Reply To: Political Statements
Who is guilty based on the actions of one person or a handful of persons among a given group?
Are leaders culpable for the actions of their followers? To what extent are followers culpable for the actions of their leaders? To what extent are followers culpable for the actions of other followers? I’ll use some concrete examples, if you’ll pardon my proving Godwin correct. To what extent is Günter Grass answerable for the crimes of Hitler? To what extent was Reagan responsible for the crimes of Oliver North? To what extent is John McCain responsible for the crimes of William Calley? It’s hard to make broad generalizations, and it mostly needs to be considered case by case, though one could probably lay out some broad principles.
I think I agree with your underlying principle that violence against the innocent, even for some kind of presumably positive end goal, is pretty close to unforgiveable.
The two biggest sources of disagreement have to do with how innocents are defined (whether politicians, military, and police targets are distinct from random civilians) and the question of “collateral damage,” the extent to which civilians might be harmed in order to hit a more “legitimate” target. I’m not clear on whether you have the latter question in mind when you speak of the “presumably positive end goal.” Suppose it had been necessary to shoot down Flight 93. Would that have been forgivable?
If I read you correctly, you don’t make a distinction between the intifada bomb masterminds and the 12-year-olds tossing rocks in the streets — they’re all part of the same violent terrorist movement.
Granted that there’s some distinction between them, does that somehow preclude their both being part of the same violent terrorist movement?