Cindy Sheehan Has No Moral Authority

[Cort Haus]

Because being a victim requires a wrong committed against them, this wrong means the victim has the moral authority to seek redress. That is a principled, consistent and rational position based on freedom.

Sure, a victim has a moral claim to seek redress, but should they be granted special powers? After the Dunblane shootings in Scotland the families' victims were granted near supra-executive powers to re-write the laws on gun ownership. Not through any democratic or constitutional mechanism, but because of emotional media campaigns putting the victims effectively in change of legislation.

That's my general point about the limits of moral authority & power. With regard to Mrs Sheehan, if she is claiming victimhood simply because the WMD prospectus for war was faked, then she has a limited grasp on the historical reality of false 'causus belli' regularly deployed by governments to justify launching wars.

If you sign up for the army, you might have to fight and die. You might not agree with the war, or the causes of the war might even be hoaxed, but that's exactly what you have to expect when you sign up.

Why do liars negate the moral authority of victims who dont lie?

They do this by getting away with it. Two huge contemporary lies spring to mind - the Big Lie of the 'Genocide' of Kosovo Albanians, and the Big Lie of the 'Genocide' of the Palestinians. These huge fibs, used to justify the gradual destruction of Serbia and Israel (Goebbels would be delighted at how things are panning out for his enemies these days), simultaneously diminish the real, historically-documented genocides against Jews and Serbs in WW2.

Nazi lies about Germans being 'victims' of a Jewish conspiracy to control the world through proxy great powers is what won them power in the first place. Islamists and their fascist Left allies like George Galloway have reinvigorated this deadly lie, which is why we are at such a perilous stage in history.

[Patroklos]

Nazi

Move along, nothing to see here. You don't have to go home but you can't stay here.

[Cort Haus]

Some parts of the US let family speak at sentencing, not during the trial. I'd be surprised if the Brits were doing what you describe.

Yes you're right. It's post sentencing, not before.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4202618.stm

I still don't agree with it, as it suggests that until now courts have been incapable of sentencing properly. I also think it will encourage crocodile tears and emotionalism over rational analysis.

[Mr. Harley]

Cort Haus - if the victim has a moral claim to seek redress, then what kind of redress would be appropriate for Cindy Sheehan to seek? Actually, based on that premise, I think she is doing a pretty good job. She's not getting that special de facto legislation that the families of/victims of the Scottish school shooting got. She is trying to get the filthy sod (i.e. Bush) to admit he lied, and is trying to address your other issue by trying NOT to let the liars get away with it.

There is also a fine American tradition supporting Berz, that our soldiers are not from the European model, but instead are not signing up for any War that their commander in chief sends them on. We fought an entire Civil War where almost half of America did exactly that (ignored the CIC, with a vengeance in fact), and it is that part of the country that supplies the greatest number of US Soldiers. They have been trying to remold that American tradition for generations, especially since the advent of a large standing army after WW2. You may agree with that effort, and as you can see from my comments here and in other threads - I don't. I agree with Berz, and like that tradition of the guard and reserve just fine, thank you very much.

[Az]

Cort Haus

[Cort Haus]

Originally posted by shawnmmcc
Cort Haus - if the victim has a moral claim to seek redress, then what kind of redress would be appropriate for Cindy Sheehan to seek?

I don't know - what is the going rate for being sent off to die in a dodgy war? I certainly think she's entitled to an apology, but if she is granted a private audience with the CIC, isn't every other victim of the war also entitled to the same?

Plenty of other wars have been fought in the last 15 years on equally unstable premises, but this is the only one where a widespread anti-war movement has been permitted. From well before the war there was plenty of media space devoted to opposition, compared to other wars where only the government line is discussed by the media. Without this, there would be no anti-war movement, and Cindy Sheehan would not be international news. The existence of anti-war sentiment in the mainstream media is very unusual.

Also, this is the first war for a long time where US troops have died in large quantities, so the iniquities of the war are noticed more than usual. It's easier to support a war where you don't get hurt.

---

btw - as a non-interventionist, I'd be very happy if the US army got on with the business of defending the USA at home, if that's what you mean by "that tradition of the guard and reserve".

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I certainly think she's entitled to an apology, but if she is granted a private audience with the CIC, isn't every other victim of the war also entitled to the same?

What part of politics don't you understand?

[Cort Haus]

It doesn't for those of us who rely on reason to guide us, no. But as the linked article points out, this is a response to the Right who has been doing such for years. A sad fact of life is, many, if not most, people are more easily swayed by emotion than logic. We have been fighting a losing battle relying solely on reason. We need to use emotions on our side as well. After all, we are humans.

I'd say that the moment emotionalism is deployed in place of reason, principle and moral authority go out of the window. The 'journalism of attachment' that developed in the nineties is quite happy to dispense with the facts and lie about what is percieved to be a 'good cause'.

A recent example - Bob Geldof stunned TV viewers by claiming that dead africans were washed up daily on a mediterranean island, and that the islands graveyards were full of the bodies. Despite being untrue, this was reported in the papers verbatim, and no-one in the mainstream press actually checked the facts. Why? Because they didn't want the facts to stand in the way of a good story with a moral-emotional impact.

What part of politics don't you understand?

?

[Mr. Harley]

Cort Haus - Bush DID NOT visit my sister when her husband got shot, and her letter of condolence was signed by an auto-pen forging Rumsfeld's signature.

However, since I have been opposed to intervention from the get-go, and for an for American defense force - it used to be called the National Guard, and the President could not deploy it if the state governor under who that unit was organized refused to supply the unit. IMHO that is one of the reasons they changed it, because the interventionists, right and left, did not like a federated model where the states governors could derail their petty and not-so-petty plans.

FYI - victim's statements have always grated on me, they have nothing to do with justice, just revenge and closure. The same for hate crimes - if the punishment is too light without adding in the hate crime increase; i.e. stringing a gay man up on barbed war and letting him freeze to death as happened in the US - then the punishment is too light for when it isn't a hate crime. If my brother or daughter died that way, I would want the murderer locked up for a very long time, as in forever, hate crime or not.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
Returning to the headline - being a victim does not give moral authority. That way lies an undignified scramble over mounds of corpses to claim the high ground, and also tends to encourage atrocity fabrication.

I agree completely.

As for the "stay the course" bull:

The course is one of failure. From day one the amdinistration has tried to do this on the cheap. We have been even ineffective in the simple "lets fix the water supply and power grid" jobs which one would think would have gotten done years ago.

Continuing to do a half-asses job is hardly the wise thing to do.

As for Iraqis, lets not kid ourselves: most people in the world don't care, neither do most Americans, which is why Bush must still mention 9/11 half a dozen times in each of his Iraq speeches. The world is very good at standing aside and lettting places collapse and doin nothing about it. The uS would get no more blame in the future than it already does for iraq falling apart, except in the ME itself, which of couse would be a serious blow. I do find it funny thought that some of the few non_Americans that cheered for this war all of a sudden get pissy that other peaople's tax dolars might not continue to be spent backing this. Yup, those damn weak Americans sure undermined the international pro-war side yet again-another stab in the back.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Cort Haus
I'd say that the moment emotionalism is deployed in place of reason, principle and moral authority go out of the window.

That's all fine and good and principled, but it isn't how the world works. The object of the game is victory, and when your opponent is unscrupulous, unless you have a fair judge in the situation, you'll have to succeed at his methods to win.

The left has been trying to win for generations by employing the reason-only argument, and it's been getting its ass handed to it by emotional appeals by the right. We are losing on every front. The fate of our civilization and our species is at stake. We cannot afford to be utterly defeated. That means we have to start appealing to emotions too, in addition to appealing to reason.

[Patroklos]

We have been even ineffective in the simple "lets fix the water supply and power grid" jobs which one would think would have gotten done years ago.

Your not serious are you, I'll give you a chance to retract that.

[Cort Haus]

I dunno Che, it seems to me that the Left has used emotion for years - along the 'OMFG UR VIOLATING MY RIGHTS' lines, as mentioned elsewhere by Kuci, rather than developing a strong case for advancing the forces of production by rational, non-market means.

In the UK the organised working class was defeated in the Thatcher era. Without a collective agency for change the traditional strategy of the left was at an end. The 'anti-globalisation' movement is no such agency, being a rag-tag collection of disparate angsts and urges, opposed to capitalism but with no coherent or progressive alternative.

In fact TINA (There Is No Alternative) has been a like-it-or-not legacy of the Thatcher-Reagan years and the collapse of the hopeless Stalinism.

Elements of social-leftist thinking certainly persist in both the American and European establishments but in a negative and autocratic way. For example, laws against 'hate speech' are supposed to be anti-racist but actually shut down freedom and democracy. Laws to 'protect' employees often stifle economic activity and often function against workers. These measures are introduced on the back of emotional appeals against alleged victimhood, but actually do more harm than good.

I could go on, but the point is that whatever the reasons are for what you call "losing on every front", lack of emotionalism from the Left isn't one of them.

btw - I don't think the Right is in much better shape, ideologically, than the Left, and politics is now multi-dimensional so left-right analysis can only get us so far , thanks .