It's an ugly area of the moral swampland we have here. As far as I recall it is still a sin to even THINK of committing a sin -- whether or not one actually commits it. Does that mean I should be prosecuted for planning to commit murder? Where does the line fall? What about merely wishing harm on someone else, like wishing my Doctors all had my medical ailments instead of me.
Getting into Minority Report territory here. Does it matter if we really weren't going to do it, were going to do it, or didn't do it because we got popped for a lesser crime?
Should all generals and presidents be prosecuted for knowing, absolutely knowing, at least some of the soldiers they send into a war will be killed?
I always thought it would be better for the politicians to fight in the wars they cause and leave us the heck out of it.
"Behind the intials was a metaphor, a delirium tremens, a trembling unfurrowing of the mind's plowshare. The saint whose water can light lamps, the clairovoyant whose lapse in recall is the breath of God, the true paranoid for whom all is organized in spheres joyful or threatening about the central pulse of himself, the dreamer whose puns probe ancient fetid shafts and tunnels of truth all act in the same special relevance to the word, or whatever it is the word is there, buffering, to protect us from."
Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
1 Comments:
It's an ugly area of the moral swampland we have here. As far as I recall it is still a sin to even THINK of committing a sin -- whether or not one actually commits it. Does that mean I should be prosecuted for planning to commit murder? Where does the line fall? What about merely wishing harm on someone else, like wishing my Doctors all had my medical ailments instead of me.
Getting into Minority Report territory here. Does it matter if we really weren't going to do it, were going to do it, or didn't do it because we got popped for a lesser crime?
Should all generals and presidents be prosecuted for knowing, absolutely knowing, at least some of the soldiers they send into a war will be killed?
I always thought it would be better for the politicians to fight in the wars they cause and leave us the heck out of it.
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