I hate it that there are no simple answers. When I think of when violence would be justified, I try to think of individual instances involving me: when would I feel justified in my daily life And self-defense comes most naturally to mind: if someone attacked me. Leave me alone, I will leave you alone, etc.OK. So that is then my rule. Sounds good: leave the world alone. I like that. Then I think of seeing Kitty Genovisi being murdered out my window: do I interfere on her behalf? And there goes my simple rule. It is so messy. My new slogan: God damn reality.

"conspiracy of structure."

i was just using it as a metaphor for watching some terrible crime and doing nothing, but point taken.

So I type in "administrative evil" into the search engine and this is the first entry that came up:

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Administrative Evil

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its and idea in Eric Voeglin. I heard him speak long ago when he was old and I was young.

I teach it three times a week. I love to read Glenn because of his nice employment of logic in his arguments. As I have said before, Glenn makes this logic teacher smile. But as any logic teacher knows, arguments stand on fall on their own merits. Don't believe me because I teach logic: believe me only when I give a good argument.

arguments stand or fall on their own merits!

may both be valid. That leaves the thornier question, which logic alone cannot answer: which one is sound?

brings in empirical evidence that supports the soundness of Glenn's position, it seems to me. Given the factor of oil and the energy situation, the effect of this war on our national security and economic well being would seem to be far beyond what merely looking at troop casualty lists and such would indicate. And there is of course the staggering cost of the war and its effects. Etc. Etc. I think Glenn's points stand the "analytical nuance" test just fine (valid arguments) and a good case can certainly be made that they are sound as well.

seems to me to be a point that could be argued both ways as well. It is almost calling for a defense of one's ontological and epistemological committments, calling for defintions of truth and certainty of final outcome. What exactly qualifies as the "end" of this now five year occupation/war/situation? etc. Charles Sanders Peirce argues that the truth is what all humans will eventually agree on, but he uses the idea as an ideal limiting point to make his definition clear. Or are Hegelians lurking amongst us, who would bid us wait until the owl of minerva flaps its wings over the middle east before any statments about it can be ventured?

I was struck by a post made earlier in which Justice Jackson from the Nuremburg trials was quoted, saying something to the effect that now that we had set such high standards by which to judge our enemies, we had best live up to them, or all our fine achievments at Nuremburg would retroactively become mere farce. And it seems to me that with the Gitmo trials, and especially if people are executed without real trials, we will have achieved that condition. Already Abu Gharib (sp?) with its administrative evils has cast a stain on our honor that puts it into the qualitative realm, if your ontology admits of such. If something is intrinsically bad, then there is no measuring it: the harm is not able to be rectified on the quantitative scale. Like the Indian Removal Act, which led to the seizure of Cherokee land and their expulsion to Oklahoma, it will have become an immesurable horror.

a defensible case can be made that Glenn is not being hyperbolic at all. In fact, I would claim he is being calm and measured.

as a professional practitioner of logic I heartily agree. Logic is only an organon, as the Philosopher told us. And there are many shadings and nuances in the symbolic forms of human rationality (see Ernst Cassirer for the details, or even, if I may be so bold, a book I wrote, called "Vico's Axioms: The Geometry of the Human World."

that image of the turkey vulture of media hackery flapping its wings over the middle east, waiting to put its sign and seal on the assured results . . . . I do not often type those hallowed words of internet approbation, but this one surely calls for it: lol.

Yes, if you combine Klein's work on the shock doctrine with Voeglin's work on administrative evil which some kind soul brought to my attention earlier in the thread and you have a real case for clarity on this and a great deal of horrified sadness.

talked about nations being born, reaching a heroic midpoint, and then declining into a kind of rational madness he called the barbarism of reflection. He wrote in his Scienza Nuova that:

For such peoples, like so many beasts, have fallen into the custom of each man thinking only of his own private interests and have reached the extreme of delicacy, or better of pride, in which like wild animals they bristle and lash out at the slightest displeasure. Thus no matter how great the throng and press of their bodies, they live like wild beasts in a deep solitude of spirit and will, scarcely any two being able to agree since each follows his own pleasure or caprice. By reason of all this, providence decrees that, through obstinate factions and desperate civil wars, they shall turn their cities into forests and the forests into dens and lairs of men. In this way, through long centuries of barbarism, rust will consume the misbegotten subtleties of malicious wits that have turned them into beasts made more inhuman by the barbarism of reflection than the first men had been made by the barbarism of sense. . .