I'm just making sure we're all on the same page about not machine gunning children.
I'm honestly shocked that this even has to be said here, let alone that apparently so many really aren't on the same page that machine-gunning children is both wrong and unjustifiable.
Eh, I know it's a minority position on the left but that's why it's a drum I beat every time it comes up. Unironically forced me back into religion when I realized that leftist politics without axiomatic moral grounding results in disaster.
Now I go to leftist meetings to avoid being useless and Quaker meeting to avoid being terrible.
I don't know, if the marxists or anarchists I work with irl ever said that kind of shit, I wouldn't work with them anymore (and we have discussed the topic). Simple as a that. Personally, I'm an atheist and haven't come up against any contradictions between my leftism and my morality or humanism. But if religion is what it takes for people to recognize that killing kids because of some hypothetical future scenario is wrong and will never be justified, then I say keep the churches full.
How are we supposed to convince people of our vision of a better world if we can't even get the easy stuff like "don't murder children" down? Christ even the liberals have the sense to pretend to feel bad about drones strikes on weddings when pressed.
I also think murdering children is bad. I think the specific situation with royal family of a monarchy is significantly different. Reducing my opinion to "machinegun kids lol" strikes me as very bad faith.
Either way I don't really think what you and I think of the murder of a royal family more than 100 years ago matters enough to get into an argument that can only sour relations. Seems unproductive. I apologise for making the mistake of stoking this argument.
I'm not looking to sour relations and am not going to take your position on the matter personally, and it's not that you stoked this argument, it's that I'm actively evangilizing a humanism first leftism. I think as soon as machine gunning kids enters into the political toolkit, regardless of what problems it resolves, we've lost the plot. Whatever nuance you want to inject into the scenario is fine, but at the end of the day it does boil down to you thinking that under certain circumstances it's acceptable, so I don't think I'm unfairly characterizing your position at all.
It doesn't seem to me like you're evangelizing a human first leftism. It seems to me like you're reducing a complex argument to "you're celebrating the killing of kids, and you think kids should be killed" you've compared it to the dropping of atomic bombs on two cities.
Again I'd sincerely urge you to read Robespierres arguments against king Louis. It's not just some words on a piece of paper, it was a legal argument on wether or not the king of France could be judged by France, and what that sentence should be. In this argument Robespierre agrees that the king himself has not committed any especially heinous deeds personally, yet he must still be put to death, because his existence is a threat. Here's a breakdown of it. Here's parts of the text itself.
Some excerpts:
introduction statement
Citizens, without realizing it the Assembly has been lead far from the true question. There is no trial to be conducted here. Louis is not accused and you are not judges. You are, as you can only be, the nation's statesmen and representatives. No verdict is required, either for or against a man. Rather, a step aimed at the public safety needs to be taken, an act of salvation for the nation. In a Republic a deposed king is good for only one of two things: He either disrupts the peace of the state and weakens its freedom, or he strengthens both simultaneously. I assert that the nature of the deliberations to date are directly at odds with this latter goal. In fact, what rational course of action is called for to solidify a newborn Republic? Is it not to etch an eternal contempt for royalty into everyone's soul and mute the King's supporters? . . .
The king shouldn't even get a trial
Louis was the King, and the Republic is established. The vital question that occupies you here is resolved by these few words: Louis has been deposed by his crimes. He denounced the French people as rebels, and to punish them he called upon the arms of his fellow tyrants. Victory and the people have decided that he alone was the rebel. Consequently, Louis cannot be judged. Either he is already condemned, or else the Republic is not absolved. To suggest that Louis XVI be tried in any way whatsoever is to regress toward royal and constitutional despotism. A proposal such as this, since it would question the legitimacy of the Revolution itself, is counterrevolutionary. In actuality, if Louis can still be brought to trial, he might yet be acquitted. In truth, he is presumed innocent until he has been found guilty. If Louis is acquitted, what then becomes of the Revolution? If Louis is innocent, all defenders of liberty are then slanderers (...)
Citizens, defend yourselves against [tyranny]! False ideas have deceived you. . . . You are confusing the state of a people in the midst of a revolution with the state of a people whose government is firmly established. You are confusing a nation that punishes a public official while maintaining its form of government with a nation that destroys the government itself.
it's him or us
When a nation has been forced to resort to its right of insurrection, its relationship with the tyrant is then determined by the law of nature. By what right does the tyrant invoke the social contract? He abolished it! The nation, if it deems proper, may preserve the contract insofar as it concerns the relations between citizens. But the end result of tyranny and insurrection is to completely break all ties with the tyrant and to reestablish the state of war between the tyrant and the people. Tribunals and judiciary procedure are designed only for citizens.
Insurrection is the real trial of a tyrant. His sentence is the end of his power, and his sentence is whatever the People's liberty requires.
The trial of Louis XVI? What is this trial if not an appeal from the insurrection to some tribunal or assembly? When the people have dethroned a king, who has the right to revive him, thereby creating a new pretext for riot and rebellionÑand what else could result from such actions? By giving a platform to those championing Louis XVI, you rekindle the dispute between despotism and liberty and sanction blasphemy of the Republic and the people . . . for the right to defend the former despot includes the right to say anything that sustains his cause. You reawaken all the factions, reviving and encouraging a dormant royalism. One could easily take a position for or against. What could be more legitimate or more natural than to everywhere spread the maxims that his defenders could openly profess in the courtroom, and within your very forum? What manner of Republic is it whose founders solicit its adversaries from all quarters to attack it in its cradle?
ya gotta do what ya gotta do
Representatives, what is important to the people, what is important to yourselves, is that you fulfill the duties with which the people have entrusted you. The Republic has been proclaimed, but have you delivered it to us. You have yet to pass a single law deserving of that title. You have yet to reform a single abuse of despotism. Remove but the name and we have tyranny still, with even more vile factions and even more immoral charlatans, while there is new tumultuous unrest and civil war. The Republic! And Louis still lives! And you continue to place the King between us and liberty! Our scruples risk turning us into criminals. Our indulgence for the guilty risks our joining him in his guilt.
Regretfully I speak this fatal truth Louis must die because the nation must live. Among a peaceful people, free and respected both within their country and from without, it would be possible to listen to the counsel of generosity which you have received. But a people that is still fighting for its freedom after so much sacrifice and so many battles; a people for whom the laws are not yet irrevocable except for the needy; a people for whom tyranny is still a crime subject to dispute such a people should want to be avenged. The generosity which you are encouraged to show would more closely resemble that of a gang of brigands dividing their spoils.
It is not a question of punishing an individual, but eradicating a system. Those children existed as parts of that system, and would in most circumstances always exist as that. Pretending like the fear of counter-revolution being fomented once again decades later around the figure of a royal heir as some statistical unlikelyhood, is absurd when we can see exactly that having happened throughout history. As you said yourself there are still bonapartists, orleanists and the like. There's no romanovists. While the orleanists are ridiculous now, they did previously and successfully lead a counter revolution. The bonarparists did as well.
In this sense the fear of the children becoming some later legitimising fixpoint for reaction is not some person "peering into the future", it is us peering into the past. Those children did nothing wrong, but by virtue of the system they were at the top of, they would forever be threats to the USSR. In this way those children were as much a victim of the system as anyone else dying senselessly.
Just because people stomp up and down about 'political necessity' doesn't actually conjure that ideological abstraction up into material reality. China didn't machine gun Pu Yi and incidentally, their communist party is still running the show. I don't know how difficult it is not to machine gun a 13 year old, and no amount of "you made me do this" are going to change the fact that we're the ones making the (erroneous) decision to machine gun 13 year olds.
I mean they literally let him live after being a Japanese puppet during their atrocity spree in the 30's and 40's, so I think my dumb ass using him as a morality puppet would seem just about par for the course to them.
The notion that anyone can peer into the future and see all the possible outcomes to a sufficient degree of certainty to claim that the only possible outcome is to kill the kid is also very silly and Madeline Albrightesque.
We can be absolutely certain that the possibility of reinstating the monarchy would be very bad for lots of Jewish children. It's terrible, but Tsar Nicholas shouldn't have created a situation where he made the existence of his family so dangerous for everyone else.
We can be absolutely certain that the possibility of reinstating the monarchy would be very bad for lots of Jewish children.
Shooting a specific Royal lineage doesn't change anything about the possibility of reinstating the Monarchy. The white's didn't evaporate after the executions in the same way that the coalitions didn't evaporate as soon as soon as Louis XVI got the chop, and the House of Windsor doesn't quake at the thought of the current Jacobite pretenders. . The notion that the fate of the revolution hangs in the balance of Alexei's life is some grade A great man theory nonsense.
The only possible outcome? No, it wasn’t the only possible outcome but still a quite probable one. Maybe it wouldn’t have been needed but it was still justified as they could have posed a threat to the rwvolution
No, it wasn’t the only possible outcome but still a quite probable one.
Somehow I don't think they made this decision after siting down with a slide rule and a bunch of actuarial tables, so I don't know how they arrived at that balance of probabilities.
In reality it's more like cops defending their use of deadly force in any circumstances. They reckoned it had to be done, and their judgement is all that's needed to justify it, and now everyone else has to object to or rationalize their decision.
Sometimes people really do make decisions with uncertain and incomplete information, and sometimes people kill a black teenager for fun and pretend they feared for their lives. These are not the same thing. I wouldn't have killed the kids, but it probably saved a lot of other kids.
Why we don't say stuff like this? We can't tease out the tread of time and say 15 years late what our actions are going to cause. Not with any degree of certainly but also not with any objective or even methodical notion of "probability" that we seem so eager to fall back on. We can stand in the moment and make a decision. Do I shoot the unarmed kid or not? That answer is pretty cut and dry for any humanstic strain of thought.
The fact that I can conceive of a possible chain of events where that has unfortunate ramifications doesn't change that.
Eh, I think it was necessary. I think the argument Robespierre made against Louis was also cogent for the Romanovs
The notion that printed symbols on a paper can change whether or not you should machine gun kids is silly, please refer back to the previous rule.
deleted by creator
I'm not asking you to feel bad that it happened, I'm just making sure we're all on the same page about not machine gunning children.
I'm honestly shocked that this even has to be said here, let alone that apparently so many really aren't on the same page that machine-gunning children is both wrong and unjustifiable.
Eh, I know it's a minority position on the left but that's why it's a drum I beat every time it comes up. Unironically forced me back into religion when I realized that leftist politics without axiomatic moral grounding results in disaster.
Now I go to leftist meetings to avoid being useless and Quaker meeting to avoid being terrible.
I don't know, if the marxists or anarchists I work with irl ever said that kind of shit, I wouldn't work with them anymore (and we have discussed the topic). Simple as a that. Personally, I'm an atheist and haven't come up against any contradictions between my leftism and my morality or humanism. But if religion is what it takes for people to recognize that killing kids because of some hypothetical future scenario is wrong and will never be justified, then I say keep the churches full.
Agree ti disagree then
How are we supposed to convince people of our vision of a better world if we can't even get the easy stuff like "don't murder children" down? Christ even the liberals have the sense to pretend to feel bad about drones strikes on weddings when pressed.
I also think murdering children is bad. I think the specific situation with royal family of a monarchy is significantly different. Reducing my opinion to "machinegun kids lol" strikes me as very bad faith.
Either way I don't really think what you and I think of the murder of a royal family more than 100 years ago matters enough to get into an argument that can only sour relations. Seems unproductive. I apologise for making the mistake of stoking this argument.
I'm not looking to sour relations and am not going to take your position on the matter personally, and it's not that you stoked this argument, it's that I'm actively evangilizing a humanism first leftism. I think as soon as machine gunning kids enters into the political toolkit, regardless of what problems it resolves, we've lost the plot. Whatever nuance you want to inject into the scenario is fine, but at the end of the day it does boil down to you thinking that under certain circumstances it's acceptable, so I don't think I'm unfairly characterizing your position at all.
It doesn't seem to me like you're evangelizing a human first leftism. It seems to me like you're reducing a complex argument to "you're celebrating the killing of kids, and you think kids should be killed" you've compared it to the dropping of atomic bombs on two cities.
Again I'd sincerely urge you to read Robespierres arguments against king Louis. It's not just some words on a piece of paper, it was a legal argument on wether or not the king of France could be judged by France, and what that sentence should be. In this argument Robespierre agrees that the king himself has not committed any especially heinous deeds personally, yet he must still be put to death, because his existence is a threat.
Here's a breakdown of it.
Here's parts of the text itself.
Some excerpts:
introduction statement
Citizens, without realizing it the Assembly has been lead far from the true question. There is no trial to be conducted here. Louis is not accused and you are not judges. You are, as you can only be, the nation's statesmen and representatives. No verdict is required, either for or against a man. Rather, a step aimed at the public safety needs to be taken, an act of salvation for the nation. In a Republic a deposed king is good for only one of two things: He either disrupts the peace of the state and weakens its freedom, or he strengthens both simultaneously. I assert that the nature of the deliberations to date are directly at odds with this latter goal. In fact, what rational course of action is called for to solidify a newborn Republic? Is it not to etch an eternal contempt for royalty into everyone's soul and mute the King's supporters? . . .
The king shouldn't even get a trial
Louis was the King, and the Republic is established. The vital question that occupies you here is resolved by these few words: Louis has been deposed by his crimes. He denounced the French people as rebels, and to punish them he called upon the arms of his fellow tyrants. Victory and the people have decided that he alone was the rebel. Consequently, Louis cannot be judged. Either he is already condemned, or else the Republic is not absolved. To suggest that Louis XVI be tried in any way whatsoever is to regress toward royal and constitutional despotism. A proposal such as this, since it would question the legitimacy of the Revolution itself, is counterrevolutionary. In actuality, if Louis can still be brought to trial, he might yet be acquitted. In truth, he is presumed innocent until he has been found guilty. If Louis is acquitted, what then becomes of the Revolution? If Louis is innocent, all defenders of liberty are then slanderers (...)
Citizens, defend yourselves against [tyranny]! False ideas have deceived you. . . . You are confusing the state of a people in the midst of a revolution with the state of a people whose government is firmly established. You are confusing a nation that punishes a public official while maintaining its form of government with a nation that destroys the government itself.
it's him or us
When a nation has been forced to resort to its right of insurrection, its relationship with the tyrant is then determined by the law of nature. By what right does the tyrant invoke the social contract? He abolished it! The nation, if it deems proper, may preserve the contract insofar as it concerns the relations between citizens. But the end result of tyranny and insurrection is to completely break all ties with the tyrant and to reestablish the state of war between the tyrant and the people. Tribunals and judiciary procedure are designed only for citizens.
Insurrection is the real trial of a tyrant. His sentence is the end of his power, and his sentence is whatever the People's liberty requires.
The trial of Louis XVI? What is this trial if not an appeal from the insurrection to some tribunal or assembly? When the people have dethroned a king, who has the right to revive him, thereby creating a new pretext for riot and rebellionÑand what else could result from such actions? By giving a platform to those championing Louis XVI, you rekindle the dispute between despotism and liberty and sanction blasphemy of the Republic and the people . . . for the right to defend the former despot includes the right to say anything that sustains his cause. You reawaken all the factions, reviving and encouraging a dormant royalism. One could easily take a position for or against. What could be more legitimate or more natural than to everywhere spread the maxims that his defenders could openly profess in the courtroom, and within your very forum? What manner of Republic is it whose founders solicit its adversaries from all quarters to attack it in its cradle?
ya gotta do what ya gotta do
Representatives, what is important to the people, what is important to yourselves, is that you fulfill the duties with which the people have entrusted you. The Republic has been proclaimed, but have you delivered it to us. You have yet to pass a single law deserving of that title. You have yet to reform a single abuse of despotism. Remove but the name and we have tyranny still, with even more vile factions and even more immoral charlatans, while there is new tumultuous unrest and civil war. The Republic! And Louis still lives! And you continue to place the King between us and liberty! Our scruples risk turning us into criminals. Our indulgence for the guilty risks our joining him in his guilt.
Regretfully I speak this fatal truth Louis must die because the nation must live. Among a peaceful people, free and respected both within their country and from without, it would be possible to listen to the counsel of generosity which you have received. But a people that is still fighting for its freedom after so much sacrifice and so many battles; a people for whom the laws are not yet irrevocable except for the needy; a people for whom tyranny is still a crime subject to dispute such a people should want to be avenged. The generosity which you are encouraged to show would more closely resemble that of a gang of brigands dividing their spoils.
It is not a question of punishing an individual, but eradicating a system. Those children existed as parts of that system, and would in most circumstances always exist as that. Pretending like the fear of counter-revolution being fomented once again decades later around the figure of a royal heir as some statistical unlikelyhood, is absurd when we can see exactly that having happened throughout history. As you said yourself there are still bonapartists, orleanists and the like. There's no romanovists. While the orleanists are ridiculous now, they did previously and successfully lead a counter revolution. The bonarparists did as well.
In this sense the fear of the children becoming some later legitimising fixpoint for reaction is not some person "peering into the future", it is us peering into the past. Those children did nothing wrong, but by virtue of the system they were at the top of, they would forever be threats to the USSR. In this way those children were as much a victim of the system as anyone else dying senselessly.
literal infanticide becomes a political necessity as a product of MONARCHY
If they wanted their children to be safe, then they should not have forced them to be the sole inheritors of a brutal dictatorship
Just because people stomp up and down about 'political necessity' doesn't actually conjure that ideological abstraction up into material reality. China didn't machine gun Pu Yi and incidentally, their communist party is still running the show. I don't know how difficult it is not to machine gun a 13 year old, and no amount of "you made me do this" are going to change the fact that we're the ones making the (erroneous) decision to machine gun 13 year olds.
Kind to people, ruthless to systems, folks.
If Chinese rebels new this online argument was going to happen they probably would've killed whoever this guy is that they let live.
I mean they literally let him live after being a Japanese puppet during their atrocity spree in the 30's and 40's, so I think my dumb ass using him as a morality puppet would seem just about par for the course to them.
The last "Emperor" of China
It could both be bad and be necessary
The notion that anyone can peer into the future and see all the possible outcomes to a sufficient degree of certainty to claim that the only possible outcome is to kill the kid is also very silly and Madeline Albrightesque.
We can be absolutely certain that the possibility of reinstating the monarchy would be very bad for lots of Jewish children. It's terrible, but Tsar Nicholas shouldn't have created a situation where he made the existence of his family so dangerous for everyone else.
Shooting a specific Royal lineage doesn't change anything about the possibility of reinstating the Monarchy. The white's didn't evaporate after the executions in the same way that the coalitions didn't evaporate as soon as soon as Louis XVI got the chop, and the House of Windsor doesn't quake at the thought of the current Jacobite pretenders. . The notion that the fate of the revolution hangs in the balance of Alexei's life is some grade A great man theory nonsense.
The only possible outcome? No, it wasn’t the only possible outcome but still a quite probable one. Maybe it wouldn’t have been needed but it was still justified as they could have posed a threat to the rwvolution
Somehow I don't think they made this decision after siting down with a slide rule and a bunch of actuarial tables, so I don't know how they arrived at that balance of probabilities.
In reality it's more like cops defending their use of deadly force in any circumstances. They reckoned it had to be done, and their judgement is all that's needed to justify it, and now everyone else has to object to or rationalize their decision.
Sometimes people really do make decisions with uncertain and incomplete information, and sometimes people kill a black teenager for fun and pretend they feared for their lives. These are not the same thing. I wouldn't have killed the kids, but it probably saved a lot of other kids.
Why we don't say stuff like this? We can't tease out the tread of time and say 15 years late what our actions are going to cause. Not with any degree of certainly but also not with any objective or even methodical notion of "probability" that we seem so eager to fall back on. We can stand in the moment and make a decision. Do I shoot the unarmed kid or not? That answer is pretty cut and dry for any humanstic strain of thought.
The fact that I can conceive of a possible chain of events where that has unfortunate ramifications doesn't change that.