...Says that howling moonbat brigade are absolutist, but I think that he's missing a huge piece of the picture.
You know who else uses rhetoric like "Hitler," "Mengele," and "murderer?" Those moonbats that I take pictures of at anti-war rallies, that's who. To them, everyone who supports a military action, no matter what the reason, what the cause, or what the potential impact, is a "modern day Hitler." Why? Because these people have such an uncompromising personal (and selective) aversion to violence, big business, positions of authority, government, that they have a fundamental inability to objectively measure the costs and benefits of the use of force by a Western government, and cannot fathom how someone else can support such an action.
Continuing the moral calculus metaphor: the US pulled the trigger on a war in Iraq that killed innocents? "Fascist Nazi oppressors!" Even though the action liberated 25 million people and came after a long list of carefully considered relative risks and benefits? Still "fascist Nazi oppressors!" It's like talking to a wall, because they're deaf absolutists. Think about the parallels; those for military action view launching a war as an exercise in self-defense and human liberation. Killed and maimed civilians are unfortunate, but acceptable because of the specifics of the situation. In contrast, that moonbat screaming in Lafayette Park obsesses over an individual family in Baghdad that huddled around their dining room table as a 2000 lb bomb struck close enough to wipe them out. They feel that anyone that could support the actions that are responsible for such a travesty is a monster. A "Nazi." They are absolutists.
Except that the people he's talking about in camp LLL only complain about the United States and Israel using violence. By in large they tend to either be disturbingly quiet (or even more disturblingly, jubilant) when "jihadis" blow themselves up, taking out several innocent people along with them. The only absolutist bone in their reality discordant bodies is their blind and absolute hatred for the United States and Israel.
They're actually relativists. Morals, values, ethics, and facts are shiftable in order to support their feelings and wants (and more often I think, to help them dodge the responsibility of thinking).
Absolutism is the belief that 'A' is 'A', while relativism is the belief (or wishful thought) that 'A' can also not be 'A'. At it's core, the rift between neo-cons and liberals comes down to those basic premises. That Saddam needed to be dealt with during the Clinton era, and that while Saddam and the situation in Iraq didn't change after Clinton left office, Saddam no longer needed to be dealt with = 'A' can also not be 'A'. Saddam needed to be dealt with during the Clinton era, Saddam didn't change when Clinton left office, Saddam still needed to be dealt with = 'A' is 'A'.
This is an important distinction that we can't afford to muddle because "'A' can also not be 'A'" is completely irrational. It's a non-thought.
(His post is about Republican views on abortion, but I'm not going to talk about abortion. I just can't fully respond to his point without mentioning his context.)
Republican pro-lifers believe that a human being is a human being at the moment of conception, so the idea of going to a doctor's office to have that human being killed is very comparable to Dr. Mengele's experiments and SS men throwing babies into fire pits. However no reasonable person can see a how a man that liberated two countries that were under the rule of murderous and oppressive regimes is just like a man who placed damn near all of Europe under his oppressive regime which was responsible for the murder of some 12 million people, which is exactly what what the liberals he's referring to frequently claim.
Helpful hint: Camp LLL does moral "calculus". Seeing, where that's landed them, we'd be well advised to stay good and clear of that kind (and all kinds) of fuzzy logic.
-R.A.H.
*Update* Apparently he means that they're actually relativists. I just thought he had the two confused. But I'm thinking that if I made that mistake then maybe other people might, so read this post as a supplement.
