stop the robber from shooting [at me] i may unintentionally kill them.
If they make no effort, i will, with little hesitation, act for my self-preservation.

Honestly, i know it is politically incorrect, but

as long as it doesn't endanger the genetic health of the human species, & perhaps even if it did, i will probably kill a very large number of people to keep myself alive, especially if there are few expected repercussions to me.

On really bad days when i am fed up with stupid & aggravating people, i might get some real satisfaction from blowing some away, especially if they have grated me the 'wrong' way.

Centcomm's General Mattis says he enjoys killing people,
i very possibly might find i had similar feelings.

If it weren't for legal & social & logistic considerations i am sure i would have killed at least one person by now, just to experiment, with totally unknown ramifications to me. The potential worry, is maybe i would enjoy it, too much.
Sort of like meth. Maybe it is something you just don't want to get started at. Or it could be a big disappointment, revealing just how crushingly banal & overwhelmingly unconcerned the Universe was with my or humanity's anything.
The illusion of an imagined even ambivalently caring universe might be all that keeps a body going sometimes.
Maybe the bubble one doesn't want to burst.
But the addiction to the notion of rationalized determinism would probably be inescapable, impossible to resist.

[edit on 31-7-2010 by slank]

Here is a very real thought for you,

What if your species very survival [based on current technologies/circumstances] depends on you/[some 'us'] killing huge swaths of humanity?

Because that is a very REAL possibility.

And if so, would one be willing to extinguish one's self as part of that necessity?

These are not moralistic, prettied up ideas,

these are very real, raw, adult things that may even be too late to consider. Although since the quantifications are so fluid & estimatedly sketchy it is very, very ambiguous to act upon.

I suppose a much more 'humane' & politically acceptable option is mass sterilization.

How would that one fit in everyone's clock?
I have to imagine that doesn't sit well with religious zealots as well as quite a few mostly non-religious people.

We have to do, what we have to do,
but the trouble is, we don't in any solid way know what we have to or don't have to do.

Life in the ambiguous realm.

My acid social commentary is that,

'Morality' is the pretense of ethics without any ACTUAL ethics.

That is why it is very often the source of atrocities.

We have all the zeal, energy & vitriol of the morality drug, without all that drag of thinking, "is this ACTUALLY a good idea?"

Nondairy creamer tastes like cream, but it isn't really cream.

'Morality' comes from some inaccessible magic source. Which is why it is so often, tragically disconnected from any kind of decency.

And one hesitates to say, but even debated, scrutinized actual ethics is itself relative to local, recent, historic conditions.

So you can have baseless magic,
or often dissatisfying relativism.

I don't think there are really any other options,
except just acting randomly from moment to moment without predictability or plan,
you know, the way most people do despite their strident claims to the contrary.