Another commenter below puts this in somewhat more offensive terms (hence, perhaps, their handle). I'm here from a comment you up on my own piece, and I note your "self-defence" position. If someone wants to kill you, you will kill them.
But, did Mangioni have a self-defence defence to raise? Can you self-defend someone else? Was Robin Hood a dangerous vigilante? The Mennonites set an example that I suspect is rarely followed, backed by the story of Dirk Willems, a 16th century Dutchman: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/on-conscientious-objection.
In terms of conscientious objection, the question is whether a pacifist would raise a firearm against anyone, even if he is the enemy. You can't test for that. You can't imagine what you would do. You'd need to be in the situation, and to see what you do do. And that could be traumatic. One can advocate for what one believes the morals tell you to do, and for whether the law provides an adequate response. But actually predicting what you yourself would do - if you know with certainty, well done.
On Vietnam, I'd not heard this thing about oil before - if it's so, it will undoubtedly have been a factor: countries that pose no direct material benefit are those in which the CIA engineers a coup; with oil wells, the US sends its own military in.
It was not our resisitance, in whichever form, that brought an end to the Vietnam War: it was the discovery that there was NO offshore oil along the coast of Vietnam, and thus the war was not PROFITABLE! Then the politicians used our resistance as an alibi to divest themselves of an adventure which no longer brought in any money.
You are wrong. Even if it’s as simple as two wrongs not making a right. Your comment about the state using violence so this makes this ok essentially excuses any number of ideologically purified by those like you on the street. Your mentality is like those in the French Revolution and your rationalization is no different than any murderous terrorist group. It’s repugnant and simply wrong.
Staying alive often entails doing repugnant things. Since you condemn murder when committed by an invidividual who, since he is an individual, will usually kill only a relatively small number of people (And I certainly don't like or belive in or cherish killing) will you condemn murder when it is committed by the state.
You exercise your rhetoric forcefully, and that is a rhetoric to the converted. It does not, regardless of its intention, convince the sceptic, I venture to say. However, I'm sceptical enough about sceptics to be able to cite source and authority for most of what you say (I confess, I had to look up Gomer Pyle).
I'm a "what iffer". So, when I would ask "How did the State of Israel get founded?", I would ask, "How did any state get founded?" Because the answer is, aside from details, the same. Through threat of force, machination and, if threat be not enough alone, the exercise of force. The logic behind your challenge to authority to "drop their weapons if we drop ours" has cogency: it's what the Western gunman says to the sheriff. But, instead, our sheriff retorts that they can be trusted, so they don't need to drop their guns. That may be so, but they're not trusted by the gunman a quo. There is little controversy about whether the forces of law and order maintain law and order. The controversy is about whose law and whose order they maintain, and in whose favour.
Violence and the threat of violence are no longer exercised "irrespective of who you are". The mantra of "irrespective of who you are" has somewhat been lost over the past quarter century. The debate about "all men are created equal" has focused on race and sexism. But even a community entirely of one race and one sex is today treated unequally by many providers of essential services and government itself. It is this mantra (of equality) that lies central to the whole American project, and which has so easily been lost sight of in the name, ironically enough, of "freedom": it was previously as follows - MY freedom means my ability to do all that is lawful within my own domain; yours is to not interfere with that until I do wrong at law. Now it has become: YOUR freedom is to engage in any act you deem meet and proper to advance your own prosperity, and as long as it does not palpably and recognisably impact on me, I will acquiesce in it."
We might rewrite that constitutional document to read "All men are created 'recognisably' equal", for the inequalities that pervade our society are in many cases unrecognisable. "I will not hire you because you are gay" is rank discrimination. "I will not hire you because you hold socio-political views that could undermine the humanistic goals of our organisation" is also discrimination, but it's less rank. If you put up a road closed sign, the motorist will find another route. He will not drive home. The only way to stop him reaching his intended destination is to get him to change his mind about where it is he wants to drive to.
"Deplore" is an interesting word. It means to lament or express grief over past events. It expresses regret over them, in this case acts of violence. But how much does deploring something mean you would take positive action to prevent such acts? What if it lay in your hands to do or not do the act in question? The focus thereby shifts from passive deploring of violence to your own personal power, or otherwise, to obviate their occurrence. I'll be plain, I also deplore violence, but in doing that I cannot in the same breath condone it. Not ever. If the mental anguish through which a conscientious objector is put when challenged on his refusal to raise a firearm against his fellow man were followed to its logical conclusion, there would be no war in which he was called up to raise such a firearm.
Mr Thompson had headed up his company for five years, about that. He stood as a figurehead of the corporation and he unquestionably benefited in his post. In other languages, a corporation like that is in a legal form that sounds strange: they are called "nameless companies". Clearly, they have a name, so what "nameless" refers to is the fact they are not named for their founder. But in UHC's case, would you have heard of Mr Thompson if he had not been slain on a New York sidewalk? Ever? How many CEO's of any company can you name off the top of your head? In truth, they're not hard to find: they're listed in the companies register. But they can be hard to find physically: many list their addresses as the company head office. It's not actually the purpose f the companies register, which is about openness and access to information. Hm. Anyway, where they actually live is a closely held secret. And knowing their movements likewise. Not impossible, but you'd need to do some research. To know that that man will be in that place at that time on that day. Day of the Jackal stuff. Maybe Mr Thompson had an affair and was killed by a jealous husband? Maybe the wildcard who killed him was a hired gun? There are more parties with beefs agains insurers than just disgruntled policyholders. Please take a number.
Nonetheless, I don't hold with insurance. It became vogue in the 1970s to hold corporations liable for the negligence of their workers (instead of the - penniless - workers). Corporations can afford to pay for insurance better than workers can pay compensation claims. It's tempting to conclude that, thereby, the corporation bears the brunt of the loss caused by their staff, but they don't. They add the premium in as a cost of doing business, so it's the company's customers who pay for their workers' negligence. But that's all right, at least the worker doesn't need to pay. Well, not all of it. Some of it. Because the insurance pay-out will up the premiums, and the worker is a consumer of insurance and of his company's goods or services, so they pay a bit more for being negligent. But it's the same for everyone, and that's less all right. Why should I pay for insurance written for another company by an insurer? Or for a pay-out to someone who incurs loss due to the company's worker's negligence? But I do. Because the premiums flow into the big pool known as the economy, and premium and pay-out together form a burden on that economy, so I pay.
But, hold on for a second, tell me, what again is the concept of insurance? Insurance is not, as some believe, a variant of the game of bingo. No, insurance is where a group of people agree that, if any one of them suffers a loss, the rest of them will stump up a fair share of the loss. Insurance as such does not exist among the Amish communities: if one of them suffers loss, the others apply the principle directly, not through an insurer. But we non-Amish use insurance companies (because we don't know each other: we "pool our risks"). But what happens if there is no loss? Well, if there is no loss, there is no pay-out. The insurer keeps the premiums, however, because it bore the risk of the risk. The risk of bearing a risk is in some degree nonsensical, but that's how it works. The problem with that is that it gets so nice for directors to have a surplus at the end of the year that they in fact don't pool risk, they pool risk plus an excess to provide for nice things. They build their profit into the premium and that is contrary to the idea of insurance. As any Amish will tell you. And that is likely what got Mr Thompson killed. But I do deplore it.
Dear Graham Vincent: Your comments, re Thompson's anonymity, reminded me of Hannah Arendt's discussion of the banality of evil. Truly evil beings are not at all like stereotypical evil things. They do not partake of seances or pointed black hats or mystical mumbo jumbo or incense and idiotic rituals.
Truly evil things are mammoth corporate or juridical entities, such as titanic corporations or the State Of Nazi Germany. They wear the attire of mendacious, machinating merchants of death: Brooks Brothers suits. They do not talk of cutting out hearts or sucking their victims' blood; they speak antiseptically of final solutions or kill ratios or "search and destroy" (The U.S. Military in Vietnam). In the words of John Lennon, they live like "the folks on the hill" who have learned to "smile as they kill."
I'm glad you mentioned the topic of gun ownership numbers. There are far more guns privately owned in America than there are Americans. This is an ammosexual state. When people have had enough, there are lots of war weapons out there to make corrupt leaders nervous. Wouldn't it be wild if the conservative obsession with having weakened or non-existent gun safety laws be their own undoing.
I work in retail in Europe and a lady asked me the other day "Can you not ban from your store the people who voted for Brexit?" I don't think she was serious, but I don't think she'd thought about her implications. I said, "The Brexit vote was a secret ballot. How do you expect us to know who voted for what?"
When President Duterte (he's about to get served by an international court for precisely this) declared open season on drug dealers in the Philippines, he effectively declared open season on anyone you have a grudge against, since it is far easier to plant drugs on a dead corpse than on a living human being. Announcing a one million peso bounty for police officers only added fuel to the fire. 30,000 people were shot dead under the Duterte anti-drugs policy. And they still have a drugs issue.
Another commenter below puts this in somewhat more offensive terms (hence, perhaps, their handle). I'm here from a comment you up on my own piece, and I note your "self-defence" position. If someone wants to kill you, you will kill them.
But, did Mangioni have a self-defence defence to raise? Can you self-defend someone else? Was Robin Hood a dangerous vigilante? The Mennonites set an example that I suspect is rarely followed, backed by the story of Dirk Willems, a 16th century Dutchman: https://endlesschain.substack.com/p/on-conscientious-objection.
In terms of conscientious objection, the question is whether a pacifist would raise a firearm against anyone, even if he is the enemy. You can't test for that. You can't imagine what you would do. You'd need to be in the situation, and to see what you do do. And that could be traumatic. One can advocate for what one believes the morals tell you to do, and for whether the law provides an adequate response. But actually predicting what you yourself would do - if you know with certainty, well done.
On Vietnam, I'd not heard this thing about oil before - if it's so, it will undoubtedly have been a factor: countries that pose no direct material benefit are those in which the CIA engineers a coup; with oil wells, the US sends its own military in.
It was not our resisitance, in whichever form, that brought an end to the Vietnam War: it was the discovery that there was NO offshore oil along the coast of Vietnam, and thus the war was not PROFITABLE! Then the politicians used our resistance as an alibi to divest themselves of an adventure which no longer brought in any money.
You are wrong. Even if it’s as simple as two wrongs not making a right. Your comment about the state using violence so this makes this ok essentially excuses any number of ideologically purified by those like you on the street. Your mentality is like those in the French Revolution and your rationalization is no different than any murderous terrorist group. It’s repugnant and simply wrong.
Staying alive often entails doing repugnant things. Since you condemn murder when committed by an invidividual who, since he is an individual, will usually kill only a relatively small number of people (And I certainly don't like or belive in or cherish killing) will you condemn murder when it is committed by the state.
You exercise your rhetoric forcefully, and that is a rhetoric to the converted. It does not, regardless of its intention, convince the sceptic, I venture to say. However, I'm sceptical enough about sceptics to be able to cite source and authority for most of what you say (I confess, I had to look up Gomer Pyle).
I'm a "what iffer". So, when I would ask "How did the State of Israel get founded?", I would ask, "How did any state get founded?" Because the answer is, aside from details, the same. Through threat of force, machination and, if threat be not enough alone, the exercise of force. The logic behind your challenge to authority to "drop their weapons if we drop ours" has cogency: it's what the Western gunman says to the sheriff. But, instead, our sheriff retorts that they can be trusted, so they don't need to drop their guns. That may be so, but they're not trusted by the gunman a quo. There is little controversy about whether the forces of law and order maintain law and order. The controversy is about whose law and whose order they maintain, and in whose favour.
Violence and the threat of violence are no longer exercised "irrespective of who you are". The mantra of "irrespective of who you are" has somewhat been lost over the past quarter century. The debate about "all men are created equal" has focused on race and sexism. But even a community entirely of one race and one sex is today treated unequally by many providers of essential services and government itself. It is this mantra (of equality) that lies central to the whole American project, and which has so easily been lost sight of in the name, ironically enough, of "freedom": it was previously as follows - MY freedom means my ability to do all that is lawful within my own domain; yours is to not interfere with that until I do wrong at law. Now it has become: YOUR freedom is to engage in any act you deem meet and proper to advance your own prosperity, and as long as it does not palpably and recognisably impact on me, I will acquiesce in it."
We might rewrite that constitutional document to read "All men are created 'recognisably' equal", for the inequalities that pervade our society are in many cases unrecognisable. "I will not hire you because you are gay" is rank discrimination. "I will not hire you because you hold socio-political views that could undermine the humanistic goals of our organisation" is also discrimination, but it's less rank. If you put up a road closed sign, the motorist will find another route. He will not drive home. The only way to stop him reaching his intended destination is to get him to change his mind about where it is he wants to drive to.
"Deplore" is an interesting word. It means to lament or express grief over past events. It expresses regret over them, in this case acts of violence. But how much does deploring something mean you would take positive action to prevent such acts? What if it lay in your hands to do or not do the act in question? The focus thereby shifts from passive deploring of violence to your own personal power, or otherwise, to obviate their occurrence. I'll be plain, I also deplore violence, but in doing that I cannot in the same breath condone it. Not ever. If the mental anguish through which a conscientious objector is put when challenged on his refusal to raise a firearm against his fellow man were followed to its logical conclusion, there would be no war in which he was called up to raise such a firearm.
Mr Thompson had headed up his company for five years, about that. He stood as a figurehead of the corporation and he unquestionably benefited in his post. In other languages, a corporation like that is in a legal form that sounds strange: they are called "nameless companies". Clearly, they have a name, so what "nameless" refers to is the fact they are not named for their founder. But in UHC's case, would you have heard of Mr Thompson if he had not been slain on a New York sidewalk? Ever? How many CEO's of any company can you name off the top of your head? In truth, they're not hard to find: they're listed in the companies register. But they can be hard to find physically: many list their addresses as the company head office. It's not actually the purpose f the companies register, which is about openness and access to information. Hm. Anyway, where they actually live is a closely held secret. And knowing their movements likewise. Not impossible, but you'd need to do some research. To know that that man will be in that place at that time on that day. Day of the Jackal stuff. Maybe Mr Thompson had an affair and was killed by a jealous husband? Maybe the wildcard who killed him was a hired gun? There are more parties with beefs agains insurers than just disgruntled policyholders. Please take a number.
Nonetheless, I don't hold with insurance. It became vogue in the 1970s to hold corporations liable for the negligence of their workers (instead of the - penniless - workers). Corporations can afford to pay for insurance better than workers can pay compensation claims. It's tempting to conclude that, thereby, the corporation bears the brunt of the loss caused by their staff, but they don't. They add the premium in as a cost of doing business, so it's the company's customers who pay for their workers' negligence. But that's all right, at least the worker doesn't need to pay. Well, not all of it. Some of it. Because the insurance pay-out will up the premiums, and the worker is a consumer of insurance and of his company's goods or services, so they pay a bit more for being negligent. But it's the same for everyone, and that's less all right. Why should I pay for insurance written for another company by an insurer? Or for a pay-out to someone who incurs loss due to the company's worker's negligence? But I do. Because the premiums flow into the big pool known as the economy, and premium and pay-out together form a burden on that economy, so I pay.
But, hold on for a second, tell me, what again is the concept of insurance? Insurance is not, as some believe, a variant of the game of bingo. No, insurance is where a group of people agree that, if any one of them suffers a loss, the rest of them will stump up a fair share of the loss. Insurance as such does not exist among the Amish communities: if one of them suffers loss, the others apply the principle directly, not through an insurer. But we non-Amish use insurance companies (because we don't know each other: we "pool our risks"). But what happens if there is no loss? Well, if there is no loss, there is no pay-out. The insurer keeps the premiums, however, because it bore the risk of the risk. The risk of bearing a risk is in some degree nonsensical, but that's how it works. The problem with that is that it gets so nice for directors to have a surplus at the end of the year that they in fact don't pool risk, they pool risk plus an excess to provide for nice things. They build their profit into the premium and that is contrary to the idea of insurance. As any Amish will tell you. And that is likely what got Mr Thompson killed. But I do deplore it.
Dear Graham Vincent: Your comments, re Thompson's anonymity, reminded me of Hannah Arendt's discussion of the banality of evil. Truly evil beings are not at all like stereotypical evil things. They do not partake of seances or pointed black hats or mystical mumbo jumbo or incense and idiotic rituals.
Truly evil things are mammoth corporate or juridical entities, such as titanic corporations or the State Of Nazi Germany. They wear the attire of mendacious, machinating merchants of death: Brooks Brothers suits. They do not talk of cutting out hearts or sucking their victims' blood; they speak antiseptically of final solutions or kill ratios or "search and destroy" (The U.S. Military in Vietnam). In the words of John Lennon, they live like "the folks on the hill" who have learned to "smile as they kill."
I'm glad you mentioned the topic of gun ownership numbers. There are far more guns privately owned in America than there are Americans. This is an ammosexual state. When people have had enough, there are lots of war weapons out there to make corrupt leaders nervous. Wouldn't it be wild if the conservative obsession with having weakened or non-existent gun safety laws be their own undoing.
Wild is the word.
I work in retail in Europe and a lady asked me the other day "Can you not ban from your store the people who voted for Brexit?" I don't think she was serious, but I don't think she'd thought about her implications. I said, "The Brexit vote was a secret ballot. How do you expect us to know who voted for what?"
When President Duterte (he's about to get served by an international court for precisely this) declared open season on drug dealers in the Philippines, he effectively declared open season on anyone you have a grudge against, since it is far easier to plant drugs on a dead corpse than on a living human being. Announcing a one million peso bounty for police officers only added fuel to the fire. 30,000 people were shot dead under the Duterte anti-drugs policy. And they still have a drugs issue.