It is indubitably true that, during WWII, the Western Allies were better behaved in their military conduct than the USSR, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan. Fewer atrocities, a determined attempt to adhere to what were then called "the Geneva Conventions" (which concern the conduct of warring parties), and continuing respect for democratic norms despite conflict (Australia had a federal election in 1943, for example).
However, the Western Allies also dropped two atomic weapons on Japan, and destroyed Dresden - an open city, so there were no air raid shelters - with incendiaries. These deeds were done in pursuit of victory against a morally depraved enemy.
I am not suggesting those acts were wrong, or disproportionate, or even legally in error (I don't really believe in international law, because it can't be enforced; the latter is the sine qua non of law).
You are on a moral precipice. But then, we all are.
Yes. I keep thinking about the certainty of what will happen if Israel doesn't end Hamas, and the position it seems to me that they're in. Be responsible for the deaths of civilians being used as human shields today or for the future deaths of their own civilians later. The people ignoring the latter half strike me as either deliberately obtuse (in some cases from anti-Semitism, in other cases just from stupidity)or hopelessly naive. It's taking a lot not to just write them off and stop listening.
I keep wondering how Israel *can* end Hamas when its leadership is safely ensconced in Qatar, being aided and abetted by other Jew-hating Muslim regimes who are happy to use Palestinians as the tip of the spear (or the whole spear) in their goal of eradicating Israel. It speaks volumes that Western leaders did not instantly demand Qatar hand them over as war criminals. I've heard that many U.S. politicians, including Rs, have deep financial ties to Qatar. :-/
Well, it's going to be rather more complicated parsing out who can be saved and who is lost to the cause given how Palestinian children are being educated. I'm having a hard time seeing the mass killing of Gazans as the viable solution given the scope and depth of the problem. For example, this article:
"A new study of Palestinian textbooks finds that Palestinian children are being taught to glorify and value terrorism and violence. The study, called "Palestinian Elementary School Curriculum 2016–17: Radicalization and Revival of the PLO Program," was conducted by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (in Jerusalem)"
Right? It seems like they have to end all the foot soldiers and force the billionaires who are responsible for the plight of Palestinians to quit spending their time with whores and gourmet meals in Qatar or pick up arms themselves.
Principles are not a weakness. Ever. Though I confess they may seem like it at times.
Suppose, for example, a principle of war is that we do not fire on vehicles marked with the Red Cross or Crescent. But suppose there is a group of people whose scruples are not the same as ours, and they use vehicles marked with Red Crosses/Crescents to transport healthy and armed combatants to do their thing. Suppose further that it is discovered that the one group is actually doing this, so the group with higher scruples begins targeting such vehicles. If there are in fact sick/injured in those vehicles, and those sick/injured are killed by this targeting, those deaths are on the hands of the group that is using them as transport for healthy combatants.
It would be useful to examine other historical examples for guidance. In the battles of Saipan and Okinawa, Allied forces witnessed (or found the evidence of) thousands of civilians who'd committed suicide rather than surrender. IJA soldiers were sent into suicidal bonsai charges where the only possible outcome was that they were going to be obliterated. Their outcome was not in question, only the number of Americans they were going to take with them was.
The allies estimated that if they were going to invade Honshu, there were probably going to be a million of their own killed, and untold millions more Japanese who would also die over the course of a year or two in standard land warfare - either directly from gunfire/bombs, or indirectly via starvation and illness as they were deprived of food and resources which would be destroyed in the fighting anyway. The outcome, the fall of Japan, was inevitable. We can navel-gaze all day long about how many people would have actually died, but it was certain to be an insanely large number, well north of 1 million souls.
This was all part of the calculus used when we decided to drop 2 nukes. Perhaps 300,000 people died directly from those blasts. A horrible number, to be certain, but less horrible than the alternative.
If there is such a thing as a just war, and I submit that there is, it is incumbent on the defenders to prosecute the war to its most rapid conclusion, which will almost certainly lead to fewer deaths overall.
At 6'6", 230 lbs and at 55 yoa, I'm in very good health, and work out. And I know how to fight, and am proficient in the use of firearms. If some 5'6" and 130 lb dope fiend threatens me with violence (and clearly is unarmed), I'll probably slap the shit out of him, bind him down, and wait for the police to show up. If he comes at me with a club/knife/firearm, I'm gonna fuck his shit up.
This is roughly analogous to what's going on in Israel and Gaza presently. Israel has done everything it can in the last 75 years to make a healthy, robust society. The other side has done what is effectively to hang out in opium dens getting high, eating poorly, and never exercising. And they've pretty much been doing that since 1948.
As to tolerance of the intolerant, it's clearly those folks who are intolerant, but truth and logical consistency are not among their values. Many of them even admit it openly.
I am a Christian, and although Christ clearly told us to turn the other cheek, and the early christians showed their faith by martyrdom, I tend to hold to Andrew Klavan's dictum: "Our moral decisions about ourselves can be spiritual. Our moral decisions about other people can only be practical." If I advocate free speach, it doesn't mean that I want hypersexualized drag queens managing participatory performances that young children are legally forced to attend. That is why I disagree with my religion when they oppose the death penalty. I used to say I would reconsider my stand the day Charles Manson no longer came up for parole. So now I've reconsidered, but haven't changed my mind.
You have a lot of thought-provoking questions here, and I have been asking myself many of the same questions. To really address them all properly, I would have to write my own essay as a response to the questions you're asking here. Bottom line is Israel is perfectly within its rights to respond with force, and the notion of proportionality is ridiculous. A proportionate response would mean raiding Gaza and raping their women and children before mutilating and slaughtering them. We also shouldn't abandon our principles. They are our strength, not our weakness. That is why the Marxist Ctrl-Left worked so hard to subvert them. They want so bad to eliminate our principles from the way we live. All they value is power. We can respond with force and still keep our principles intact. Perhaps when I write my response essay, I might be able to illustrate how we can do that as classical liberals and still achieve a decisive victory over these psychopathic lunatics.
Any thinking person, thinking as in serious as unbiased as possible thinking, has to confront the same questions as you've stated. Perhaps this trite cliche "life isn't fair" is the most succinct conclusion one can draw.
The principles we’ve lived by as a society for a long time worked because living by those principles was the most effective strategy. These principles worked excellently because the more people bought into them and played by them the more everyone benefited and enough people believed in and played by that strategy that it worked. But at some point the meta shifted.
People realized that these principles and strategy could be preyed on and have exploited its inability to answer. What we have been unable to deal with is that this exploitation isn’t a different strategy inside the same structure. It’s a declaration of war. We have further been unable to understand that we have to fight this like a war.
Fighting does not mean changing your principles. It means being aware that in combat, the rules are different than in the safety of your own home.
Luckily, I believe the meta is shifting again. More and more people are becoming aware of the strategies being used to exploit and supplant our principles. It has been too long in coming but people are finally fighting back. And even more fortunately, those who stand with the rapists and murderers are making the same mistake we did. They do not understand that the meta is shifting and it’s going to break them.
That is, it will if we do what our principles demand and fight. Not like them, like animals. But rather fight as humans. Fight with strategy, intelligence, and stopping when the time has come to end the fight.
It remains to be seen if we can be human long enough to reestablish the dominance of our principles. Our founders were human. We can be again.
Luckily for me I live in Poland so we are some distance deteched from the Woke madness.
But you should not despair - here, there or in Israel - the rules can still hold while we win wars. Of course, if the choice is between holding rules and succumbing to barbarians or giving up rules and surviving - that choice is clear. For now Israel manages to conduct its war in an effective and humanitarian way, minimizing number of civilian casualties.
Maybe a piece of a beginning of an approach: Is the the worst outcome we seek to forestall dying at the hands of something like a Hamas Einsatzgruppe, or is it participating in something like a Hamas Einsatzgruppe? (Studies such as Christopher Browning's _Ordinary Men_ convince me that this question is probably prior to most other questions of ethics and politics.)
I would die, including submitting to being the victim of barbarism, before I would commit barbarism. I also think I would die before I would prevent barbarism by creating massive civilian casualties (though I'm less sure of this). But that's me, making a decision that affects only me. If my choice was to facilitate barbarism against a lot of innocents or kill a lot of innocents, which it seems to me is Israel's predicament, it becomes a hell of a lot less clear.
I, also, don't feel up to being a head of state, or even a general. The nation-scale issue may be upon us. In not very many decades, the Left (a majority of the young Left, according to at least one poll) has gotten from lovely-but-imprecise notions to justifying 10/7. If my fellow-citizen can find a justification of 10/7 convincing, is it safe for me to trust he can't *do* a 10/7? I hope some of the esteemed and powerful are good and worried about this.
I am strict about enforcing boundaries. We need to. Sometimes, in order to enforce a boundary, you have to be very harsh (and people stuck in the drama triangle will misunderstand but it doesn't matter what they think). I know it's the way of the world. I don't think we need rape or other barbarism to stop other people. I don't think people need to give up their morals, but they sure as heck need to learn how to be strict with their boundary enforcing.
And, in the case of killing innocent children (used by Hamas as shields), if they're saving more children, and through death saving other children from fates of barbarism also, then perhaps there is some sort of cost-benefit analysis that will help ease the consciousness. When we're talking about the bigger picture it really sucks that any innocent lives are lost, but Israel is up against a wall, and innocent lives will be killed any way you slice it.
Sound thought. To characterize one’s attitude to be that “the only thing that is not tolerated is intolerance” is to embrace an illusion as some kind of self-exalting philosophy. It is obvious that the statement is paradoxical, but those who claim it apparently don’t have to face reality squarely enough to find that you can’t actually live by a paradox except by sitting on your hands.
I'm not sure where we go from here. I generally agree with James Lindsey when he says that responding to evil with evil, usually in the context of the Race driven riots and Trans issues in the USA, is only going to serve the interests of the activists who seek to cause damage to the USA socially and culturally. But in international issues such as these you have done a good job as far as indicating the issues and problems with all of this. You have mentioned in other posts, and in this comment section, that you are largely unwilling to commit evil in order to stop evil. While I can respect this from an individualist perspective my own perspective is shaped by my family having a long history of military service stretching back past my Great-Grandfather, and that the simple fact is that while individuals may hold this belief, societies and civilizations do not have that luxury and having to call it that feels both wrong and right at the same time. This is why every society in history has had some form of armed forces to defend it and why many militaries through out history are willing to shape men, volunteer and conscripts alike, into monsters, weather that be temporarily or permanently, in order to inflict violence on those who would commit violence on them; hopefully in the name of defense but also all to often in the name of offensive force. I don't know what the answer is, but it is one we will have to come too hopefully before the knives start coming out among those here domestically who hold these kind of ideas and embrace the new "de-colonization" that they have openly admitted will require murder, rape, and torture of those who they hold have "wronged" them.
You raise some very good questions, Holly. The main thought I have about the rise of barbarism on the left is that (instantiated largely through Critical Theory) the Left now operates on what Ayn Rand called "the Death Premise," though that could be a long discussion in its own right.
Regarding principles, I've found it helpful to distinguish between the principle itself and the most common application of a principle. For example, I don't view something like "do not target civilians in war" as a principle per se. I see that as an application of the abstract principle of something like "do not compromise your soul while waging war," which in turn is a refinement of the principle "do not compromise your soul." I realize that's not a very well fleshed out principle, but the point I want to make is that I see the principle as being far more abstract in the guidance it offers, which is what makes it powerful, but also more difficult to use. A principle is not there to allow me to get away without thinking, it's there to guide my thinking.
In the situation you present it's difficult because it only involves alternatives that are beyond painful, either watch the ones you love be slaughtered, take innocent lives, or take your own life. But for me, I know that allowing a person I love to go through what you describe would absolutely compromise my soul to the point I wouldn't want to exist afterward. Taking an innocent life would haunt me, but ultimately I would place the moral responsibility on the person who created the situation, not on me who didn't ask for it. But, that would not necessarily be true for someone else, even if they accepted the same moral principle as I did.
I think that some of the difficulty with the Israel-Hamas conflict has come not because they are too committed to principles, but because for so long we have conflated an application of the principle with the principle itself. I believe that if Israel (and more broadly the West) is to survive this resurgence of barbarism, we will not only have to use our principles but we will have to rediscover many of them, because the rules of thumb we have accepted as proxies will no longer suffice.
A thoughtful piece, Holly. It becomes overwhelming to think these things through (with all their twists and turns) while keeping an empathic heart.
You bring up something astute in the mention of cluster B personality disorders. Those who don't know, simply don't know what it's like to live on the other side of that. And, yet, we see the destruction from them daily on a global stage. Is there an evolutionary purpose for those disorders? Hmmmmm... So many questions. So few answers.
Your queries make Benjamin Franklins' words come to mind:
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is one well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
Confronting reality. There is an awful lot raised in this piece. But I think that underlying it all is an assumption that national governments act in the interest of their citizens. An examination of the facts should be enough to prove that assumption false.
My assertion is that national governments act in the interest of their central banks, because the government actors have been bought or otherwise compromised by the central banks.
This is as true of Israel as it is of the U.S. and the U.K., the primary culprits of this unraveling disaster in Gaza. Rather than agreeing to a ceasefire, and allowing some breathing space for everyone to come to their senses, the US and Israel, along with the UK and the EU, rush headlong into the destruction of over 2 million inconvenient people, most of whom are children.
Of course the attack on Israel was wrong (Anyone celebrating that attack is mentally deranged.), as was the attack on the US on 9/11. But like the attack on 9/11, the attack by Hamas was allowed to happen by Israeli, US, and UK intelligence - for their own purposes and those of the cabal. Why has Netanyahu consistently advocated funding Hamas?
Since 2006 Gaza has been under lockdown, electricity and food restricted by Israel. It is has been described, accurately, as an "open air prison". Most of the people in Gaza are refugees or direct descendants of refugees, displaced by Israel from their ancestral homes, and slowly starved and squeezed. How would most people behave in such a situation?
The parallels between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Russians living in the Donbas between 2014 and 2022 are striking.
This crisis is multifaceted and terribly difficult to resolve. But it is the result of a long campaign of fear on the part of the Israeli government, and governments around the world, primarily designed to get people to hate each other. And as Peter Gabriel says, "fear, she's the mother of violence".
More violence on anyone's part is not the answer.
No one is all bad. And no one is all good. But we should all be doing the best we can to help each other get along. Don't expect that from the Israeli government and its allies.
Tolerance is essential for freedom. But tolerance implies putting up with disagreeable things. It is up to all of us to determine where disagreeable crosses over into trespass and criminal. Not an easy task.
1) 2006 is when they elected Hamas. If a new family moved in next door and their family's published manifesto was "ELIMINATE EVERYONE NAMED DAN MAIULLO OR WHO COULD POSSIBLY BE RELATED TO HIM" and then, despite having the ability to kill everyone there silently, *all* you did was check their vehicles and make sure they weren't bringing in weapons, I would consider you the soul of restraint.
2) "Open air prison"? I bet they wish they'd lived up to this, given how much intelligence for the attack came from the Palestinians they allowed to cross into Israel and work. Perhaps if they'd actually regarded it as one, and run it as one, rather than pulling out and forcibly relocating 9000 of their citizens, trying to turn as much of it over to the Gazans as they could, October 7 wouldn't have happened.
3) Asking "How would most people behave in such a situation?" comes so close to justifying what happened that I can only assume you wrote this comment in an attempt to ruin my Monday by making me think I have readers who believe that there are situations where it's ok to gang-rape kindergarten kids. If that was your goal, you did a fantastic job. My Monday is shot; it's 4:24am and I've already vomited. So please, go ahead. Tell me under what circumstances it's ok to gang-rape a 5-year-old. Under what circumstances would you gang-rape a 5-year-old? How badly do her ancestors have to fuck up before you'd look at a group of men who broke her pelvic bons with the force of their gang rape and think, "Well, how would most people behave?" or "Well, you know, they did have a right to be upset." If you say "none" then explain what's so different about you and why you expect of yourself to refrain from gang-raping 5-year-olds, no matter what their ancestors did to your ancestors, but you don't expect this out of brown people who live in the desert?
I apologize. The last thing I intended was to cause you any distress. Maybe you didn't notice that I said explicitly that the attack by Hamas was wrong and that anyone celebrating that attack was mentally deranged. But I think it is equally deranged to call for the Palestinians to be "wiped out" (eg. Jordan Peterson). There have been abuses and atrocities committed on both sides of this, but none of it justifies more violence.
Asking "How would most people behave in such a situation?" is just an attempt to recognize, as you might say, the limits of tolerance. It is not to justify more violence, and specifically not to justify the attack by Hamas on the Israelis.
It's not okay to gang-rape a 5-year-old. It's not okay to gang-rape anyone. It's also not okay to blow up children with missiles and bombs. It's not okay to use others as human shields. It's not okay to force people off their land and confine them to what constitutes a 15-minute city. It's not okay to slowly starve them and restrict their movements. A lot of things are not okay.
And it's not okay to use such atrocities to justify more atrocities.
But perhaps the most important thing to recognize is that Hamas was funded by the Israeli government. That was done to displace Arafat who was campaigning for peace. This is a top-down conflict, causing harm to the people on both sides. The Israeli government is not concerned about the welfare of Israelis, just as the US government is not concerned about the welfare of Americans.
As for me? What would I do in such a situation? I have absolutely no idea. I would hope that I would behave ethically, but I can't assure that. However, I can 100% guarantee that I would not be raping anyone, let alone a 5-year-old. Having said that, I have to emphasize that this is not about me. I could evaporate right now, and these issues would continue. Making it about me is not helpful to the discussion.
Again, I'm sorry for any distress I have cause you. That is also not okay. That was certainly not my intent. I hope you can forgive me.
The interrelationship between the individual and the group may be the key to unlocking this dilemma.
Adherence to principles by individuals may not always be beneficial for a group. The Shakers were a successful 19th century movement, whose members were committed to the principle of celibacy. But that commitment, among other things, doomed the group, in the end, to extinction.
Perhaps it is necessary to state that you will never compromise certain principles as an individual, but, regrettably, you recognize the necessity of the group to do so in extraordinary instances. And that, as a member of that group, you may be called upon to do so as well.
Great article. I really liked how nailed that the issue with standing against 'intolerance' is when people define anything even remotely offensive as 'intolerance'. This is why us libertarians typically draw the line at people trying to censor any type of speech and start joking about commies and helicopter rides.
It's not unprincipled to stand up and defend yourself or your loved ones. That is actually a super good thing but every collectivist hates that idea. They believe that only the state should be permitted to use violence and the reality is that leaves people vulnerable.
Neither Israel or Gaza permit their citizens to have weapons. Israel is now arming their citizens but if they were not disarmed in the first place it would be been much more difficult for Hamas to commit the atrocities they did. The leadership in Israel, deliberately and knowingly, prioritized their own safety over the safety of their citizens, choosing to disarm their own people in order to prevent a civil uprising as they institute unpopular policy.
The same goes in Gaza. Only Hamas has guns in Gaza. If you arm the general population Hamas won't be as able to rig elections and you'll find the people stand up to them more. Yes, I'm suggesting that when the IDF see a kid throwing rocks at them they give that kid a gun and watch Hamas shit their pants. That kid will learn who his enemies are.
I also really appreciated your comment that you are grateful that you never have to make these decisions. A large part of the more awful parts of the Marxist social justice agenda revolve around making women terrified of men. The reality is that as men, it's our role to be the stick to the carrot in society, we are the pointy end of the stick that gets the dirty work done when it needs doing. However most men are not tyrants and we are very much aware that it's only ethical to use the least amount of violence possible. Women on the other hand advocate that no violence is ever reasonable and have been advocating for the expansion of the definition of violence to include refusing to pay for things, raised male voices, and ignoring women. In this environment men are sent a very clear message not to interfere and most men will listen to that message.
You help fight against this divisive nonsense and it's very much appreciated. It is helpful and you are doing your part to make things better.
It is indubitably true that, during WWII, the Western Allies were better behaved in their military conduct than the USSR, Nazi Germany, and Imperial Japan. Fewer atrocities, a determined attempt to adhere to what were then called "the Geneva Conventions" (which concern the conduct of warring parties), and continuing respect for democratic norms despite conflict (Australia had a federal election in 1943, for example).
However, the Western Allies also dropped two atomic weapons on Japan, and destroyed Dresden - an open city, so there were no air raid shelters - with incendiaries. These deeds were done in pursuit of victory against a morally depraved enemy.
I am not suggesting those acts were wrong, or disproportionate, or even legally in error (I don't really believe in international law, because it can't be enforced; the latter is the sine qua non of law).
You are on a moral precipice. But then, we all are.
Yes. I keep thinking about the certainty of what will happen if Israel doesn't end Hamas, and the position it seems to me that they're in. Be responsible for the deaths of civilians being used as human shields today or for the future deaths of their own civilians later. The people ignoring the latter half strike me as either deliberately obtuse (in some cases from anti-Semitism, in other cases just from stupidity)or hopelessly naive. It's taking a lot not to just write them off and stop listening.
I keep wondering how Israel *can* end Hamas when its leadership is safely ensconced in Qatar, being aided and abetted by other Jew-hating Muslim regimes who are happy to use Palestinians as the tip of the spear (or the whole spear) in their goal of eradicating Israel. It speaks volumes that Western leaders did not instantly demand Qatar hand them over as war criminals. I've heard that many U.S. politicians, including Rs, have deep financial ties to Qatar. :-/
Well, it's going to be rather more complicated parsing out who can be saved and who is lost to the cause given how Palestinian children are being educated. I'm having a hard time seeing the mass killing of Gazans as the viable solution given the scope and depth of the problem. For example, this article:
"A new study of Palestinian textbooks finds that Palestinian children are being taught to glorify and value terrorism and violence. The study, called "Palestinian Elementary School Curriculum 2016–17: Radicalization and Revival of the PLO Program," was conducted by the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (in Jerusalem)"
https://www.cfr.org/blog/teaching-palestinian-children-value-terrorism
Also: https://unwatch.org/un-teachers-call-to-murder-jews-reveals-new-report/
Right? It seems like they have to end all the foot soldiers and force the billionaires who are responsible for the plight of Palestinians to quit spending their time with whores and gourmet meals in Qatar or pick up arms themselves.
Principles are not a weakness. Ever. Though I confess they may seem like it at times.
Suppose, for example, a principle of war is that we do not fire on vehicles marked with the Red Cross or Crescent. But suppose there is a group of people whose scruples are not the same as ours, and they use vehicles marked with Red Crosses/Crescents to transport healthy and armed combatants to do their thing. Suppose further that it is discovered that the one group is actually doing this, so the group with higher scruples begins targeting such vehicles. If there are in fact sick/injured in those vehicles, and those sick/injured are killed by this targeting, those deaths are on the hands of the group that is using them as transport for healthy combatants.
It would be useful to examine other historical examples for guidance. In the battles of Saipan and Okinawa, Allied forces witnessed (or found the evidence of) thousands of civilians who'd committed suicide rather than surrender. IJA soldiers were sent into suicidal bonsai charges where the only possible outcome was that they were going to be obliterated. Their outcome was not in question, only the number of Americans they were going to take with them was.
The allies estimated that if they were going to invade Honshu, there were probably going to be a million of their own killed, and untold millions more Japanese who would also die over the course of a year or two in standard land warfare - either directly from gunfire/bombs, or indirectly via starvation and illness as they were deprived of food and resources which would be destroyed in the fighting anyway. The outcome, the fall of Japan, was inevitable. We can navel-gaze all day long about how many people would have actually died, but it was certain to be an insanely large number, well north of 1 million souls.
This was all part of the calculus used when we decided to drop 2 nukes. Perhaps 300,000 people died directly from those blasts. A horrible number, to be certain, but less horrible than the alternative.
If there is such a thing as a just war, and I submit that there is, it is incumbent on the defenders to prosecute the war to its most rapid conclusion, which will almost certainly lead to fewer deaths overall.
At 6'6", 230 lbs and at 55 yoa, I'm in very good health, and work out. And I know how to fight, and am proficient in the use of firearms. If some 5'6" and 130 lb dope fiend threatens me with violence (and clearly is unarmed), I'll probably slap the shit out of him, bind him down, and wait for the police to show up. If he comes at me with a club/knife/firearm, I'm gonna fuck his shit up.
This is roughly analogous to what's going on in Israel and Gaza presently. Israel has done everything it can in the last 75 years to make a healthy, robust society. The other side has done what is effectively to hang out in opium dens getting high, eating poorly, and never exercising. And they've pretty much been doing that since 1948.
As to tolerance of the intolerant, it's clearly those folks who are intolerant, but truth and logical consistency are not among their values. Many of them even admit it openly.
I am a Christian, and although Christ clearly told us to turn the other cheek, and the early christians showed their faith by martyrdom, I tend to hold to Andrew Klavan's dictum: "Our moral decisions about ourselves can be spiritual. Our moral decisions about other people can only be practical." If I advocate free speach, it doesn't mean that I want hypersexualized drag queens managing participatory performances that young children are legally forced to attend. That is why I disagree with my religion when they oppose the death penalty. I used to say I would reconsider my stand the day Charles Manson no longer came up for parole. So now I've reconsidered, but haven't changed my mind.
If you want to read some of my views from a historian's perspective on the current Gaza situation, I posted them here:https://open.substack.com/pub/chrisbray/p/the-imbalance-of-means-and-ends?r=udtcm&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&comments=true&commentId=42107244
You have a lot of thought-provoking questions here, and I have been asking myself many of the same questions. To really address them all properly, I would have to write my own essay as a response to the questions you're asking here. Bottom line is Israel is perfectly within its rights to respond with force, and the notion of proportionality is ridiculous. A proportionate response would mean raiding Gaza and raping their women and children before mutilating and slaughtering them. We also shouldn't abandon our principles. They are our strength, not our weakness. That is why the Marxist Ctrl-Left worked so hard to subvert them. They want so bad to eliminate our principles from the way we live. All they value is power. We can respond with force and still keep our principles intact. Perhaps when I write my response essay, I might be able to illustrate how we can do that as classical liberals and still achieve a decisive victory over these psychopathic lunatics.
Any thinking person, thinking as in serious as unbiased as possible thinking, has to confront the same questions as you've stated. Perhaps this trite cliche "life isn't fair" is the most succinct conclusion one can draw.
The principles we’ve lived by as a society for a long time worked because living by those principles was the most effective strategy. These principles worked excellently because the more people bought into them and played by them the more everyone benefited and enough people believed in and played by that strategy that it worked. But at some point the meta shifted.
People realized that these principles and strategy could be preyed on and have exploited its inability to answer. What we have been unable to deal with is that this exploitation isn’t a different strategy inside the same structure. It’s a declaration of war. We have further been unable to understand that we have to fight this like a war.
Fighting does not mean changing your principles. It means being aware that in combat, the rules are different than in the safety of your own home.
Luckily, I believe the meta is shifting again. More and more people are becoming aware of the strategies being used to exploit and supplant our principles. It has been too long in coming but people are finally fighting back. And even more fortunately, those who stand with the rapists and murderers are making the same mistake we did. They do not understand that the meta is shifting and it’s going to break them.
That is, it will if we do what our principles demand and fight. Not like them, like animals. But rather fight as humans. Fight with strategy, intelligence, and stopping when the time has come to end the fight.
It remains to be seen if we can be human long enough to reestablish the dominance of our principles. Our founders were human. We can be again.
An excellent article, as always.
Luckily for me I live in Poland so we are some distance deteched from the Woke madness.
But you should not despair - here, there or in Israel - the rules can still hold while we win wars. Of course, if the choice is between holding rules and succumbing to barbarians or giving up rules and surviving - that choice is clear. For now Israel manages to conduct its war in an effective and humanitarian way, minimizing number of civilian casualties.
Maybe a piece of a beginning of an approach: Is the the worst outcome we seek to forestall dying at the hands of something like a Hamas Einsatzgruppe, or is it participating in something like a Hamas Einsatzgruppe? (Studies such as Christopher Browning's _Ordinary Men_ convince me that this question is probably prior to most other questions of ethics and politics.)
I would die, including submitting to being the victim of barbarism, before I would commit barbarism. I also think I would die before I would prevent barbarism by creating massive civilian casualties (though I'm less sure of this). But that's me, making a decision that affects only me. If my choice was to facilitate barbarism against a lot of innocents or kill a lot of innocents, which it seems to me is Israel's predicament, it becomes a hell of a lot less clear.
I, also, don't feel up to being a head of state, or even a general. The nation-scale issue may be upon us. In not very many decades, the Left (a majority of the young Left, according to at least one poll) has gotten from lovely-but-imprecise notions to justifying 10/7. If my fellow-citizen can find a justification of 10/7 convincing, is it safe for me to trust he can't *do* a 10/7? I hope some of the esteemed and powerful are good and worried about this.
I am strict about enforcing boundaries. We need to. Sometimes, in order to enforce a boundary, you have to be very harsh (and people stuck in the drama triangle will misunderstand but it doesn't matter what they think). I know it's the way of the world. I don't think we need rape or other barbarism to stop other people. I don't think people need to give up their morals, but they sure as heck need to learn how to be strict with their boundary enforcing.
And, in the case of killing innocent children (used by Hamas as shields), if they're saving more children, and through death saving other children from fates of barbarism also, then perhaps there is some sort of cost-benefit analysis that will help ease the consciousness. When we're talking about the bigger picture it really sucks that any innocent lives are lost, but Israel is up against a wall, and innocent lives will be killed any way you slice it.
Sound thought. To characterize one’s attitude to be that “the only thing that is not tolerated is intolerance” is to embrace an illusion as some kind of self-exalting philosophy. It is obvious that the statement is paradoxical, but those who claim it apparently don’t have to face reality squarely enough to find that you can’t actually live by a paradox except by sitting on your hands.
I'm not sure where we go from here. I generally agree with James Lindsey when he says that responding to evil with evil, usually in the context of the Race driven riots and Trans issues in the USA, is only going to serve the interests of the activists who seek to cause damage to the USA socially and culturally. But in international issues such as these you have done a good job as far as indicating the issues and problems with all of this. You have mentioned in other posts, and in this comment section, that you are largely unwilling to commit evil in order to stop evil. While I can respect this from an individualist perspective my own perspective is shaped by my family having a long history of military service stretching back past my Great-Grandfather, and that the simple fact is that while individuals may hold this belief, societies and civilizations do not have that luxury and having to call it that feels both wrong and right at the same time. This is why every society in history has had some form of armed forces to defend it and why many militaries through out history are willing to shape men, volunteer and conscripts alike, into monsters, weather that be temporarily or permanently, in order to inflict violence on those who would commit violence on them; hopefully in the name of defense but also all to often in the name of offensive force. I don't know what the answer is, but it is one we will have to come too hopefully before the knives start coming out among those here domestically who hold these kind of ideas and embrace the new "de-colonization" that they have openly admitted will require murder, rape, and torture of those who they hold have "wronged" them.
You raise some very good questions, Holly. The main thought I have about the rise of barbarism on the left is that (instantiated largely through Critical Theory) the Left now operates on what Ayn Rand called "the Death Premise," though that could be a long discussion in its own right.
Regarding principles, I've found it helpful to distinguish between the principle itself and the most common application of a principle. For example, I don't view something like "do not target civilians in war" as a principle per se. I see that as an application of the abstract principle of something like "do not compromise your soul while waging war," which in turn is a refinement of the principle "do not compromise your soul." I realize that's not a very well fleshed out principle, but the point I want to make is that I see the principle as being far more abstract in the guidance it offers, which is what makes it powerful, but also more difficult to use. A principle is not there to allow me to get away without thinking, it's there to guide my thinking.
In the situation you present it's difficult because it only involves alternatives that are beyond painful, either watch the ones you love be slaughtered, take innocent lives, or take your own life. But for me, I know that allowing a person I love to go through what you describe would absolutely compromise my soul to the point I wouldn't want to exist afterward. Taking an innocent life would haunt me, but ultimately I would place the moral responsibility on the person who created the situation, not on me who didn't ask for it. But, that would not necessarily be true for someone else, even if they accepted the same moral principle as I did.
I think that some of the difficulty with the Israel-Hamas conflict has come not because they are too committed to principles, but because for so long we have conflated an application of the principle with the principle itself. I believe that if Israel (and more broadly the West) is to survive this resurgence of barbarism, we will not only have to use our principles but we will have to rediscover many of them, because the rules of thumb we have accepted as proxies will no longer suffice.
A thoughtful piece, Holly. It becomes overwhelming to think these things through (with all their twists and turns) while keeping an empathic heart.
You bring up something astute in the mention of cluster B personality disorders. Those who don't know, simply don't know what it's like to live on the other side of that. And, yet, we see the destruction from them daily on a global stage. Is there an evolutionary purpose for those disorders? Hmmmmm... So many questions. So few answers.
Your queries make Benjamin Franklins' words come to mind:
"Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is one well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
It's a tough world we're living in.
Confronting reality. There is an awful lot raised in this piece. But I think that underlying it all is an assumption that national governments act in the interest of their citizens. An examination of the facts should be enough to prove that assumption false.
My assertion is that national governments act in the interest of their central banks, because the government actors have been bought or otherwise compromised by the central banks.
This is as true of Israel as it is of the U.S. and the U.K., the primary culprits of this unraveling disaster in Gaza. Rather than agreeing to a ceasefire, and allowing some breathing space for everyone to come to their senses, the US and Israel, along with the UK and the EU, rush headlong into the destruction of over 2 million inconvenient people, most of whom are children.
Of course the attack on Israel was wrong (Anyone celebrating that attack is mentally deranged.), as was the attack on the US on 9/11. But like the attack on 9/11, the attack by Hamas was allowed to happen by Israeli, US, and UK intelligence - for their own purposes and those of the cabal. Why has Netanyahu consistently advocated funding Hamas?
Since 2006 Gaza has been under lockdown, electricity and food restricted by Israel. It is has been described, accurately, as an "open air prison". Most of the people in Gaza are refugees or direct descendants of refugees, displaced by Israel from their ancestral homes, and slowly starved and squeezed. How would most people behave in such a situation?
The parallels between the Palestinians in Gaza and the Russians living in the Donbas between 2014 and 2022 are striking.
This crisis is multifaceted and terribly difficult to resolve. But it is the result of a long campaign of fear on the part of the Israeli government, and governments around the world, primarily designed to get people to hate each other. And as Peter Gabriel says, "fear, she's the mother of violence".
More violence on anyone's part is not the answer.
No one is all bad. And no one is all good. But we should all be doing the best we can to help each other get along. Don't expect that from the Israeli government and its allies.
Tolerance is essential for freedom. But tolerance implies putting up with disagreeable things. It is up to all of us to determine where disagreeable crosses over into trespass and criminal. Not an easy task.
Sigh. I guess we have to do this.
1) 2006 is when they elected Hamas. If a new family moved in next door and their family's published manifesto was "ELIMINATE EVERYONE NAMED DAN MAIULLO OR WHO COULD POSSIBLY BE RELATED TO HIM" and then, despite having the ability to kill everyone there silently, *all* you did was check their vehicles and make sure they weren't bringing in weapons, I would consider you the soul of restraint.
2) "Open air prison"? I bet they wish they'd lived up to this, given how much intelligence for the attack came from the Palestinians they allowed to cross into Israel and work. Perhaps if they'd actually regarded it as one, and run it as one, rather than pulling out and forcibly relocating 9000 of their citizens, trying to turn as much of it over to the Gazans as they could, October 7 wouldn't have happened.
3) Asking "How would most people behave in such a situation?" comes so close to justifying what happened that I can only assume you wrote this comment in an attempt to ruin my Monday by making me think I have readers who believe that there are situations where it's ok to gang-rape kindergarten kids. If that was your goal, you did a fantastic job. My Monday is shot; it's 4:24am and I've already vomited. So please, go ahead. Tell me under what circumstances it's ok to gang-rape a 5-year-old. Under what circumstances would you gang-rape a 5-year-old? How badly do her ancestors have to fuck up before you'd look at a group of men who broke her pelvic bons with the force of their gang rape and think, "Well, how would most people behave?" or "Well, you know, they did have a right to be upset." If you say "none" then explain what's so different about you and why you expect of yourself to refrain from gang-raping 5-year-olds, no matter what their ancestors did to your ancestors, but you don't expect this out of brown people who live in the desert?
I apologize. The last thing I intended was to cause you any distress. Maybe you didn't notice that I said explicitly that the attack by Hamas was wrong and that anyone celebrating that attack was mentally deranged. But I think it is equally deranged to call for the Palestinians to be "wiped out" (eg. Jordan Peterson). There have been abuses and atrocities committed on both sides of this, but none of it justifies more violence.
Asking "How would most people behave in such a situation?" is just an attempt to recognize, as you might say, the limits of tolerance. It is not to justify more violence, and specifically not to justify the attack by Hamas on the Israelis.
It's not okay to gang-rape a 5-year-old. It's not okay to gang-rape anyone. It's also not okay to blow up children with missiles and bombs. It's not okay to use others as human shields. It's not okay to force people off their land and confine them to what constitutes a 15-minute city. It's not okay to slowly starve them and restrict their movements. A lot of things are not okay.
And it's not okay to use such atrocities to justify more atrocities.
But perhaps the most important thing to recognize is that Hamas was funded by the Israeli government. That was done to displace Arafat who was campaigning for peace. This is a top-down conflict, causing harm to the people on both sides. The Israeli government is not concerned about the welfare of Israelis, just as the US government is not concerned about the welfare of Americans.
As for me? What would I do in such a situation? I have absolutely no idea. I would hope that I would behave ethically, but I can't assure that. However, I can 100% guarantee that I would not be raping anyone, let alone a 5-year-old. Having said that, I have to emphasize that this is not about me. I could evaporate right now, and these issues would continue. Making it about me is not helpful to the discussion.
Again, I'm sorry for any distress I have cause you. That is also not okay. That was certainly not my intent. I hope you can forgive me.
The interrelationship between the individual and the group may be the key to unlocking this dilemma.
Adherence to principles by individuals may not always be beneficial for a group. The Shakers were a successful 19th century movement, whose members were committed to the principle of celibacy. But that commitment, among other things, doomed the group, in the end, to extinction.
Perhaps it is necessary to state that you will never compromise certain principles as an individual, but, regrettably, you recognize the necessity of the group to do so in extraordinary instances. And that, as a member of that group, you may be called upon to do so as well.
Great article. I really liked how nailed that the issue with standing against 'intolerance' is when people define anything even remotely offensive as 'intolerance'. This is why us libertarians typically draw the line at people trying to censor any type of speech and start joking about commies and helicopter rides.
It's not unprincipled to stand up and defend yourself or your loved ones. That is actually a super good thing but every collectivist hates that idea. They believe that only the state should be permitted to use violence and the reality is that leaves people vulnerable.
Neither Israel or Gaza permit their citizens to have weapons. Israel is now arming their citizens but if they were not disarmed in the first place it would be been much more difficult for Hamas to commit the atrocities they did. The leadership in Israel, deliberately and knowingly, prioritized their own safety over the safety of their citizens, choosing to disarm their own people in order to prevent a civil uprising as they institute unpopular policy.
The same goes in Gaza. Only Hamas has guns in Gaza. If you arm the general population Hamas won't be as able to rig elections and you'll find the people stand up to them more. Yes, I'm suggesting that when the IDF see a kid throwing rocks at them they give that kid a gun and watch Hamas shit their pants. That kid will learn who his enemies are.
I also really appreciated your comment that you are grateful that you never have to make these decisions. A large part of the more awful parts of the Marxist social justice agenda revolve around making women terrified of men. The reality is that as men, it's our role to be the stick to the carrot in society, we are the pointy end of the stick that gets the dirty work done when it needs doing. However most men are not tyrants and we are very much aware that it's only ethical to use the least amount of violence possible. Women on the other hand advocate that no violence is ever reasonable and have been advocating for the expansion of the definition of violence to include refusing to pay for things, raised male voices, and ignoring women. In this environment men are sent a very clear message not to interfere and most men will listen to that message.
You help fight against this divisive nonsense and it's very much appreciated. It is helpful and you are doing your part to make things better.