Apologies for posting.
I should say by way of introductory remarks, that while this is an effort post, it is an effort post on a shitposting website, and thus ab initio a shitpost and therefore be taken in the correct spirit of levity in which it is intended. Don't get my thread locked.
Recent discussion on here has touched on the moral status of the execution of the Romanov family by Bolsheviks ahead of the advancing White Army1. While not exactly of practical significance given how few of us have Royal Families locked up in our basement, it did reveal several significant, (sometimes severe) differences in the philosophical underpinnings of the posters on this website.
A Moral Communism
Moral status as such actually has very little to deal with communism/leftist (in the Marxian vein) in terms of it's internal mechanism. Marx, Engels, Lenin, and the rest of that intellectual lineage2. famously thought very little of moral philosophy. A communist is thus entirely at liberty to dismiss this entire discussion as idealism, and observe that within a Marxist framework, there are no 'good' and 'bad', merely a historically deterministic sequence of class antagonisms that will eventually resolve in favor of the proletariat and thus choosing to be a communist is merely choosing to throw one's hat in with the predetermined victors. This strand of amoral communism thus is not terribly interested in this discussion, and anyone here that adheres to that framework is excused from the discussion as having won the argument.
Given the rest of us do have moral considerations that prefigure our political beliefs, it's necessary for us to sketch out at least a scaffolding for what moral commonalities leftists share before going further, lest we fall into a morass of fundamentally incompatible frameworks stemming from different axiomatic premises. Speaking from my own personal position, I ascribe to leftist political positions as they offer me the greatest promise of granting a comfortable and dignified existence to the largest number of people possible. That in of itself does not make a moral axiom though, as achieving a large amount of something is valueless if the individual components don't themselves have value, and therefore, and a fundamental value informing my politics is the axiomatic value/sanctity of human life. So I am taking on as an assumption that generally speaking, want everyone to have dignified and comfortable lives3. If that position doesn't more or less describe you, you are also excused as having won the argument.
Justifying Shooting a Tsesarevich in my Pajamas
Which brings us to the Romanovs. In keeping with 3. above, and considering the minor children of royals not culpable for the systematic injustices perpetrated under the dictatorship of their parents, we'll limit our discussion here to the minors (Anastasia, and especially Alexei), though I think the general outline of the argument can be applied to pretty much all of the Tsar's issue. The entirety of the family, along with their retinue, were bulleted and bayoneted in Yekaterinburg about 10 days before white occupied the city. In attempting to defend the legacy of one of the most politically successful socialist projects in history4., this action has largely been justified on the left. Examining the commonly proposed justifications in light of our moral principles finds them universally lacking.
- It was necessary in order to safeguard the immediate success of the revolution against an individual with claim to the throne.
This argument goes that while we do value human life and dignity, our efforts to maximize these will sometimes require that certain human lives be forfeit, essentially turning this into a trolley problem5.. This argument differs in an important aspect from the trolley problem in that the trolley problem consists of single moment in time with clearly articulable and certain outcomes given at the outset. Leaving Alexei alive was in no way certain to doom the revolution to failure of significant struggle, as he could have been maintained in custody, and ascribing such outsized influence on the course of political affairs to the life of a sickly 13 year old is a profoundly anti-materialist approach to history. History is replete with challenges to establish socialist authority6., none of which stemmed from claimants to the Imperial thrown. Further, liquidating the Tsar, his children, and his brother did not exhaust the Romanov line, his cousin could and did proclaim himself Emperor-in-exile, and despite being old enough to actually head a restorationist intervention, none materialized. So the notion that killing Alexei was necessary fails to stand up to scrutiny 7.. It is also worth noting as an aside that the Romanovs were deeply unpopular, and to wit, were not the government the Bolshevik revolution occurred under, and supporters of the provisional government (domestic and international alike) formed the overwhelming contingent of the White forces, and the notion that a 14 year old tsarist claimant to the thrown would have had a meaningful impact on that colossal clusterfuck strains credulity.
- It prevented a longterm challenge to Boshevik control in a manner similar to Jacobite uprisings or the Bourbon Restoration.
Taking a more longterm view of the problem, it might be acknowledged that the Alexei presented no immediate threat justifying his liquidation, but, drawing from the history of pre-CIA regime changes, he presented a longterm likely/probable/plausible/possible threat in the form of an eventual challenge, and that acting in light of that possibility was justified if not strictly necessary. If we wish to examine this in light of our moral principles, we need to develop some notion of probability calculus; at what point is taking in innocent life now justified in order to avoid certain possible harms that have a certain probability of occurring. You can formalize this to ridiculous extents8., or you can take the legal systems more qualitative approach, of establish some standard of proof (you are, after all, justifying killing someone), where the execution is deemed justified if seems more likely than not/clearly and convincingly/beyond a reasonable doubt that it will prevent further, greater harm in the future. This lets you weaken the requirement that it is necessary to kill him to merely it is prudent to kill him. What is lacking though is any evidence that anyone has meaningfully carried out this process for any standard beyond plausible. The greatest extent to which this is established is that historically, there have been several restorationist insurrections, but no systematized historical study has been undertaken to quantify the risk of insurrection/coup in the presence or absence of an legitimate claimant.9.
Well perhaps we leave it there; a plausible narrative that places Alexei as the cause of some harm is sufficient in our eyes to justify his liquidation. The problem with this is that it is such a liberal standard that it can be applied to nearly everyone. There are scores of documented peasant rebellions throughout history, so by the same standard it is plausible that any given peasant may be at risk for launching a peasant rebellion down the line and thus, by that same standard, we are justified in liquidating them. Universalizing from this generic peasant^.10. to all peasants. And thus our system named aimed an providing dignity and comfort is able to justify pretty much any atrocity.
- The moral culpability of for the executions lies at the feet of the Tsar who created the system and not the executioners themselves.
This argument goes that it was actually the Tsar that placed him in position to be killed by standing at the top of a monarchical system that has ruined and ended untold numbers of lives. Had the Tsar dismantled that system before it came to blows, Alexei would have lived a happily inbred life as a continental European curiosity.
This argument plays fast an lose with the notion of fault to an extent that borders on the absurd. Within getting into the morass that encompasses the legal notion of fault, I'll observe that the executioners where in total control of the situation, given the Romanovs were in the zone of immediate material influence, while the Bolshevik leaderships were at a more distant proximity, and Tsar Nicholas II at the head of the Imperial State was a fleeting memory, having greatly influenced the events that now overtook them, but having no control over them. The Bolshevik's in Ipatiev House or those in leadership in Moscow alone decided who in that house lived and died, they knew that, and they exercised that choice.
- Unpleasant things happen during a revolution and we accept that as soon as they begin.
This is true, but once again, it comes down to the notions of control and proximity. As a leftist, I acknowledge that the struggle for political power may involve the world becoming a worse place (as judged according to my moral principles outline above) due to my actions to make it a better one. This is an abstract acknowledgement. It may also result in me taking actions that I find unpleasant or repugnant11. If it is the moral principles that describe motivate my political struggle though, it is fundamentally self-defeating to exercise my control over my immediate surroundings to knowingly act in a manner that results in an immediate degradation of the world around me (once again, as judged by my moral standards). My actions in the here and now, must be justified according to my principles in the here and now and my actions in the here and now. If 10 minutes ago I was standing in Yekaterinburg and the Whites are closing in, and now I'm still standing in Yekaterinburg and the Whites are still closing in, but now there is a brand new pile of child corpses of my making, then I have made the world a worse place.
No tears for dead peasants
It is reasonable to ask why go to such great lengths to challenge the justifications for the murder of Alexei (which is so emotionally remote to me as to essentially be fictitious). To which I offer the following justifications.
- It's ridiculous and therefore funny.
- Because eventually some of us may be in positions to make decisions that make the world a substantially better or worse place for others, and I want it be very clear what stands before us when making those decisions. No, none of us are going to decide whether or not an heir lives or dies, but we are going to decide how to treat with those around us, and want everyone to pause before they exercise what little control they have in the world around them before making it a worse place, justifying it with a glib aphorism or some half-baked argument.
1. The fitness for humor here is not considered, as something can be both morally bad and the legitimate target of well-done comedy. Like 9/11.
2. I was promised ice cream if I didn't say 'ilk' here.
3. To wit, one of the main justifications for political violence on the left is that it is directed at those preventing others from enjoying dignity, comfort, or well, life.
4. Such as it is.
5. which we may dub the Yekaterinburg Streetcar Defense
6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Rebellions_in_the_Soviet_Union
7. One could alternatively take the logical form of necessity as a conditional, ~P -> ~Q with P being "the legitimate claimant to the imperial thrown is killed" and "Q" being "the revolution is successful". Given the contra-factual nature of ~P, the truth value of this statement can't be evaluated directly, but given the analogous situation in China with PuYi, we can strongly infer that this conditional is in fact false and thus logical necessity is not present.
8. define xi to be each enumerated possible future in space X, p(xi) to be the probability of that future occurring, and h(xi) to be the number of lives ruined by Alexei in that future xi. Shoot kid if
9. To reach a preponderance of evidence standard you would need to establish P(Insurrection|Legitimate Claimant) > P(Insurrection), which the strictly materialist interpretation would hold P(Insurrection|Legitimate Claimant) = P(Insurrection).
10 Regular viewers will recognize this as universal generalization.
11 Orwell's description of the conditions of fighting in the Spanish civil war come to mind.
Formatting is fucked, had to split this into to parts for some reason.
Thank you for taking the time and effort to post this.
I'm gonna repost the thread that I assume led you to making this effortpost. Here it is, I will refer to some things from that thread, which I think are relevant. Beforehand I will say a little bit, but first I'll ask this question: Is it bad to kill child soldiers in war?
I think you are misinterpreting the arguments people have made for why they understood that the soviets saw the killing as justified, and in some senses I think you're misrepresenting these arguments in order to give yourself a stronger case.
No one is saying that leaving him alive was certain doom. The argument is that having him fall into the hands of the white army would be an immense risk. In the other thread you talk of peering into the future, here you instead just speak of probability calculus. You then point to future insurrections happening in the USSR as proof that it was not justified. How would the soviets know those future insurrections would happen? The soviets were able to peer into the past and observe the many MANY counterrevolutions centered around a royal heir, this was a worry and a legtimate one at that. Dismissing this worry is anti-materialist, though since we're doing a moral argument, I struggle to see why materialism all of a sudden matters.
Saying that the soviets could have moved the royal family once again is certainly true, but again you are looking at it with all knowledge available. What did they know? The whites were close by, things could go bad soon.
In the other thread you referenced Puyi and said you thought the family should have gotten the same treatment. The conditions that allowed Puyi to receive that treatment were significantly different from those that forced the soviets to carry out a summary execution.
Again I think you are misrepresenting the argument here. Comparing the worries the soviets had of what would happen if the royal family fell into the hands of the opposition to just regular people is ridiculous. You are comparing the royal family of a country in civil war with just anybody else.
Following this logic systemic issues do not exist. We must always focus on the individual and blame the individual for any action that hurts others. I'm sure this isn't something that is supposed to be a universal outlook, but if systemic issues are ignored one place, then it seems to me there is no reason they should ever not be ignored.
Furthermore the soviets were not in total control. They were afraid the white army would close in and take control of the royal family. What the people in the house knew at those times is hard to say. Additionally we cannot say wether or not an order to execute was given by the bolsheviks or it was the people in the house that made the decision on their own.
Back in the other thread you said you didn't think words on a paper could justify killing children. I think that was a very rude misrepresentation of what I presented to you in good faith, and honestly I'm a bit disappointed you haven't acknowledged this. It was in reference to the argument made by Robespierre against King Louis. It was not words on a paper, it was a legal argument presented in court against a man on trial - the thing you've requested. I will now repost from the other thread:
Some excerpts:
introduction
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.
::::
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. When users say that the tzar is at fault for the death of his children, the argument is that just as everybody else were a victim of the system, so were the royal family. The only person who could be said to have had an individual solution, would have been the Tzar. Anything else would be a systemic change - and in order for that change to occur, the old system would have to be abolished. Attempts at abolishing this old system had been made many times, and many times these attempts were stopped due to resistance organized around the royal family.
I don't think you're making a moral case. I think you're reducing a complex argument to "killing kids is bad" - Something no one disagrees with. Had the soviets in the house known what we know today, then they probably wouldn't have summarily executed the royal family. We can say it was a mistake, but to say that it was not understandable, and to say that it did not rest on a rational foundation, is dishonest.
If "killing kids is bad" is true in general, then killing this particular kid is bad as well, through the most basic logic of universal instantiation. Is it bad to kill child soldiers in war? If the kid is unarmed and cowering in a corner? Yeah. And if Alexei had pulled a peice on the guards, I wouldn't have anything to say right now.
I'm not saying it wasn't understandable. Of course it's understandable, they had a lot going on and not exactly the most pleasant experience under the tsar, so I can absolutely understand it, but that doesn't make it moral? Was it rational? Well that's hard to say because they didn't ever provide the rationale for it. We can try to rationalize it now, though very few people here seem willing to develop that rationalization to the level that in my mind would be sufficient to justify killing a kid. But the point is the Bolsheviks didn't seem to do their homework before doing something terrible, they didn't provide the rational foundation for it. They just gestured at some vaguely articulable threat and called it a day. The entire point of the thread is that I'm imploring people, in their own lives, to actually do their homework before making decisions that come with obvious bad effects. You can make a pat, 30 second justification for any number of bad things today, in the same way the Bolsheviks did then, and in the same way that tons of liberals will do today about Iraq or healthcare or welfare. My point is you shouldn't.
I didn't respond to the Robespierre's argument here despite having read it beforehand because I'm arguing a more general position here than I was in the original thread (as opposed to my personal view that none of them should havs died), so I didn't view it as relevant to the position advanced here, or relevant at all to positions of Alexei and Anastasia.I also found it to be the some of the most oratorical garbage I've ever read where he's just making shit up the entire time but clothing it with enough rhetorical flair that it can get a room howling for blood. Maybe you had to be there. I don't know. He probably wishes he hadn't uncorked that particular bottle though.
If "eating food" is good in general, then eating this particular rotten dish must be good as well, through the most basic logic of universal instantation.
That was not the question I asked you. Answering that question honestly also shows the fault of your "universal instantation" simplifying a complex question.
They did, it's been gone over in this thread and the previous one several times.
They did, as has been gone over in this thread and the previous one several times. The fact that you disagree with the conclusion does not mean there was not a rational foundation.
You should probably do that instead of litigating a debate about the validity of killing a royal heir 100 years ago then.
You're presenting the same argument as you did then, and it's focused on the same subject.
It's a legal argument arguing the case of how a person that is - according to the law - above the law, still able to be persecuted by the law. You wanted due process, courts, that stuff. That's what you got in that argument. In fact you've requested morality and Robespierre is presenting such a one. It seems like you just don't like the thought of killing royals
@a_blanqui_slate@hexbear.net is using universal instantiation in the mathematical sense, where a single counter example invalidates the statement. so either food isn't good as it's possible to construct as a counter example, as you've done, or the definition of food needs to be adjusted.
I'm not saying it's a good idea to apply mathematical formalism to politics, just explaining what's meant in this context. (i.e. it's possible to argue that "killing kids is bad" isn't a universal proposition precisely because of counter-examples like the Romanov kids.)
Thanks for the clarification, I was not aware that it was a mathematical term, however I was aware of what the argument was doing. I chose to use food as a counter-example to show how it's not really something you can do to a discussion of morality or other complexities.
yep, that's why edited to make it clear that it's sound to argue that it's not a universal proposition on the grounds that the Romanov kids are a counter-example.
Didn't see your message pre edit I think, I think I might be misunderstanding you, sorry if so. Thanks for the clarification anyway!
Seems like you need to develop a more robust moral axiom then and not pretend you hold ones that you don't actually hold.
No, you all have been more or less trying to do the Bolshevik's homework for them. No one has pointed to the rationalization provided by the Boleshevkis (a letter, a statement, a coded telegram, meeting minutes) in which they do their homework.
You're the one simplifying complex questions by insisting that all we can know about the circumstances is that they are child soldiers. Any real situation is going to involve specifics, and the answer, based on my universal moral principles, will change based on those specifics.
I very much am not. In that thread I took the hardline stance, which I hold personally, that killing anyone is who cannot be reasonably inferred to pose a imminent and proximal threat to the life of others. In this post, I allow that killing the Tsar could be morally justified, in keeping with footnote 3, on the basis of previous crimes, which I consider a more mainline ethical position among leftists. I would argue personally that the killing of Louis XVI could not be justified with any amount of words at the time of his execution, but that is not the argument I am making here, because it requires premises that I consider relatively uncommon among leftists and so it would be a waste of time owing to incommiserable frameworks.
If you'd read the thread (it's long, I know) before commenting you'd see me doing that everywhere, as well as incidentally showing that the 'likelihood of future threat' based arguments that you and everyone else made fall apart under any scrutiny longer than 10 minutes. One of the few other commenters to flesh out that position most fully has already changed their mind about the justification of the killing.
It specifically denies within it's text that it is any of those things. It's arguing that the revolution was the due process afforded to the king, and now that they as safeguards to the revolution have the right to do whatever they think is appropriate, without argument or defense from the other side, in order to safeguard the new republic. Saying "we don't need a trial, the revolution was the trial" is just making shit up.
Wasn't doing a moral argument, was highlighting the ridiculousness in your logic.
No, you just keep dismissing things as not sufficient, and fail to engage when it challenges you too much to dismiss it.
I'm not simplifying anything and I'm not insisting the Romanovs are child soldiers - They weren't. Answer the question.
You're making the same argument as you did then. Killing the Romanovs was an unforgivable crime done for no reason at all, no rationality at all, and if we do anything but critize it we think child killing is cool and good.
I did read the thread before I commented, thank you for assuming good faith. I see you arguing for why killing the Romanovs was a bad thing that cannot in any way be understood as reasonable or practical or anything other than just evil and bad. I don't see you do much of anything else, though when you're pressured a bit too much you claim you're not actually talking about the Romanovs.
Do you not know the context of the speech? It was a trial. It's saying the trial shouldn't be necessary, the trial that they are holding that trial. You also mention the Terror elsewhere, which shows to me you know barely anything about the subject you speak so confidently of.
Link me right now in this thread to any statement , telegraph, meeting minute or any other documentation that shows the justification of the bolsheviks in the words of the bolsheviks. Do that or acknowledge that the rationale of the bolsheviks has not in fact been provided before we can move on.
Are you saying you want internal documents from the bolsheviks about the execution or are you saying you want an explanation for why they at the time might be thinking it was prudent action? I don't know of their internal communication for the first, and for the second gestures at all the people having answered your many silly demands thru this thread.
Also we can't move on until you answer my question.
That would be evidence that they had done their homework, yes. It's not like we don't have some internal documents including the telegram announcing the deed to Lenin. Could be a public statement though, I'm not picky. I want evidence that they in fact develop the rational foundation for killing the kid.
I don't need that. I know why they might have thought it was a prudent action, I'm saying there's no evidence they thought particularly hard about it, because all of those maybe reasons to me fall under any sort of scrutiny. But in any case, you don't get to shoot kids first and ask questions later and then act like it was justified at the time. If we want to provide safeguards on the killing of kids (or any other action with obvious and immediate bad effects), the consideration and justification must come first, which you seem to acknowledge there is no evidence of in this case.
Only 2 or 3 people have gotten anywhere near this standard and even those were incomplete, and of those one has already changed their mind.
The question whether or not 'it is moral to kill child soldiers' is true? From my own personal moral calculus, that statement is not truth-bearing. The application of my moral axioms does not supply a ready made answer until more about the situation is known.
Okay, I don't have access to that. Are you saying this whole post is actually a historical debate? You must be if what you actually want is analysis of documents of an event that happened 100+ years ago.
Wow I've never seen any one turn the word "no" into an opportunity to soapbox before. Is there anything else you'd like to repeat for the fifth time despite it not being relevant for the question you're answering?
Lmao, allright. Must be nice to have a discussion centered around your personal opinion, so you can arbitrarily decide what is and isn't valid. "The only people that did it were the people that agreed with me".
Ah my bad! I thought we were having a discussion in good faith, yet what I see is that you in fact just want a
pedantic debate where we pretend not to understand what the other is communicating unless they use perfect language. I'm not really interested in that though. I'll try to rephrase the question so you might be able to give an honest answer instead of a weaselly little piece of debate rhetoric: Is it always in every situation immoral to kill a child soldier?
I'm saying this entire post is about thinking hard about difficult decisions at the time and not relying on a pat 30 second justifications to do something horrible like liberals do with Iraq or healthcare. Which I said, in the original post.
Everyone centers their discussion around their personal opinion and how other's arguments interact with their personal opinion.
You're right, it's bad faith for me to answer my interpretation of the specific questions you've asked and instead I should be answering your interpretation of the questions you've asked which is apparently magically available to me, and only in situations of bad faith does those interpretation differ, and the last 60 years of analytic philosophy hasn't made massive changes to it's structure to solve the unheard of issue of people talking past each other in a discussion.
No
Okay, then provide me internal documents from the people in the house or the bolsheviks that at the time communicate they are very well aware that this killing is done without any justification or rationale.
Yeah, and the good faith part is then in not dismissing others arguments as insufficient just because you disagree with them, when you're discussing something without an objective answer.
Nah you're right it's much better to argue about the definition of a word or a phrase instead of answering in good spirit. Great discussions come when we very well understand what is being discussed, but we pretend we don't in order to continue the debate and to avoid any argument we don't like, or any thing phrased not in completely perfect communication. Pedantry is awesome and a great way to make this space ND inclusive, lets focus even more on verbage rather than meaning.
Thank you for answering. When would it not be immoral?
See in my view, the default assumption is that the killing of children is unjustified unless an affirmative justification is offered and presented beforehand. You're welcome to adopt the inverse position that the killing of kids is justified by default unless it can be affirmatively shown that the perpretators knew they were behaving in an unjustified manner. I'd hesitate in taking up such common cause with American police unions, but if that is our disagreement then there isn't really anything else to discuss.
If I find an argument unconvincing, I'm not doing anyone else an favors pretending I found them convincing. I've set what in my mind seems an achievable standards, and others have had fruitful conversation over it, and given the effort I've put into the original post and comments to make my position and comments clear, accusations of bad faith carry absolutely no water with me. You're welcome to make them, but I simply won't wear them.
I see absolutely no distinction between these two things. Sometimes disagreements in beliefs do come down to disagreements of definitions and so to relegate discussion of them to the realm of bad faith is to not take discussion as a serious enterprise.
It language, verbiage is what carries meaning. If anything, asking someone to construct a mental model of their interlocutor and respond to what they think that mental model means as opposed to the plain language on the page is far less ND inclusive.
When the child soldier presents a clearly articulable, imminent and proximate threat to the life or wellbeing of others.
How do you know they didn't provide affirmative justification beforehand? You've made it so the requirement to disprove your thesis to be the presentation of internal documents that verify the soviets did in fact carry out an investigation to fulfill your set of subjectively chosen arbitrary limits, and should they fail to fulfill your specific limits, then they are unjustified. I am asking you to prove that they knew they were acting unjustifiably, amorally, irationally, in pure anger or likewise. I am asking for a communique that says "we know they're innocent and there's no risk, kill them anyway". I am asking you to live up to your own standard.
As I and others have pointed out your standards are weighted in favour to supporting your argument, you keep changing on what basis this argument rests - Moral, legal, historical, materialist, rhetorical - and you, as has been highlighted to you, do not fulfill the standards you yourself set.
Also, since we're doing pedantry: You can't wear words.
Asking someone to not focus on imperfect communication and to ask clarifying questions in good spirit, rather hostilely dig into a perceived fault in a specific interpretation of what was communicated does not make this site ND inclusive. It is debatebroism and pedantry.
How would you know the child presents an immediate and proximate threat?
As I've said elsewhere, I don't care what standards they use. I insist that they outline those standards ahead of time and then see if they are met. I insist that they adopt some articulable moral framework beforehand to see if killing the kid is justified, and that those standards give appropriate care and weight to the execution of a child. We universally agree that the ad hoc standards used by American policing of "I perceived a possible threat" is insufficient to justify killing an unarmed child. I want to see evidence they put more thought into this than American cops, because I think killing unarmed kids who present no imminent threat is bad.
I hold that is no standard of evidence required to justify not killing an unarmed kid. It is prima facie justified in my view and I imagine, in the view of nearly everyone here. Surely we both agree that the standards of justifying killing kids and the standards to justify not killing kids are radically different.
But one can of course wear accusations.
I didn't know of the need to clarify; I thought I understood your question, and gave the provided my answer. I'm not faulting you for asking that question, there was nothing wrong with that question. I just didn't understand it as the one you meant to be asking. I simply do not care about accusations of debatebroism and pedantry, as I don't understand what the former is even supposed to be beyond "arguing with me in a way I don't like" and the latter is just a pejorative of verbal precision (which in logic and mathematics is absolutely vital, which is why often times symbols with incredibly well-defined meetings take the place of words). The tone and tenor of the conversation should have been immediately clear from the outset in the OP, where I spent an entire 500 talking about things I don't care about here (the Marxist view on morality) so that the discussion can much more precisely, and dare I say pedantically frame in it's moral terms. If you don't like that tenor and tone, you're welcome not to engage with it's source. I don't arguments that are peppered with the dumb emojjis on this website, so when I see people arguing like that, I block them.
Well, perhaps I'm aware of the fact I am in a warzone, I see the child is armed, I see the child pointing a gun at other people. Everyone here would agree that such an evidentiary threshold that the threat is reasonable, proximal, and articulable is met in this case, I presume.
You are once again ignoring the argument in order to dig into a specific choice of phrase. If you are truly a professor then I feel really bad for any student that deviates in the least way from NT communication norms.
You are also dishonest here as you say you do not care what standards they use, but when standards have been presented to you, you have dismissed them - You do therefore care.
You are here once again making the same false equivalency as you did in the last thread where you equate any child to heirs to the throne of a monarchy in the middle of a civil war.
I don't really give a shit what you're asked to prove, as we're not discussing you, but the killing of the Romanovs, and for this killing to be justified you require very specific historical documents (which you know are not available, thus creating a standard that is unfulfillable, yet not accepting that we simply cannot know). I therefore ask you to prove that your thesis is correct: That the soviets did this action knowing it was not justified, as that is what you've been saying it is. Once again it is incredibly poor form of you to attempt this rhetorical weaseling rather than admitting you might've made a mistake.
Oh so we're accepting slang? So we are accepting unclear communication that could be interpreted in several ways, and we're expected to understand what is communicated rather than focus down on one very specific communication uttered? I thought we were doing pedantry, but if we're doing collouqial communication then that seems to be exhausting.
You're doing this thing again where you're digging into something communicated weirdly and then attacking that, rather than what was communicated. You then think up wild specific scenarios in which we don't assume good faith of each other (literally one of the rules) but rather start using language to obfuscate what we mean. This whole act you're doing is really shitty, and once again - as has been communicated to you, which you now no longer go into in this argument, though that was the whole point of this specific thing you're answering - is making the site less welcome for ND people, who are well-known to have issued communicating clearly as is. You should in fact give a shit about being a debatebro or pedant, as such a person is a person that makes a space unwelcoming.
How would you know the child was armed with an actual weapon and how would you know their weapon actually worked? It might be dysfunctional or just a toy. How would you know their shot would be deadly? How would you know that it was necessary to shoot to kill rather than just wound?
Also in this case you would not have to carry out the calculations you demanded of the soviets? You would not have to provide the documentation before taking the action?
What if you were alone? What if there were no witnesses?
I find this pretty revealing. You've spent a lot of time saying your complaint was that "they didn't show their work," but then, in another case where the revolutionaries did show their work, it still wasn't good enough. It seems to me that if the soldiers who killed the Romanovs had produced moral arguments, you'd dismiss them as "oratorical garbage" if they'd performed the sort of historical survey you asked for, you'd say it was biased and incomplete. It's pretty clear at this point that you have another reason for thinking the killing is wrong that you're not telling us (perhaps for fear of getting dogpiled) and you're just concern trolling using a similar tactic to the media demanding Corbyn prove he's not anti-semitic, where nothing's ever good enough.
This goes back to my first comment where I speculated that your views on the matter are based either consciously or subconsciously on the Christian framework of the devil tempting people to sin and the final judgement. It's either that, or you just have a very unrealistic view of how the world works.
Robespierre wasn't showing his work, he was literally just making shit up. Everything he says is just one shoddy unchallenged assertion after the other, and I think the result of his nonformalized, vibes based execution justification techniques he introduced speak for themselves.
The reign of terror pretty conclusively shows you what happens when you allow executions on the basis of any old ad hoc justification.
I tell you reason in my OP. Human life has value is an axiomatic foundation of mine. Yes, it can at great length be shown that it is necessary to take a particular life, but absent those overriding circumstances it is wrong. My general dismay here stems from how low that threshold seems for everyone else.
I reject that explanation. You've set your standards for evidence to be so high that they could never be reasonably met, which is functionally equivalent to saying that it's axiomically wrong to kill a prisoner, regardless of the consequences or the material conditions. I hate to break out the fallacies, but it's a motte and bailey.
I've already pointed out that half of Russia, and presumably half of the Red Army, was illiterate at this time. You're expecting illiterate peasants to make a stronger argument than Robespierre before they're allowed to kill prisoners. Clearly, you're not seriously considering the possibility that killing the prisoners was justified - even if we were in a world where there was a much stronger case for it, there is still nothing that they could've done that would satisfy your standards.
We don't really know what the soldiers discussed or what was going on in their heads. Maybe they had a serious, good faith discussion about it, maybe they were just angry and taking it out on them. No amount of studies or polemics could prove (at least to your standards) that they reached the decision through a reasonable, good faith process, to the best of their abilities. And if it wouldn't convince anyone, then what's the point of publishing it? Stop pretending that you're just asking questions and just need a bit more evidence and just admit that you think it's axiomically wrong.
And I reject this, the standard is in fact very high, but it is not insurmountable. If the Tsar had attempted a breakout or an actual attempt to liberate him made, then he presents a clear and imminent danger and in that case shooting him would in fact would be a regrettable but justifiable action. In fact, the fact that Egon has insisted that we litigate Louis XVI despite my initial goal to of discussing Alexei and Anastasia makes this more of a bailey and motte argument than a motte and bailey. When I say that Louis XVI should not have been killed based on my personal moral calculus, I am advancing a radically different argument that I advancing in the OP.
The first is way harder than the latter, and requires me to rely on moral principles that are not all that common on the left, making it something of an exercise in futility owing to incommensurability.
I don't care who makes the argument. It's not like they couldn't spare eight hours of 3 clerks time to arrive at a decision, one to argue each side and the other to decide. But when you take on the role of state executioner, you take on additional moral responsibilities. If you're not willing to take on those responsibilities, get out of the killing kids game. Besides, like I've said, Robespierre's arguments are so bad in their form and their effect I find it hard to believe anyone couldn't make a stronger argument than him.
To show that this is true you would have to show such a case where the captors show the prisoner presents a clear and imminent danger to the lives of others and have me reject that. Robespierre isn't that.
I have not at any point insisted we litigate the trial of King Louis. I presented you an argument made by a person from another situation in which a royal person was defenseless, in the control of the revolution, and not able to escape or seemingly fall into the hands of the enemy. While Louis is king and therefore responsible for what happened, the argument does not rest on this, but instead the fact that Louis is Royal and therefore by default "guilty". Except for being a child this is the situation you've described. A person in that situation made that argument, and I've asked you to read that argument to get an idea why some people might rationalise such an action to be justified.
You keep misrepresenting what others argue and you keep avoiding engaging with the arguments others present you, instead dictating stringent terms other must follow, while you yourself can weave and bend with what you're saying, what your argument is, what it is that we're debating and so forth. This is rude.
For all we know, they might have. They probably didn't, because that's not how decisions are made in war-time (except perhaps the case with Robespierre), but even if they did, even if we could produce evidence of it, I do not believe that would be enough. You could easily dismiss it as all for show. What you're asking for is for them to make the case to you that they followed a reasonable process, even though nothing they could've reasonably done would be enough to convince you, and there's also nothing to be gained from making the effort.
Fine, I hate stupid hypotheticals as much as anyone but you've left me no choice.
The Whites are in possession of a fully functional nuclear ICBM that is biolocked the the DNA of the Tsar and his immediate family. How many pages of polemics will you demand from illiterate soldiers, how many fish will you demand walk on land, before you sign off on mulching the orphans in that case?
Sure it's possible that I could, but you're speaking to contrafactual. If you want to show the claim that I will shift the goalposts is true, you actually have to show them achieve the original goalposts.
Well considering the whites found the corpses, and thus gained ready access to the primary source of their DNA (their bodies) I would say the prudent move in this case would have been to move them away from the whites instead of killing them, and I guess, going back to the entire point of my argument, that if the captors thought about the scenario for more than 10 minutes, they'd have realized that and not gotten the Petrograd soviet nuked.
OK, so you want a couple people to get together and debate before killing a prisoner. The French did that. You said it wasn't good enough because you found the arguments unconvincing. That's a goalpost shift. Unless you'd have us believe that if the Reds did the exact same process as the French, you'd treat it differently for some reason.
As for the other part, obviously they wouldn't have ditched the bodies where the whites could find them in that scenario, you're just trying to weasel your way out of answering. And the reason that you won't answer is because you're arguing from a sockpuppet position that is rapidly disintegrating.
It's so rude tbh.
I'm enough of a debate pervert that even though I saw through it right away, I was willing to engage because I'm still down to defend my beliefs even if the other person is just playing Devil's Advocate. But now it's pretty clear that they just want to attack from an unreasonable position that no one would actually believe while never allowing their actual beliefs to be scrutinized by keeping them hidden, which yeah it's pretty frustrating and unfair.
I guess I can understand that they don't want to get dogpiled but at this point I'm more curious about the other people who I've seen agree with their position, since this user is pretty much the only one who's engaged in the question substantially from that side. I'm guessing a lot of it is knee-jerk and unexamined.
A lot of people on this site assume that since they're on "the good side" all of their beliefs are therefore "the good beliefs". This leads to them never investigating and never doing self-crit.
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Why did you post this response? It's a needless antagonistic interaction. Since you do respond to this, yet fail to respond to the longer texts I've written in response to you, it's pretty clear you're just doing this whole thing to troll.
I'm also not american
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Yeah sure, allright let's pretend that. If you're gonna behave as you do now, don't bother.
I cannot antagonize you when I do not interact with you. I was responding to another user about our interactions with you, the fact that you are frustrated that your actions are perceived negatively and your reaction to this frustration is to be needlessly hostile is on you. Had I written this to you - as I have earlier, where it would make sense for you to come with your snide comment, rather than drag that grievance with you to another conversation - then I would not think your response would've been needless.
I'm not saying you can't respond, it's a public forum, I'm just wondering why you would want to.
I have already done so - as it seems you also know judging by how you communicate here. I have not at any place accused you of ableism, you might want to practice some of that "reading what the text says" thing you're a big fan of. I've pointed out how and why what you do is something that makes this site less inclusive for ND people, but I haven't at any place called you ableist or your actions ableist. It seems as though my explanation have led you to consider yourself whether your actions might be problematic My claims of pedantry were not refuted by you, in fact you argued for pedantry, though I do not know wether you can remember this, you have a tendency to switch between what case you're arguing and what your standards are and what we're discussing.
I'm not going to block you, but what's probably going to happen is that I leave this site once again, though I'd prefer it if people like you got banned, like they used to. I've wanted to give the site a try again, and it's clear it's just become a box of debateperverts. It sucks that it used to have a vibrant ND community and that the ND moderation team left. It sucks that calls for initiatives that would make the place more welcoming are met with ridicule and hostility by dickheads like you, but it is what it is.
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This isn't "On Shooting Louis the XVI", I regret ever engaging with Louis the XVI, because I do not view it disqualifying as a leftist to support his execution, mirroring what I allude to in footnote 3 and mention further here. I find the argument unconvincing, I do not expect every leftist to. I am an acknowledged peculiarity in that regard. The fact that we're even talking about Louis XVI is a reflection of a massive goalpost shift in your favor, given his actual culpability in the crimes of the regime.
Sorry, I missed where you said this part originally.
We are rapidly approaching the point where I get fed up with your bad faith bullshit and start telling you to post hog.
If the Reds had followed the same process as the French, would you accept their decision, yes or no?
If the only way to avoid giving the Whites a nuke was to kill an innocent prisoner, would you accept that decision without needing the unreasonable standard of evidence you're asking for in the historical scenario, yes or no?
Absolute moral rules with exceptions requiring an impossible level of proof to achieve are still absolute moral rules. If you want to argue for them, quit this concern trolling bullshit and actually argue for them. And answer the questions or we're done.
Personally? Or would I view it as disqualifying as a leftist?
As I've said since yesterday, if it could be shown they had done their due diligence, I wouldn't have anything to say even if I disagreed personally.
This isn't about it being justifiable, this is about it being justified.
I would need a very high standard of evidence to know that this was the only way to avoid giving whites the nuke. If you insist on the magical scenario of perfect knowledge and trust in that perfect knowledge, I would view it as acceptable according to my moral framework, rising to the level of imminent, proximate risk.
Don't play these games with me.
"The reason I'm talking about trans women in sports is because I just think it's disqualifying to support that position. Now, I personally don't agree trans people should have any rights at all, but I don't consider it disqualifying to say they should."
Literally nobody gives a shit about what you think is disqualifying vs what you just disagree with. This is textbook concern trolling. You have a much broader belief that you're not willing to defend (the bailey, that killing a prisoner is always wrong regardless of the circumstances), but instead you're hiding behind a much narrower position (the motte, that you "just have concerns" about whether the Reds followed the right procedure). You throw out all these accusations and insults at us because we're actually willing to be honest about our beliefs, while you keep your real beliefs hidden so that you can't be attacked in return. Your goalposts will obviously shift such that whatever's considered an edge case is the one that's "disqualifying" while you try to push the community closer to a position you know would be rejected if you stated it openly. You want to set the terms of the debate so that you're always able to go on the offense while never having to defend anything yourself.
I'm out.
We're not talking about transwomen in sports or some other reactionary nonsense. I do personally oppose the death penalty, plenty of leftists do. But I do not personally take issue with a leftist who does support the death penalty, because I know my moral views are peculiar and contingent to my upbringing. This isn't about me, in the same way it's not about the Romanov's. It's about or moral views and adequate justification for them, and has been since the beginning, and I regret that I have been drawn into mixing my own personal views on morality into the discussion. Everything was fine yesterday.
What accusations and insults?
I'm defending the claim that there is no evidence that the murder of the Romanov children was justified at the time. The terms of the debate will include things like adequate justifications
Everything was fine yesterday because it's reasonable to ask me to explain and defend my beliefs, which I have done, but if you want to keep pressing the offensive then it's only fair that you're willing to allow your own to be scrutinized as well.
Is that a joke?