OCCOM BILL wrote:One need not take a very comprehensive look at the world's economies to see a marked difference between Democracy and Communism.
You wont hear me saying that democracy isnt better or different than communism. Kinda wholly besides the point - or the one I was making, anyway.
I wasnt saying that what you're striving for is the same as what the communists were - I was saying that the way in which you were striving for it and the kinds of argument you use in the process are the same they did. And I personally believe that it wasnt just the ideal they were striving for that was wrong about the communists: more than anything it was the reasoning they applied
striving for it.
Much of the gravest consequences of their rule came not from their stated objectives but from the reasoning they applied getting there. The way they kept their project beyond the test of reality by underpinning it with a self-sustained logic. No matter how bad things went, it did not matter, it could not prove anything wrong about what they were doing, because the only test they applied was that of the lofty goal it was all to eventually bring about.
Thats the logic Bill has used at least twice now too.
The danger of zealotry isnt necessarily only in what the zealot's
aim is; it's the way he's a zealot about it. Call me conservative (note the lack of an article), but I consider zealotry dangerous no matter what the purported Grand Goal is; and in any case the zealot will always insist that his goal is just different and better from the others', and therefore not zealotry at all.
I thought both of those points would have been kind of obvious.
Concerning the zealot's claim about how
his cause is just different and
is good - well, its up to us non-Believers to check up on that, to burst that self-sustained bubble of circular logic if need be. Finding that 98% of the population he claims to have liberated has already lost faith in him is one way to do so.
O'Bill insists that it's wrong to judge America's intervention in Iraq on the basis of actual realities; we should judge it on how much better things will be when they are what he is promising us they will be. In short, anything that happens now is justified by the belief in what they once will turn into, eventually -
if you are right. Sane people will insist to judge
whether you are right or not on actual realities rather than mere Conviction.
OCCOM BILL wrote:it's equally silly to classify an attempt provide people with self-determination to one that sought to deprive them of it. Even with your eloquence Nimh, that dog won't hunt.
Note: the communists
also claimed their attempt was to "provide people with self-determination" - and it wasnt just fellow communists who took their world for it at the time, too.
The proof of the pudding, again, is not in the argument about what Lofty Goal is being attempted; it's in what's actually shaped and created on the ground. Some of the worst events were rooted in sincere attempts to do Good.
Finally, on a predictable side note:
Foxfyre wrote:We have done and are doing our deeds:
1) As self defense retaliation against a hostile attack
Oh yeah there was this whole how Iraq attacked America on 9/11 thing huh?
I keep forgetting that ...
I think we all know just how Yousif feels.
Where might you get such an crazy idea? You speak as if the war is over and today is their new reality. War is hell Nimh. Whether the cause is just or not, the result can't be measured by the difficulty of the journey. That anything that happens now doesn't belong in an argument from you, Nimh.