Happy Tiananmen Square Massacre Day

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by GePap
"The moral fabric of society"? What moral fabric? You have rights given to you by the system. if you go beyond those rights you endanger the system. You do not, as an individual citizen, have the right to decide the life or death of fellow citizens. Only the state has that right, after it meets certain criteria of proof. What you think is moral or not is immterial, you either have the right to it or not. For you to terminate the life of another citizen is murder: why you think you did it may grant you some level of leniency, but you are still going beyond what you rights and resonsibilities are, and thus endanger the very system you claimt o be trying to uphold.

You as an individual do not have the authority to claim to act in the name of the system. For you to do so is a crime. And thus you will ahve to accept the penalties for your crime.

Which particular society are we talking about here, exactly? The Matrix?

[David Floyd]

GePap,

have rights given to you by the system.

Sorry, a system cannot give rights any more than it can take them away. Rights are natural.

You do not, as an individual citizen, have the right to decide the life or death of fellow citizens.

You do when they are trying to kill you or another - the right to self defense.

[mindseye]

And should every single Chinese street be continuously pumped with tear gas for the next six weeks?

Would that be better or worse than shooting civilians with AK-47s and running them down with tanks.

[GePap]

Originally posted by David Floyd
Sorry, a system cannot give rights any more than it can take them away. Rights are natural.

Sorry DF, they aren't, and I feel no inclination to get into it.

You do when they are trying to kill you or another - the right to self defense.

So you agree that you do not have the right o decide the life or death of another? becuse the right to self-defense is a different one. And you only kill in self-defense if necessary. To do beyond what is necessary for self-defense is itself a crime.

Which particular society are we talking about here, exactly? The Matrix?

Any society. You can;t just moe into someone else's property, even if you are poor and homelesss. Why? becuase that other person has the exclusive right to that land, and the right to decide who goes in and who doesn't. For you to break in is to trample on the rights they were given by the system.

You do not have the right to deicde that the life of 100 about to die form natural causes is greater than that of a healthy man. For you to assume that right goes well beyond those rights you have. Under yur scenerio, if you have the right to kill one individual to save another (the fact that it is plural is unimportant), then I could just as well claim the right of rep-emptive self-defense by killing you before you kill that one individual, "in order to preserve the moral fabric of society" as you claim. But I don;t have that right, and neither do you.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by ranskaldan
Quickness is often good, especially in a volatile situation.

So you're quite certain that the only reason the military was able to so effectively massacre the students was that the military was given a head start? In other words, if the demonstration turned violent, the military would have been caught with its pants down and the country would have been plunged into anarchy? What are you basing this conclusion off of?

And should every single Chinese street be continuously pumped with tear gas for the next six weeks?

So you're quite certain that it would have been necessary to pump every single Chinese street full of tear gas for the next six weeks if the students weren't massacred? What are you basing this conclusion off of?

Other nations have had demonstrations that haven't turned into riots, as well as riots that haven't turned into bloodbaths (let along revolutions). I guess I'm just confused as to why you're so certain that this particular demonstration was so different that deadly force was justified, much less necessary.

[loinburger]

Another thing to keep in mind is that having the military fire on civilians is far from being the safest means of breaking up a demonstration -- nothing puts a soldier's will to the test more than being ordered to kill fellow countrymen. If the demonstrators start the violence then the soldiers are fighting in self-defense, but historically the make-or-break situation for many revolutions comes at the point when the military is forced to take a side. Were I in the shoes of the Chinese leadership, then even if I had utter disregard for the lives of the demonstrators and/or even if I truly felt that the demonstrators were a clear and present danger to the State, then I'd still balk at ordering the military to fire on civilians -- I'm not sure if I'd put quite that much trust into the will of the soldiers. (Then again, maybe being in the shoes of the Chinese leadership would grant me mystical powers of foresight...)

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by GePap


Any society. You can;t just moe into someone else's property, even if you are poor and homelesss. Why? becuase that other person has the exclusive right to that land, and the right to decide who goes in and who doesn't. For you to break in is to trample on the rights they were given by the system.

You do not have the right to deicde that the life of 100 about to die form natural causes is greater than that of a healthy man. For you to assume that right goes well beyond those rights you have. Under yur scenerio, if you have the right to kill one individual to save another (the fact that it is plural is unimportant), then I could just as well claim the right of rep-emptive self-defense by killing you before you kill that one individual, "in order to preserve the moral fabric of society" as you claim. But I don;t have that right, and neither do you.

Then your point is totally different. You're essentially saying that society enforces some small-scale immorality (e.g. making trespassing an offense) in order to preserve its own integrity. After all, if all homeless people were allowed to camp out on private property, chaos would ensue.

Well then, sure, society preserves itself by codifying laws that may be immoral in some cases. Such as forbidding you to kill 1 person, even if it would save a hundred. But that hardly makes this moral.

[ranskaldan]

Originally posted by loinburger

So you're quite certain that the only reason the military was able to so effectively massacre the students was that the military was given a head start? In other words, if the demonstration turned violent, the military would have been caught with its pants down and the country would have been plunged into anarchy? What are you basing this conclusion off of?

Yes, society would likely have been plunged into anarchy. This is because once the peasants get started, nothing short of all out civil war would stop them. But that's what we're trying to prevent in the first place.

So you're quite certain that it would have been necessary to pump every single Chinese street full of tear gas for the next six weeks if the students weren't massacred? What are you basing this conclusion off of?

Off your idea that another way would be to pump streets full of tear gas. Well then, we would certainly like to cover all the places the students might pick the next morning.

Other nations have had demonstrations that haven't turned into riots, as well as riots that haven't turned into bloodbaths (let along revolutions). I guess I'm just confused as to why you're so certain that this particular demonstration was so different that deadly force was justified, much less necessary.

This is China we're talking about. The demographics are not encouraging and history isn't either.

Another thing to keep in mind is that having the military fire on civilians is far from being the safest means of breaking up a demonstration -- nothing puts a soldier's will to the test more than being ordered to kill fellow countrymen. If the demonstrators start the violence then the soldiers are fighting in self-defense, but historically the make-or-break situation for many revolutions comes at the point when the military is forced to take a side. Were I in the shoes of the Chinese leadership, then even if I had utter disregard for the lives of the demonstrators and/or even if I truly felt that the demonstrators were a clear and present danger to the State, then I'd still balk at ordering the military to fire on civilians -- I'm not sure if I'd put quite that much trust into the will of the soldiers. (Then again, maybe being in the shoes of the Chinese leadership would grant me mystical powers of foresight...)

That's a good point, actually.

[GePap]

Originally posted by ranskaldan


Then your point is totally different. You're essentially saying that society enforces some small-scale immorality (e.g. making trespassing an offense) in order to preserve its own integrity. After all, if all homeless people were allowed to camp out on private property, chaos would ensue.

Well then, sure, society preserves itself by codifying laws that may be immoral in some cases. Such as forbidding you to kill 1 person, even if it would save a hundred. But that hardly makes this moral.

If morals were absolute, then you could speak about "moral fabric" and similar trash. All society can try to do is maintain a certain amount of order and prosperity, but the mot important way to do so is to create laws, a way to change them without violence, and to enforce the current ones.

Lets bring in a new tact: what if troops ordered to crush the dmeonstrators had mutinied? (even those form the west?). What if the general population, appaled by the criminality of its leaders, had revolted outright? You say only brute, murderous force could lead to peace: not true. It could also have lead to greater chaos and everything you claim the leadershipo wanted to avoid.

[mindseye]

I in the shoes of the Chinese leadership, then even if I had utter disregard for the lives of the demonstrators and/or even if I truly felt that the demonstrators were a clear and present danger to the State, then I'd still balk at ordering the military to fire on civilians -- I'm not sure if I'd put quite that much trust into the will of the soldiers.

Well founded concern.

(A) highly presitigous group of retired PLA generals wrote an open letter to Deng XiaoPeng recalling the army's popular revolutionary traditions and reminding the paramount leader that: "The People's Army belongs to the People ... and cannot stand in opposition to the People." Indeed the first groups of young soldiers who entered the capital intuitively fraternized with the population they had been dispatched to control, and some welcomed student invitations to join together in singing revolutionary songs.

"Mao's China and After", Maurice Meisner

The later troops (from the 27th Army) were veterans from the recent struggle with Vietnam. They were drawn mainly from the western regions, so had much less sympathy with Beijingers. More importantly, Deng was certain that they would obey his orders to shoot to kill. It took two weeks to assemble the 200,000 troops used for the assault. It was very, very deliberate.

[mindseye]

Hey, Urban Ranger, where are you? I wanna hear your reaction after seeing photos of an event you claimed never happened!

[Mr. President]

I think he doesn't want to accidentally say anything that might blow back in his face.

Why exactly should I care what the Chinese government does and doesn't do in its own country? I fail to see how driving tanks through public squares in Beijing ever hurt America.

[Winston]

I'd like to see what he has to say as well.

[Saras]

Damn, I guess Lithuania should also have shut up and stayed with the USSR, because looky looky what a mess Russia is now

[Az]

EDIT: ok, ok, that troll was getting tiresome anyway.