You know, you're right. Saudi Arabia reports a zero muder rate. As in nobody is ever murdered there. And Libya doesn't have enought murders to even bother keeping the statistics. I'm going to have rethink my positions concerning the morality of Libya and Saudi Arabia. Check welfare expenditures per capita. Or church donations. Or Red Cross fundraisng statistics.
This is a simple assertion without evidence to back it up. Again, if you're talking about representatives of a political system then I agree. If you expect me to believe that individual citizens' moral systems proceed in lock step from the moral system embodied by their political system, then you need to back this up. Even if you're saying that, generally speaking, citizens of democracies are more moral than citizens of non-democratic states, the argument you're making is at least problematic. Political systems are but one in a whole range of factors that can influence something like a person’s moral values and it’s simple-minded to assume that a corrupt gov’t will inevitably breed only corruption in its citizens. For example: There was some suggestion that citizens of form soviet countries were somehow less moral than citizens of democracies, for example. Until one at least starts by accounting for the effects of variables like the extreme poverty that pervades these systems and the continuing government corruption that has flooded the post soviet vacuum, I don’t think that position, taken about former soviet citizens in general, is remotely supportable. What about a place like Iran? I think most of us on this board would agree that the theocratic state in place there is repressive in the extreme, particular in the cases of rights for women and non-Muslims. However, I challenge anybody to give me a point-by-point comparison of the average Iranian citizen compared to the average American, with a convincing argument that the Americans are more “moral.”
You're attributing to me a vocabulary of absolutes ("in lock step" "only") which I do not use. Great example. The following are the top 11 countries in the world by murder rate. Six are former territories of the USSR: 1. Colombia 0.65 per 1000 people 2. South Africa 0.5 per 1000 people 3. Jamaica 0.33 per 1000 people 4. Venezuela 0.33 per 1000 people 5. Russia 0.2 per 1000 people 6. Mexico 0.13 per 1000 people 7. Lithuania 0.1 per 1000 people 8. Estonia 0.1 per 1000 people 9. Latvia 0.1 per 1000 people 10. Belarus 0.1 per 1000 people 11. Ukraine 0.09 per 1000 people [/B][/QUOTE] I don't know enough about the average Iranian citizen to comment.
There's no question that the murder rate is higher in the USA than many non-democratic countries. You're really suggesting it's merely a question of reporting? This would be more a function of wealth than anything else.
Let's go back to the story at the beginning. Say there were stories about the Iranian clerics ordering that the wives of political dissidents be decapitated. Say the Iranian citizenry tolerated that as an expected cost of opposing the government. Americans who find that concept horrifying would be more moral. Until I see the head of Rosalynn Carter on a plate, the facts are self-authenticating.
No, I'm suggesting your attempt to cherrypick my theory using non-existent crime statistics of an absolute dicatorship is ridiculous and, ultimately, meaningless.
Also, you and bunga are suggesting that presence or absence of wealth is not a function of the morality of a political system. A system that leaves its citizens in poverty is not a moral one.
How do you separate this choice (“we're backing the Ayahtollah”) from the history of the country preceding it? The Shah was no picnic. Also, it’s not correct to assume that Iranians were not conflicted about it: there were other political factions resisting the Shah alongside the hard-line clerics and the clerics won out as much because they were more organized than the others. Finally, there is active resistance to the theocracy (anybody listen to NPR this morning) precisely because of the sort of atrocities you mention. Should Iranians get morality extra credit for risking their lives to stand up against a threat Americans of this generation have never faced?
Yes. Iran has always seemed to me the most moral of the Middle East muslim countries. I only know this from watching their movies.
what about a system that uses it's military and economic might to force a weaker country into accepting economic measures that leave it's citizens in poverty?
I understand what you're getting at and my tagteam partner John Galt has already addressed this in a previous post. But I don't know of an instance where the U.S. has forced another country into poverty. Now the U.S. has exploited plenty of countries already compromised by poverty.
my point is you can't determine morality based on the wealth or poverty of citizens. whether the regime is a democratic or an authoritarian one, the economic elites will pursue their economic interests, and if they're given a voice in policy making we can expect that those policies will reflect their pursuits. when we pressured columbia to lift its' wheat subsidies, only to be flooded with subsidized american wheat, the results were predictable. now, either there is a moral objection i'm not aware of which states that brown people shouldn't grow wheat, or i'm left to suspect that the little group called american agribusiness had something to do with it. as a side note, there are plenty of poor people in the usa.
Poverty is relative. If everybody's income is 59 cents a month, poverty does not exist. It's silly to equate morality with wealth.
Actually, the part you quoted (“generally speaking”) was the less absolutist option I offered deliberately in order to avoid pinning something on you I didn’t actually think you were suggesting. How about my actual point, though: the connection between the morality of a political system and the citizens of that system is more complex than you are arguing, especially when you make your argument using words like “define” to characterize that connection? This is where I do think you need to address the “only” I used, because there is evidence to suggest that immoral political systems produce highly moral people. In other words, it’s not possible to predict the morality of the citizenry by looking only at a political system. Nor is it safe to assume that an immoral political system only influences its citizens toward immorality (resistance, rebellion, weapons of the weak, etc.) Based on what I’ve read, I think these “only’s” can be attributed to you. To what extent is the homicide rate in ex-soviet countries attributable to the morality of their citizens rather than to other factors? To what extent does the higher homicide rate in the US, as compared to European democracies, indicate a lesser morality on the part of American citizens as compared to the citizens of those countries? I think for either of us to comment, we’d have to start getting pretty explicit about what we mean by “morality.” See also my response to John Galt. 1. No I am not. I'm suggesting that the presence or absence of altruistic spending by citizens depends on more than things than morality. Certainly, a despotic regime that hords it's county's wealth while citizens suffer poverty is morally reprehensible, both absolutely and when compared to systems like ours. 2. Agreed. But only because you’re talking about the morality of systems rather than citizens. To muddy things a little, this point pulls us directly into a discussion of whether or not even a despotic (let’s say) African ruler can be held entirely accountable for the poverty endured by the citizens of his country, when the world system does so much to structure the economies of countries like his. Which leads us further: How moral can Americans claim to be when they use such a disproportionately high level of world resources, while inflicting upon the rest of the world such a disproportionately high level of pollutants, unsafe products, etc.? Again how are we going to define morality? Because I think this stuff really does have be included along with all the good our system (Yoo Hoo, Conservative posters! Please take note of the phrase immediately preceding this parenthesis.) does if we are going to start judging like this.
You're getting off track to the point of threadjacking, so let's recap: Post one of this thread contains an Op-Ed piece positing that the U.S. may have to commit atrocities to combat atrocious behavior of Baathists and terrorists in Iraq. The example given was the decapitation of the wife of a political dissident in front of her children and mother-in-law. Joe Pak then posited that the U.S. already commits these types of acts and is not morally superior to the Baathists, but deludes itself into thinking it is. Debate ensued. Your choices are: 1. Yes, our democratic principles and rule of law raise us as a people above the types of acts described in the article; or 2. No, the U.S. is equally as capable of beheading wives for political gain as is any other country. If you choose No. 1, you move to the next step of deciding whether the Iraq situation calls for the temporary sacrifice of our principles. If you choose No. 2, there is no reason for our troops not to engage in the behavior described, and the question is only whether we should be subversive or open about it. This is not a debate about capitalism, Iranian history, Gandhi, or the meaning of goodness. It's about our tactics in Iraq.
Gringo, It is interesting watching your intelligent and thoughtful defense of an essentially indefensible position, but nonetheless, you're shovelling it bigtime... Do you have any evidence to back up these huge (and wrong) claims? Here's mine: I lived in a decidedly undemocratic country for two years: Morocco. The populace was largely poor, unfree, uneducated, and devoutly religious. They were also much more "moral" by any defintion of the term, than the average American. You break morality down into two categories: 1) refraining from hurting others 2) actively helping others On both accounts, I saw much more evidence of this in the Moroccan people than I do in Americans. And I'm sure statistics would bear that out. - Re: hurting others--the society is remarkably free of violent crime, comparatively speaking. I lived in pretty much the poorest section of the medina, the old part of the city of Rabat. Many times, I arrived home from travelling by train/bus and had to walk for 45 through alleys and slums to get to my home, often at 2 or 3 in the morning, passing groups of young Moroccan punks along the way. Mind you, I'd be wearing my Patagonia fleece, lugging a huge hiking pack--pretty much screaming: "I'm a rich American and you're not!" Generally speaking, violent crime among the populace is certainly relatively rare compared to America. Bunga's point about immoral societies producing more moral people seems to hold in this case. -Re: helping others--I have no doubt that the average Moroccan gives to/assists the poor much more than the average American. They take that pillar of Islam quite seriously, and I often witnessed people from the lower classes bringing huge bowls of food to mosques to feed people from the even lower classes. I also witnessed "super poor" people coming around to my friend's houses, who were merely "quite poor." And the "quite poor" would always take them aside and force a little cash into their hands on the sly. Now, I don't want to be misinterpreted as saying that an Islamic system is itself more moral than a democractic one. But I think bunga is onto an important and interesting point about immoral systems perhaps producing more moral citizens. I think this is borne out by history: surely most empires have been more moral systems for their own citizens than contemporary civilizations, and yet moral decay has been a consistent feature of empires through the ages. Power and success lead to complacency, decadence, pride, and vanity. This last point may be overstated to an extent, but there's the ring of truth to it.
Obviously factors such as art, philosophy, religion, and ethnicity influence the morality of a populace and the morality of the political system. But the political system is the 800-pound gorilla. Catholicism, for example, did not choose democracy- democarcy forced Catholicism's hand. Of course highly moral people are produced within immoral political systems. It happens all the time. I thought it was understood that I'm speaking in generalities. Of course it is. You can't predict the morality of individual citizens, but you can predict the general morality of the citizenry. I've never used "only" in my argument, which I why I'm confused as to why you keep on attributing it to me in yours. When is homicide not immoral? I think the high homicide rate in America reflects badly on American morality. Don't confuse the ruler with the system. I don't know how much a ruler as opposed to a colonial power can be blamed for a nation's poverty unless we pick a specific nation and I reserach it. That's an entirely different argument. America can claim to be a more moral nation than a country it has exploited, if that's what you mean. I've already posted how I define personal morality and morality of a system.
The debate has clearly ranged a lot farther than that, based on GT's position re: the relationship between political systems and the morality of citizens. I joined after the genie had left the bottle. You want to put it back in, that's up to you, but that's got little to do with the points I was making, rather than the other way round.
Sure you can. Overwhelming statistical evidence says the poorer the populace, the higher the rates of crime and "incidents" generally associated with immorality. I must not be communicating very well, because I can't understand the strident objections to something so obvious.
Colin Powell's great contribution to America is his doctrine, if you can't solve a problem, make it larger. At first, it makes no sense, but when you apply it to real situations, it works over and over and over again. JoPa and his allies are using the Powell Doctrine. They can't really win this argument, which they engage in knee-jerkedly. So they continually attempt to enlarge the issue. So long as we keep it on track, we're right and we're winning the argument.
In the hiearchy of types of evidence, sure, anecdotal is not high. But when compared to your "no evidence," I'd say it's at least a helpful addition to the subject!
Aside from the rash of statistics and reports regarding murder, torture, rape, famine, mass disease, orphans, etc. prevalent in non-democratic countries, I'm not sure how much more evidence you guys need. I guess I could talk about my own half dozen years traipsing along Latin America's yellow brick road, but I was too drunk to remember the bad parts.