Monday, January 23, 2006

My Scary Conspecifics

My conspecifics appear to be soiling themselves out of fear of terrorism. I posed the question whether Pakistan would be justified in bombing a motel in Tampa to kill some suspected “terrorists” even if it meant killing all the innocents also in the hotel. To my dismay, some of them were entirely OK with this scenario. “Whatever it takes,” say they. How many innocents would have to be killed before it would not be OK? They conceded that one would have to “draw the line” somewhere, that killing 50,000 innocents might be morally unacceptable. I am glad that they are not completely unprincipled.

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