Last week a woman called Dennis in one of his shows. She wanted to reason against the war in Iraq.
Her argument was (I’m citing it from memory, she certainly articulated it in different words)
“Have you ever fought a war? Did you fight in Vietnam? No? So how can you argue, that a war can be right and just to fight? You’ve never been in a war. You don’t know how it is. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Dennis argued, that you don’t have to have the experience to fight a war in order to reason, that a war can be just and worth fighting.
I agree on that.
But ….
Dennis also said, that this argument is baseless because having experienced something doesn’t entitle you to decide wether it is right or wrong resp. having not experienced something doesn’t disables you from judgement. He said (in words to that affect) that the woman’s argument was baseless and a distortion, caused by leftist thinking.
I don’t agree on that.
I think, the point that the woman made was another one. It was not a stupid one at all.
She basically expressed the moral dilemma of a war. It is the dilemma of the individuum’s rights and value vs. the group’s rights and value(s).
Here is what I mean in other words:
The father of a friend of mine was a young man during the second world war. He was fighting as a young soldier for Nazi-Germnany in Russia. He saw and experienced horrible things and most of his comrades died in combat or froze to death. The horror was so overwhelming that after the war for him there was no greater cause - wright or wrong, whatsoever - that could justify the cruelty human individuums cause to each other in a war ever again.
[Footnote: this is a little bit like some people don’t believe in God because of the badness and the evil in the world. It’s the best argument (theodicy problem) against the existence of a good and almighty God in my opinion. Every believer has to struggle with it at least every once in a while.]
On the other side there is the reasoning, that by fighting a war, a country must defend itself and/or stop evil in the world and therefore may sacrifice innocent young men and women to prevent even greater evil from the group.
A war always means weighing up life against life. Can one say that the life of one innocent is less valuable than the life of ten innocent people?
I don’t think so. It’s a moral dilemma that has no final solution, no final answer to it.
There are two layers. One is the layer of the individual life with its individual rights and value. The other one is the layer of the group, that shapes society and protects the rights and value of the individuals.
Politics is located in the realm of the second layer, the layer of the group, but has to consider the first layer, the layer of the individual, too. In order to protect the rights and value of the individuals of the whole group, it may be justified to potentially sacrifice an individual, e.g. who fights as a soldier. There is a moral obligation to protect one’s fellows from evil: one’s family, one’s neighbours and in the greater perspective one’s country. This is an absolute demand.
The woman that called Dennis argued in the first layer, the layer of the individual. No loss of an individual, e.g. of a son who is fighting as a soldier, can ever be replaced or justified by anything. The loss of one is the loss of the world. The mother’s pain is something, that touches absoluteness.
Nevertheless, the woman who called was reasoning only in the layer of the individual. She, and a lot of people (in my opinion usually people on the left) have a kind of blindness for the layer of the group. Their focus is limited.
One has to consider both layers. One’s mind has to move in both realms when it’s about politics. Considering the layer of the group alone would lead to cruelty against individuals and utilitarism. Considering the layer of the individual alone would lead to extinction of the group, because it could not defend itself as a group from outside evil – or for that matter even defend a fellow group from inside or outside evil (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq or WWII).
Thus “Did you ever fight in a war? Do you know about what you’re talking?” is not a totally wrong question to argue against a war in my eyes: the point behind it is proper. But it is only half of the equation.
Dennis Prager Show (c)
5 responses so far ↓
1 Cristian // Jan 28, 2008 at 11:13 pm
Füchsin, no offense to your friend, but I wish people were less concerned with metaphysics and philosophy and more with preserving their civilization. And I agree with Dennis, this is the influence of the left (nihilism). Nothing is worth dying for. Not even (virtual scenario) passing on to the children a free country (I mean in case the country would be attacked, not about Iraq, but I guess he answer of your friend’s father would be the same).
God and evil: so you agree with this position? (there cannot be a good God that allows so much suffering in the world).
About the life of one innocent being or not more valuable than the life of ten innocent people, I’m not sure I understand who is the one and who are the ten, but I’m glad that the free world didn’t ask itself this question in WWI, WWII, Cold War.
As about the war being a moral dilemma, I don’t know either. The higher ground of the pacifists didn’t count in WWII, for instance. It took a Churchill to stand up to Hitler in a mostly defeated Europe.
A Churchill that told Chamberlain upon his returning from signing the Munich pact with Hitler: “You were given the choice between war and dishonor. You chose dishonor and you will have war.”
2 Füchsin // Jan 29, 2008 at 8:15 am
Hi Cristian
some answers to your comments …
- philosophy and reasoning about the transcendent is a constitutional part of our civilisation and also of the Christian religion (very good on that is D’Souza’s “What’s so great about Christianity”) so in my eyes it is impossible to pit one against each other. On the contrary, it is the moral confusion of people, the confusion about values, that is caused by a lack of clear thinking. Clear thinking has been replaced by a feel-good-’thinking’. That is also why some people would rather save their dog from drowning than save a stranger in the same situation if they had to choose. They have stronger feelings about their dog. (There’s more in that but let’s discuss it another time)
- god and evil: no - I do believe in God. Nevertheless, the evil in the world is my (and not only my) biggest problem in my faith. It was also thought through by many theologians and is called the “theodicy problem”. For an example: there were several reports of survivers of the holocaust in the newspaper just a few days ago because of January 27, the date of the liberation of Auschwitz. What they experienced was literally hell on earth. I am convinced that no loving and caring God would ever allow such things happen to his beloved humans. The answer in my opinion is, that this potentiality of evil in the human being is the ‘price’ of freedom of will. Freedom of will is a constituent part of our human species (in contrast to animals or plants). No freedom of will – no human specie. So God can’t change it because when changing he had to take our freedom away and with it take away our characteristic of being human. We can discuss that on a meetup if you like to
or in another post here in the blog
- the one/ten innocent people: by that I wanted to say, that a war is always a weighing of life because innocent people will die in the war. And weighing of life is something impossible in my eyes.
- the moral dilemma is:
- two absolute goods have to be weighed against each other: innocent individual life against, you named it, the preservation of our civilisation.
- Pacifists would confine only to the first good (innocent life), therefore the civilisation would be doomed.
- The reason pacifists would confine only to the first good is, that they rely only on their feelings and consider them as the only source of true and deep insights. They consider reasoning as dangerous because one can err. It takes a small bit of abstract thinking to recognize the civilisation as an absolute good whereas it takes no abstract thinking to recognize a beloved fellow individual life as an absolute good.
I think, we agree on that both ‘goods’ have to be considered. E.g. that’s why in a war a civilized party of the war would deliberately try to limit the loss of innocent lifes if possible. Considering both is part of our civilisation, too.
3 cris // Jan 30, 2008 at 12:46 am
Hi Füchsin,
So, our daily dose of debate
Oops, this quote was from the competition.
I don’t really understand your point about philosophy. I’m saying that the philosophy that influenced Europe is rather nihilism.
And, moreover, Christianity and the our philosophy (Europe’s) have almost nothing in common.
Let’s take the greatest 10 philosophers (let’s say the most influential ones) and see how much Christianity we will find in there. But what I’m sure we’ll find is atheism, secularism, nihilism, materialism.
So they cannot pit one against each other since they have almost nothing in common.
Disclaimer: I’m not against philosophy. Can it be nice or interesting? I guess, as I’m sure there are interesting and great men who are/were philosophers. But in my opinion, the major philosophers, the ones that are revered even in the history class (like the much overrated French Enlightenment) brought about most of the problems that we as Europeans have today.
I think I’m beginning to understand where we differ.
You say that life is an absolute good. I guess it is not for me.
There are more important things in life than life itself, if I may put it this way.
I cannot think of many that are, but liberty is definitely one of them.
But the days of “live free or die” are long gone. At least, here, on the continent.
I can imagine, though, that a redneck (how we like to mock them), if his country is attacked, will not say to himself “now, war is a moral dilemma…”. And I’m pretty sure that’s because he never heard of Rousseau or Nietzsche. He’s not “enlightened”.
Trying to keep the number of the casualties down has nothing to do with the example that you gave (which I can’t get off my mind) of the guy who cannot fight a war (not even to defend his country) because of the horrible things he saw. Well, this is frightening to me…
And Dennis is sooo right. Europe learned the wrong lesson. We learned that fighting is evil, when we should have learned that we have to fight evil.
I think that’s the meaning of “never again”…we will never fight again
4 Füchsin // Jan 31, 2008 at 11:07 pm
Hi Cris,
first of all: you know what - I don’t think that Europ is so non-religious as Dennis puts it sometimes. Most of the people do have their religion – but it’s more their own private one that is not based on some sort of church or so. They fear and mistrust the great institutions. So they build up their own believes that they put together from pieces of their childhood believes, esoteric books they read, Asian religions and so on. I think there are only very few people who believe in nothing at all. Most people do agree on ‘there is something behind it but we don’t really know what it is’.
Do you remember, that on our meeting I said, I’m not sure if there isn’t such thing as reincarnation? Reincarnation is not a Christian believe, nevertheless, it seems possible to me that it is part of reality. I thought a long time about it because as a Christian I’m not supposed to believe in it and I came to the conclusion that wether there is reincarnation or not is not important for this life and even if there is, God didn’t want to let us know about it, maybe in order to keep our focus completely on this life instead of the past and wanted to prevent us from excuses for the future (“I’ll do it better in my next life” or “that baby will be reborn anyway…”) So I’m also a little bit that kind of eclectic. The correlation of individualism and authority (of for example a church) is a problem for most people. I think in Europe people opt for individualism only. They think, individualism excludes any moral authorities and anything they don’t understand offhand, they reject. The trinity for example is beyond their grasp so after reflecting it for an instant they discard it.
By calling life an “absolute good” I mean that there is no relative good that can replace a life. For example, you can replace a car that got broken, but it’s not the same to replace a human. “Absolute” in this sense means, that there is something absolute, something devine in it. And yes, for a person there can be a higher value than his own life. But it is difficult to decide for another person. And you can’t count lifes and weigh them as easy as you can count and weigh peas.
Nevertheless I agree with Dennis that the life of a mass murderer has less value than an innocent life of a decent human being. In fact I even believe, the mass murderers life has no value at all on this earth any more. (Let’s discuss about my rejection to the death penalty at another time) And I agree that there can be good and clear reason for waging a war.
Then about the example of the man experiencing horrible things in WWII – I think you misunderstood this example – the point was not, that the man is now reasoning or using philosophy – the point is, that he doesn’t … because he was (understandably) completely overwhelmed by his experiences. Btw, this makes McCain very credible to me. I think, if he is talking about war and about torture, he really knows what he is talking about. Mitt Romney for that matter does not, but that doesn’t mean he can’t make the right decisions.
About your last paragraph: I agree. It’s worrying. There is a lot to say about that. We will probably discuss it in this blog, and that is great!
5 cris // Feb 1, 2008 at 12:12 am
Oh, Füchsin, I’m absolutely sure Europe is very non-religious. If I had to bet everything I had, I would hesitate maybe a nanosecond.
I am not talking about people registered as religious. Because in that case, yes, we’re religious. We are not pagans. We have a lot of Christian holidays, we don’t eat meat on Friday…
But I’m afraid that’s pretty much it. I’m talking about going to church regularly (at least every two weeks). I’m talking about living that faith you have. Believing in your heart doesn’t count.
‘There is something behind it but we don’t really know what it is’ doesn’t count either. This is something pretty passive, this is not religion or faith.
Do you think people mistrust big churches? (denominations). Maybe, but this doesn’t make them more religious.
Some links: (believe me, I added them after writing the comment)
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2005-08-10-europe-religion-cover_x.htm
http://www.cbn.com/CBNNews/News/040301a.aspx
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2843/is_2_28/ai_114090210
I’ll think about reasons why Europe is non-religious and put them together, because I always wanted to do that.
About “absolute good”: let’s ask 100 people on the street “life or liberty?” (of course, about their own life, not about others’). Wanna bet that 75 will say “life”? So, then, isn’t Europe too passive about its own fate?
The example with your friend: he is not using philosophy, but I think many pacifists do. I didn’t misunderstand. He was understandably overwhelmed, but when he refuses to defend his country, I’m not sure I have respect for him. I understand not wanting to fight for the Iraqi people for instance, but not when it comes to his children.
If you agree with me about the last part, why don’t you agree that this is pretty much the same case, when this guy says “fighting is evil”? (or “no cause is just enough to justify a war”)
Leave a Comment