From: cmk@athena.mit.edu (Charles M Kozierok)
Subject: Re: Genocide and degrees of morality?
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Fri, 8 Jan 1993 17:31:01 GMT

well, it's nice to see someone actually trying to *defend* the claims
made on the other side of this issue...

In article <dliebman.359l@terapin.com> dliebman@terapin.com (David Liebman) writes:
>karen
>>>      Many of you have posted, or written me personally, to comment on
>>>the difference in the "systematization" of the genocides between Hitler's 
>>>attempted extermination of the Jew and the American relatively successful
>>>extermination of the American Indian.  Regarding this, I say they are equally
>>>immoral.
>>
>CMK
>>why? you admit he was more systematic. that means his primary intention
>>was to murder. this makes his actions more reprehensible in my mind.
>>that is the reason we have first-degree murder, second-degree murder,
>>and manslaughter.
>
>surely this particular aspect of the legal system was not devised
>purely to correspond with the contents of your mind?

well, you only included one small section of my point. the main point
was made in my previous post . the above was just an analogy.

>the argument of means versus ends is typically deployed in the service
>of murderous politics.

the invocation of cliche arguments is typically deployed in the defense
of indefensible positions. sorry.

>the government of the united states was, as
>karen has noted, fully aware of the homicidal implications of its
>annexation policies.

when? when they came over from Europe or 200 years later?

>as far as the united states penal code is
>concerned, this consitutes premeditated -- first-degree -- homicide.
>the distinction you refer to is not one of ethics, but rather of
>semantics: it is the difference between 'we will kill them in order
>to occupy the land' and 'we will kill them in the process of occupying
>the land'.  the relevent linguistic phenomenon here is the auxiliary
>verb 'will'.

i don't quite get what you are trying to say here. are you saying
that if the Europeans had, instead of what they did, herded up
all the Indians and gassed them to death summarily, while extolling
the virtue of this, and conducting medical experiments on them,
you would not think they were more wrong than they were for what they
actually did?

remember -- i am not even *close* to defending what happened to the
Indians. i will even admit another similarity to the Holocaust.
in both cases, there was a dehumanizing going on. in both cases,
the persecutors justified their actions by convincing themselves
that the victims were somehow "less than human". but even if 90%
of the two cases are common, that does not make them equal.

>>>The end result is not, in any way, lessened by a lack of intent
>>>on the part of the European settlers.  It was official government policy >>
>that
>>>what the Indians would not trade, the government would take "even if every >>
>last
>>>Indian must die" (President Andrew Jackson).
>>
>>because he considered the US to be at war with the Indians. that war
>>was unjustified, as i have said before, but unjustified war is not
>>the same thing as genocide.
>
>but jackson presumably believed that the war was justifiable.
>similarly, hitler believed that the killing of jews and gypsies and
>homosexuals was justifiable on the grounds that should be familiar
>to you; stalin was a paranoid ideologue, and so forth.

were the Jews and gypsies trying to shoot arrows through Hitler's head?

the war with the Indians was unjustified looking back on the overall
history of the conquest. at the time, all he probably saw was a threat.
remember, the war had started scores of years before. even though
the Europeans had started it, should they have let themselves be
killed by the Indians? of course not.

what they *should* have done was to make peace with the Indians, 
giving them their rights, and setting aside *substantial* amounts
of land that they would not colonize. they did not do this. instead
they let themselves war with the Indians over territory. that still
is not the same thing as systematically rounding up Indians and
torturing and killing them.

>all three
>of them were in error -- why should jackson's error be any greater
>excuse for clemency?

not clemency. why do you people keep accusing me of defending Jackson
or anyone else? i am not. i am just damning Hitler more. there *is*
a difference.

and you have made one more point for me here, by bringing up "error".
Jackson was in error, aided by an unjustified hatred, i can admit.
Hitler made no error. he knew exactly what he wanted to do, he
prepared for it years in advance, and then he did it. so how
can you compare the two?

there are degrees of maliciousness. why do we have the Geneva Convention?
presumably because there are some forms of killing that are considered
worse than others. why are biological weapons considered "unfair"?
why was dropping the bomb on Japan considered worse than the
death of any other group of a similar-sized civilian population? because
there *are* degrees of intent. there are things which are worse than others,
even if both are horrible.

>>>Would you argue that genocide should be abhorred more for its
>>>means of systematization or for its success?
>>
>>a far more logical argument than basing it upon success or lack thereof!
>>words such as "abhorrent" and "immoral" are indicators of the mental
>>intent of the action. success is irrelevant.
>
>intention is pernicious.  the _knowledge_ of the agent is relevent to
>an ethical analysis of her actions.

true. but knowledge is not intent.

>come on, charles -- if i saw you
>loitering beneath my sixteenth story window, and i knew that if i
>dropped that piano i was planning to drop on the street it would
>certainly squash you, would you deem your squashing less immoral
>or abhorrent when i claim that i was simply intending to dump my
>steinway?

no. your claims are irrelevant. you could just be lying.
but that's not the point.

to use your analogy properly (you are comparing yourself
to the Europeans), i must make explicit your implicit statement
that you had originally planned to drop the piano for some other reason than
squashing me, but then you saw me loitering below and did it anyway,
because you cared more about what you wanted to do than about how
it would affect me. that would of course be very wrong.

but i claim that it would be worse if you planned the whole
thing in advance, lured me there and made sure i stood under the
window (perhaps via an accomplice) and then dropped the piano
*specifically* to crush me, when you had no other reason for
dropping it *other than* to crush me, and when it would have costed
you a great deal to drop it.

and i claim that it would be worse *still* if you had
spread hatred against me for ten years to rationalize your actions,
then removed me from my house at gunpoint, locked me up
with scarce food or water for six months until i had lost half
my bodyweight, then conducting a few "medical" experiments on me,
and *then* dropped a piano on me, knowing that while you spent
your energy on this, you were neglecting another situation 
(e.g. WW II) which was more important, and that this neglect
would lead to your downfall.

please tell me how the three situations are morally equivalent.

--
charles
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