From: jmc@SAIL.Stanford.EDU (John McCarthy)
Subject: Re: Robert Conquest's _The Great Terror_F
Reply-To: jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU
Organization: Computer Science Department, Stanford University
	<1993Jan25.122432.19779@husc3.harvard.edu>
	<JMC.93Jan25195548@SAIL.Stanford.EDU>
	<1993Jan26.113447.19810@husc3.harvard.edu>
Date: 26 Jan 93 20:59:10

In article <1993Jan26.113447.19810@husc3.harvard.edu> zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:
   In article <JMC.93Jan25195548@SAIL.Stanford.EDU> 
   jmc@cs.Stanford.EDU writes:

   >zeleny@husc10.harvard.edu (Mikhail Zeleny) writes:

   JMC:
   >>>There is a distinction to be made between the execution of someone
   >>>believed and convicted, perhaps wrongly of a crime, and the killing
   >>>of a 1 1/2 year old baby.  Every bit of restraint is valuable.
   >>>
   >>>Even if you believe the execution was motivated by malice and the
   >>>person was innocent, the distinction is important.  The killing of the
   >>>baby was a signal for a greatly increased level of killings of
   >>>innocent people.

   MZ:
   >>I think you are missing something, Professor.  If the execution of
   >>Parsons et al. is to be justified by the common belief of their guilt,
   >>the same logic can be applied to justify the Nazi Judeocide, which
   >>logically proceeded from the assumption that the Jews were an evil and
   >>noxious race, congenitally and irremediably deadly to the Aryans.  Come
   >>to think of it, the same could be said about the feelings a committed
   >>bolshevik might have had for the members of the Romanov family.
   >>
   >>Should you like to appeal to the distinction of "due process", I entreat
   >>you to consider the contemporary idea of "Revolutionary justice".  After
   >>all, your argument turns on the participants' beliefs about their actions
   >>being just, and not on any immanent aspect of the latter.

   JMC:
   >There were inhibitions among the Bolsheviks against killing children,
   >and these inhibitions were overcome by arguments like those Zeleny
   >mentions.  Overcoming them was an important step in extending the
   >terror.

   I made no mention of any argument.  Consequently, you are failing to
   address the real argument I used.  I repeat my questions: is it your
   position that hypocritically following the motions of "due process"
   makes the execution of Albert Parsons more *just* than the execution
   of a Romanov child?  If so, what is your position on other egregious
   phenomena of Western justice that were accomplished in equally full
   compliance with due process, such as the Nuremberg Laws?  Should you
   disapprove of the latter, what is your position on the doxastic and
   epistemic warrant for judicial and political action, given by one of
   their primary causes, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which were
   sponsored by the selfsame Romanovs?  Finally, what is your position on
   the like warrant given by the _raison d'Etat_?

   In short, are you prepared to maintain that the sincerity of belief in
   the justice of one's actions, somehow vindicates the unjust agent?  If
   so, why do you choose to vindicate the bourgeois juror, but not the
   proletarian revolutionary?

   >--
   >John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305

   mikhail zeleny@husc.harvard.edu

1. I regard every inhibition against arbitrary killing as valuable and
breeching it harmful.  Therefore, I don't need to compare the conviction
and execution of Albert Parsons with killing the Tsar's baby.  Wrongly
convicting Parsons is not as bad as lynching him would have been.

2. I'm a bit puzzled about _The Protocols of the Elders of Zion_.  I
thought the afore-mentioned Tsar recognized it as a forgery.  Parts
of it were cribbed from a novel.

3. The unjust agent isn't vindicated by sincerity, but the magnitude
of his crime would be aggravated by insincerity.


--
John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
*
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.