![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Peikoff, you collectivist dickhead.
Sep. 13th, 2001 10:42 amThe following went down on the UI Objectivist Club mailing list yesterday. The former club president, who now goes to the University of Washington-Seattle, posted an especially vitriolic essay supporting the position which Peikoff and evidently the rest of ARI espouse: disproportionately large retribution.
One of the other listmembers agreed, remarking:
> Congress and the White House need to know that we don't care
> about *bin Laden and the individual perpetrators*.
The following is my response.
---
We don't?
Then who, pray tell, took the actions which destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and murdered tens of thousands of people?
How do you intend to arrogate responsibility to -- for instance --
shopkeepers, landlords, high school students, university professors, *average citizens* of Kabul who took no action to bring these atrocities about?
Men take actions as individuals, not as collectives. Isn't that one
of the principles objectivists agree upon?
Punish the actors. Punish the contributors. Punish those who attempt to protect the above. Execute the terrorists and feed their corpses to stray dogs, execute any government officials who attempt to shelter the bastards responsible and put their heads on stakes in the desert.
Retribution is 100% called for. But retribution which is not just is not retribution; it is bloodlust and murder. A man is responsible for his own sins, AND HIS ALONE.
Maybe the citizens of Palestine hate us, maybe they danced in the streets and gave children candy when they heard about yesterday's tragedy. Fine by me. They can be as rude as they like to be. They can make all the 'hate speech' they like. There is a line in the sand, and that line is the initiation of force.
And I think we all know what that means.
---
I don't pretend that there will be some way to avoid losses of civilian life. To do so would be foolish -- would be complete and total evasion. But there's a great deal of territory between "make sure no civilians are killed" and "bomb them all into steaming glass."
I have heard people who claim to respect the autonomy of the individual state that "any casualties will belong on the heads of the aggressors for forcing this choice upon us." This is bullshit. This is buck-passing. This is mindnumbingly collectivist reasoning -- hell, I shudder to call it 'reasoning' at all,
because there is no logic behind it. There is only the threat of power, the threat of the gun to the head. It is the EXACT SAME train of thought which fuelled the terrorists' actions. "We will make them fear for their lives, and then they will do what we order them to." These are not the words of principled men.
Practically speaking, I'm not naive enough to think there's going to be any way to resolve this situation without using weapons of mass destruction. But we can choose how many, and where to point them, and how massive.
I agree entirely with Bush when he said: "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these
acts and those who harbor them." I only call for care in determining who is doing the harboring.
One of the other listmembers agreed, remarking:
> Congress and the White House need to know that we don't care
> about *bin Laden and the individual perpetrators*.
The following is my response.
---
We don't?
Then who, pray tell, took the actions which destroyed the World Trade Center, damaged the Pentagon and murdered tens of thousands of people?
How do you intend to arrogate responsibility to -- for instance --
shopkeepers, landlords, high school students, university professors, *average citizens* of Kabul who took no action to bring these atrocities about?
Men take actions as individuals, not as collectives. Isn't that one
of the principles objectivists agree upon?
Punish the actors. Punish the contributors. Punish those who attempt to protect the above. Execute the terrorists and feed their corpses to stray dogs, execute any government officials who attempt to shelter the bastards responsible and put their heads on stakes in the desert.
Retribution is 100% called for. But retribution which is not just is not retribution; it is bloodlust and murder. A man is responsible for his own sins, AND HIS ALONE.
Maybe the citizens of Palestine hate us, maybe they danced in the streets and gave children candy when they heard about yesterday's tragedy. Fine by me. They can be as rude as they like to be. They can make all the 'hate speech' they like. There is a line in the sand, and that line is the initiation of force.
And I think we all know what that means.
---
I don't pretend that there will be some way to avoid losses of civilian life. To do so would be foolish -- would be complete and total evasion. But there's a great deal of territory between "make sure no civilians are killed" and "bomb them all into steaming glass."
I have heard people who claim to respect the autonomy of the individual state that "any casualties will belong on the heads of the aggressors for forcing this choice upon us." This is bullshit. This is buck-passing. This is mindnumbingly collectivist reasoning -- hell, I shudder to call it 'reasoning' at all,
because there is no logic behind it. There is only the threat of power, the threat of the gun to the head. It is the EXACT SAME train of thought which fuelled the terrorists' actions. "We will make them fear for their lives, and then they will do what we order them to." These are not the words of principled men.
Practically speaking, I'm not naive enough to think there's going to be any way to resolve this situation without using weapons of mass destruction. But we can choose how many, and where to point them, and how massive.
I agree entirely with Bush when he said: "We will make no distinction between the terrorists who committed these
acts and those who harbor them." I only call for care in determining who is doing the harboring.
