Well, it's 6 June 2006 and, while I've got Iron Maiden's "The Number of the Beast" playing, Satan is hard at work making the world a horrid place. Oddly enough, Lake Monona hasn't turned to blood and no dragons are rising from its depths. Still, the world does look a little topsy-turvy today.
Firstly, note that the United States is giving nuclear technology to a member of the Axis of Evil - Iran.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt fly across an ocean to Africa in order to avoid the press as they become parents and now they're hogging the spotlight by selling pictures of their kid.
Yahweh apparently decided to forsake a man in Kiev and so his visit to a lion's den ended in his desmise.
Did anyone else see Noam Chomsky on BookTV this past weekend speaking to cadets at West Point? The talk itself was actually given in April and you can read an account of it here. I thought it was quite interesting. This wasn't his usual philippic against U.S. foreign policy, but rather it was akin to a course lecture. He spoke about Just War Theory and made reference to a book on the matter which the cadets were reading. I don't personally know much about it so all I can really say is that Chomsky thought it to be rather meaningless as it's not grounded in a sound argument. His other basic point was one of universality. That is, if it is just for one state to launch a pre-emptive or preventative strike, then it is just for all states to do so. If it is just that the United States invades Iraq in a preventative war because it feels threatened, then Iran is justified in launching an attack on the U.S. in some fashion if it is sufficiently threatened by using the same logic.
A lot of food for thought.
I just wanted to say what a pleasure your blog is. It is in the vein of cultivating an art of living and as I am fairly new to Wisconsin, find it to be enormously insightful and culturally rich. With regards to Chomsky's lecture to the cadets, he was at pains to disabuse them of the utility of just war theory. It is often thought that a theory--whether it be an ethical or a political theory--or, in this case, "just war theory", will tell us when and under what conditions the right thing to do is. One of his main points to the cadets was that just war theory doesn't really tell us very much at all. We have to evaluate conflicts on a case by case basis, being careful, of course, to apply to ourselves the same standards we would apply to others (the "universality" point you mentioned). I liked Chomsky's point here because it is often the case that we want a theory to do more work than it is capable of doing. We want some theory to exhonerate us from the responsibility of taking action for which we are ultimately responsible. I can think of no better medicine to tell these cadets than that they are responsible for their actions and not the theory which appears to support their actions. Some more critical reflection is needed. Thank God for Chomsky. Thanks for your blog
ReplyDeleteThanks for your kind words, Feng.
ReplyDeleteOne thing I liked about the Chomsky speech was simply that, unlike a lot of interviews with him, it wasn't a littany of complaints against US foreign policy. I think that people like Amy Goodman & David Barsamian tend to structure their interviews so as to maximize Chomskian rants against US foreign policy. It was a breath of fresh air for me to hear him lecture on more abstract concepts for a while.
Agreed! Utah Phillips performed in Milwaukee on May 1st at the Pabst and in between songs explained that listening to Amy Goodman, "God Bless her", is just "so damned depressing". The truth is indeed hard to hear and she does an excellent job reporting it, but who amongst us has the strength to endure the constant stream of negativity. One must listen to her selectively, gratefully, but alas, infrequently too.
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