wait a minute...if we're still talking within the context of morality in relation to a political system, i think there are ample examples of immoral behaviour in democratic sociaties. of course poverty will contribute to theft, robbery, drug dealing, and all sorts of street crimes. that's just as true in the middle east as it is in chicago's west side or l.a.'s inglewood. we also know of instances of gross immorality carried out by our democratic government and tolerated by our citizens. i mean, unless you're axis alex, you can't tell me that saturating the south vietnamese country side with chemical weapons, the effects of which carry on to this day, wasn't immoral. or let's go back to the example of colombia. sure, you could consider purse snatching in the streets of medellin an immoral incident. what about the democratic government that used it's power to concieously destroy the country's ability to sustain itself agriculturally, and left the former wheat growers to either cultivate coca leaves, work for sub-standard wages at the coca cola palnt,facing u.s. sponsored death squads if they try to collectively negotiate a better wage, or snatch purses in some shanty town. these aren't just some unforseen consequences. they're rational, economic policies that enrich some beyond belief, while empoverishing entire populations. that's immoral in my book.
You said "A system that leaves its citizens in poverty is not a moral one." I said, it depends on comparing to whom. If everyone in the system is poor, then poverty doesn't exist because there is no difference among its citizens. By the way, the current system in US leaves some of its citizens in poverty, is it then, according to your definition above, immoral?
Is this like your jaw literally dropping to the floor? People use such a mix of words these days. I don't know, but "decidedly undemocratic" seems like one of those phrases that drives the word detective crazy!
David Brooks must be happy!! http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A6116-2003Nov5.html Apparently, we're holding as hostages, relatives of people we're after. Thanks George.
Rather than do my usual obsessive point-by-point thing with your last response to me, let me try this. If one wants to argue that the soldiers of a democracy are less likely to engage in atrocities than the soldiers of a less morally defensible regime, it’s not necessary to compare the morality of the citizens of either regime. Reference to the nature of the political systems in question is all that’s necessary. The soldiers of a democracy are constrained by the nature of that political system, because they are more directly guided by the will of the people at home, who are, not incidentally, not experiencing combat conditions and therefore less subject to its morally corrosive effects. Soldiers of a democracy are also less likely to be put the service of the specific interests of a despot. They are also more likely to be held accountable for war crimes should they commit them. All because they belong to a military force that emanates from a democratic system. Full stop. What I’ve just written provides no basis for reflecting on the morality of the average citizenry. It allows us to answer the opening question of this thread without putting ourselves in the extraordinary (and I’m being nice) position of saying that the citizens of a despotic regime are morally culpable because they suffer the oppression of a tyrant or of saying that the victims of poverty are morally culpable because they suffer the deleterious effects of poverty. If anybody wants to make a case for this, then they are going to have to show a direct causal connection between the political structure of a state and the moralities the individuals of that state. They are also going to have to show how differential murder rates are a reflection of differences in morality, rather than the presence or absence of such factors as access to firearms, local politics, poor distribution of wealth, inequalities, and other such extraordinary motivational factors. In case you’re wondering: yes, a person is responsible for his or her choices. Yes, we can make inferences about the morality of a person based on her or his choices. However, when the options available to two populations are shaped differently by such factors as politics and poverty, then a comparison of the moralities of those populations is insupportable. Relativism applies here precisely because the conditions are so different. To put it another way, if you took the citizenry of Ann Arbor, Michigan or Oslo, Norway, or Sweethaven, Imaginaryland and dropped them into the political and social environment faced by Iraqis or Palestinians, I doubt very much if the overall moral profile would differ. Terrible conditions consistently confront people with terrible options. Unfortunately, relatively few of us, regardless of our cultures, are capable of rising above this.
You've just connected the moarlity of the system to the morality of the people to the morality of the soldier. So we can agree that in a democracy, the morality of the system is reflected in the citizenry. Our disagreement then lies in how true this is in a non-democratic system. You're expanding the boundaries of the argument. Never once have I claimed that the citizens of a third world country are morally culpable for the poverty they found themselves in. I don't believe in original sin. But poverty does have a negative effect on a people's morality. Crime rates and poverty levels are directly proportional. There is a mountain of statistical evidence to back this up. I do think the citizenry, to various degrees, can be culpable for their leader. This is a more complicated relationship, but no dictator can rule without a substantial degree of collaboration by the citizenry. Would a 60 country comparison of crime rates between democracies and non-democracies suffice? This may be the keystone of our disagreement. You want to measure morality seperate from such things as politics and distribution of wealth. My argument is that you can't. That morality is defined (or "heavily influenced," so as not to be so absolutist) by these factors of a political system. My definition of morality is not subject to relativism. I'm claiming that homicide, rape, political and economic corruption,and torture are always immoral. That their are no circumstances when this is not true. It would differ drastically at first. Then as the years wore on, the political system would slowly mold and change the morality of the citizenry of Ann Arbor.
If you were to ask me, I'd claim that bungadiri and Gringo Tex just reconciled their views. I know I agree with both of your last posts.
Since anecdotal evidence is the best evidence... when I met my wife (well, she wasn't my wife then, but you get the point), she was very distrustful of gvt. workers, because she came from a place where the gvt. is a kleptocracy. After 7-8 years here, she is more trusting, but not as trusting as I am.
1. Ummmmm…to be precise what I did was connected the morality of the system to the range of morally inflected options a soldier representing that system is presented with. I also think that the nature of the system is more important than the culture of the citizenry you plug into it. 2. No actually, I think we’d agree on that, too. See, I think we do have a serious disagreement here and it’s based on how we understand what drives these crime rates. I think there are factors that are essentially amoral (or “non-moral”) that dramatically affect these things because they increase the frequency with which people are placed in harms way for moral failure. This is why it sounds to me like you’re blaming the victim when you say higher crime rates among the poor reflect a lesser morality of the poor. I understand that you are saying this is just one more unfortunate consequence of poverty, but I still think you are putting morality on the wrong side of a causal equation. Agreed. Probably not, given my response above (“See, I think…”) but I’m probably willing to spare this thread my response to it whether you post it or not. You can even do a victory dance if you do, as long as it doesn’t involve turbo-mooning. Agreed. We do disagree here. I had a single-spaced-two-fucking-page-and-counting post going all the way back to social evolutionists like Morgan, Tyler, and Spencer (whom I dug out of boxes in my basement) and I was heading for Boas, Weber, and Marx next. God only knows where I would have stopped. If you ever meet my wife, thank her, because whether I’m right or you are it wouldn’t have been pleasant for either of us. But I agree with this, which is what I meant when I differentiated the individual, from the group, from the systemic and I think relativism kicks in past the individual level. I think all but a very few personal moralities have a failure point, where a person can be driven to do something he or she knows is wrong. I think some systems put greater pressure on individuals than others. I think that until you account for these different pressures, then you cannot even begin to validly compare the aggregate moralities of the populations living in the different systems. Yep. Except my asshole neighbor across the street would laying pipe bombs inside of 48 hrs.