When is violence against the government justified?

[classical_hero]

Violence is wrong.

Violence solved the Nazi problem we once had.

[DaniCatBurger]

Violence solved the Nazi problem we once had.

Did it do that?

[Phier]

Did it do that?

Yes, it did.

[DaniCatBurger]

Yes, it did.

You are right seen from an optimistic point of view but names can change.

Quoting a bit free Lévinas: "Reason and language remain exterior in relation to the violence as act."*

*E. Lévinas, Ethique et esprit, Difficile liberté p. 21.
"Raison et langage sont extérieurs à la violence."

[Phier]

You are right seen from an optimistic point of view but names can change.

Quoting a bit free Lévinas: "Reason and language remain exterior in relation to the violence as act."*

*E. Lévinas, Ethique et esprit, Difficile liberté p. 21.
"Raison et langage sont extérieurs à la violence."

Polio is still out there too, but its not really the problem it once was. Saying war didn't end the Nazism problem is like saying vaccines didn't end the Polio problem.

[ABH2]

Violence is wrong.

Government is violence. It is force. Every tax, every regulator or law is backed up by the threat of violence. If you don't comply, the state has a lot of people with guns who will make you do so. This is as true in a democracy as it is in other form of government. I don't agree with the statement that all violence is wrong. I do think that all initiatory violence, aggression, or force used against another is wrong no matter who is doing it.

[DaniCatBurger]

Polio is still out there too, but its not really the problem it once was. Saying war didn't end the Nazism problem is like saying vaccines didn't end the Polio problem.

We have Polio under control because we have learnt that vaccinating children was an efficient measure. How efficient are our tools to control self-imposed irrational, hollow and stupid lies? It is an illusion to think we can delegate individual responsibility.

Government is violence. It is force. Every tax, every regulator or law is backed up by the threat of violence. If you don't comply, the state has a lot of people with guns who will make you do so. This is as true in a democracy as it is in other form of government. I don't agree with the statement that all violence is wrong. I do think that all initiatory violence, aggression, or force used against another is wrong no matter who is doing it.

We empower and separate the powers to prevent that forces translate into violence too often. Using force can be legitimate to get violence under control but it requires that the power of judgment remains within the limits of the law. The responsibility of the individual not to give in to self-imposed irrational, hollow and stupid lies describes the condition behind the power of judgment, to say so.

[Phier]

We have Polio under control because we have learnt that vaccinating children was an efficient measure. How efficient are our tools to control self-imposed irrational, hollow and stupid lies? It is an illusion to think we can delegate individual responsibility.

Its hard to control what people think, but what they can do is less hard. Those bad ideas are controlled by threat of violence. When that threat no longer works, because of desperation, desire, or mental imbalance then you see bad things happen like the OKC bombing.

We empower and separate the powers to prevent that forces translate into violence too often. Using force can be legitimate to get violence under control but it requires that the power of judgment remains within the limits of the law. The responsibility of the individual not to give in to self-imposed irrational, hollow and stupid lies describes the condition behind the power of judgment, to say so.

Law is just paper. Have some place like London go without food for three days and tell me about how well the law works.

[DaniCatBurger]

My expectation would be that we are all that reasonable that we recognize that violence is not seen as a possibility to express requests or disagreement. I am aware that reality for many people is far away from a Kantian expectation of a world of moral laws.

[Phier]

My expectation would be that we are all that reasonable that we recognize that violence is not seen as a possibility to express requests or disagreement. I am aware that reality for many people is far away from a Kantian expectation of a world of moral laws.

So your expectations are against what you know reality is?

[DaniCatBurger]

So your expectations are against what you know reality is?

"I am aware" and "I know" is different in many respects. I am a believer in the law and the answer of the law on violence is force but force won't be forceful enough to help the moral law. There are people who have no access to books. I can't force people to read the Critic of Pure Reason or join a Kant seminary or make them read expressionist lyrics from before 1920. I simply can't do it because I would just cause laughter.

[kesa82]

Polio is still out there too, but its not really the problem it once was. Saying war didn't end the Nazism problem is like saying vaccines didn't end the Polio problem.

And this seems to be like saying that Hitler was going to live forever , or that band wagon- riding opportunists were not going to overwhelm and undermine the diehard true-believing Alter Kampfer , or that demographics like ; by the spring of 1942 non-Germans outnumbered Germans in the German army , would not play out as can be predicted without being psychic.
It seems to be like saying the Nazis really were Aryan supermen.

No, I don't figure that is what you are saying.

Russia is a really crappy place to live , so the Russians brag about their military power , and are utterly impervious to the suggestion that maybe Stalin and Mao winning the war was no better than Hitler and Mussolini winning the war, and perhaps even worse.
and the crappier a place it becomes , the more they brag about their jet fighters, the more they insist the crappy neighborhood is absolutely necessary.

the same thing seems to be happening in the United States, only maybe even worse because it used to be a nice place to live. it must be a hard pill to swallow to think you pissed away paradise for the sake of tanks and battleships that have long since rusted away or been scrapped.

Law is just paper. Have some place like London go without food for three days and tell me about how well the law works.

This did happen in North Korea. And Koreans pulled together and weathered the storm.
I will not argue though that this was because the North Korean regime , the North Korean Army, or their concentration camps, are so estimable.
But because Korean culture --- a culture that pre-dates the North Korean regime --- is remarkably self-effacing, self-sacrificing, restrained and cohesive.

If three days with empty grocery store shelves would induce a Mad Max scenario it's because your culture is weak and it basically sucks.
And , yes, law can do nothing about that, but neither can guns do anything about that.

[Phier]

And this seems to be like saying that Hitler was going to live forever , or that band wagon- riding opportunists were not going to overwhelm and undermine the diehard true-believing Alter Kampfer , or that demographics like ; by the spring of 1942 non-Germans outnumbered Germans in the German army , would not play out as can be predicted without being psychic.
It seems to be like saying the Nazis really were Aryan supermen.

No, I don't figure that is what you are saying.

Russia is a really crappy place to live , so the Russians brag about their military power , and are utterly impervious to the suggestion that maybe Stalin and Mao winning the war was no better than Hitler and Mussolini winning the war, and perhaps even worse.
and the crappier a place it becomes , the more they brag about their jet fighters, the more they insist the crappy neighborhood is absolutely necessary.

the same thing seems to be happening in the United States, only maybe even worse because it used to be a nice place to live. it must be a hard pill to swallow to think you pissed away paradise for the sake of tanks and battleships that have long since rusted away or been scrapped.



This did happen in North Korea. And Koreans pulled together and weathered the storm.
I will not argue though that this was because the North Korean regime , the North Korean Army, or their concentration camps, are so estimable.
But because Korean culture --- a culture that pre-dates the North Korean regime --- is remarkably self-effacing, self-sacrificing, restrained and cohesive.

If three days with empty grocery store shelves would induce a Mad Max scenario it's because your culture is weak and it basically sucks.
And , yes, law can do nothing about that, but neither can guns do anything about that.

I won't even comment on the Nazi stuff, but I'll get to the Korean stuff very simply.

You say it has nothing to do with the North Korean government...

Well here ya go...



Thats in South Korea.

In a city like London, all hell would break lose. Its a very diverse city, it would become "us vrs them" very quickly. I'm not picking on London though, just about every major US city would have the same issue.

[kesa82]

I'll get to the Korean stuff very simply.

that would have been a good zinger , if that was the intention, .......except I have close family in South Korea.

So , yeah, I'm actually aware that democracy ( sort of ) , and a booming economy , doesn't necessarily equate to Disneyland ( in South Korea ) .
Like, supposedly ( the statistical methods are baring of some question ) , the South Korean government killed more South Korean citizens , deliberately, in the Korean war than The North Koreans did.
And that regimes behavior isn't but incrementally better now.

As for North Korea ---

You say it has nothing to do with the North Korean government...

Admittedly you got me here ! My narrative there was quite grossly simplistic and deliberately avoided some sticky and embarrassing caveats.

Like ---

Anyway ---

You say it has nothing to do with the North Korean government...

how you might possibly have completed that thought might be very interesting ?

which, dare I venture, is why you didn't complete it ?

Might you have said something like ;

Curiously , Communist regimes, though ostensibly extreme left-wing, often seem to wind up preserving and representing at least some staid values a lot better.
I'm not sure it's true, but I wouldn't be surprised if it were true, porn is the U.S.'s 3rd largest export.
In contrast, in North Korea, girls in bikinis draped over Chevrolets would be considered porn.
At best it makes for a rather boring environment. At worst, there is zero respect for free speech rights or freedom of information rights for ten year olds.
On the other hand, while I doubt your typical ten year old would go looking for porn regarding anal sex with cows, under these circumstances now prevailing in the west it's hard to imagine how a ten year old would avoid such exposure --except deliberately, which presupposes prior knowledge anyway , or by sheer luck, accidentally.
I dunno, maybe exposing kiddies to that sort of thing is good ? But let's just drop the nature of child welfare in the west - can of worms. ?

Or -

You like guns ? I would guess that in North Korea they have gun control on paper . Except , as I just indicated, I wouldn't know that, because circumstantially it's largely irrelevant even if true .
What circumstance renders it irrelevant?
North Korea puts a larger percentage of it's population in the army than any other state. So, gun control or no gun control, it's not uncommon to see some working class teenage girl riding the city bus with an AK-47. And she's not shooting up the bus with it. ?

Or ---

In North Korea even ditch-diggers are clean-cut ---if albeit shabby.
You don't see college graduates with bones through their noses and otherwise looking exactly like 17th century head-hunting cannibal aborigines , and whatever message that image is supposed to imply.
Perhaps behind closed doors it is super model call girls, Scottish Whiskey, and Harley Davidson's for the North Korean elite, but their public persona , at least, is , by western standards, lower middle class and modest at best.
Kim Ill Sung had his signature thousand dollar suits and Italian shoes , but he was the sole exception.
There are no decadent and opulent North Korean Kennedy's or Kardashian's flaunting it publicly and brazenly, even though the North Korean elite presumably has absolute power .
We know that the North Korean elite does not remain rooted in Pyongyang , hermetically sealed off from the prosaic and mundane reality of North Korea in the fashion of the Forbidden City or Versailles --- or western elites. They constantly tour the country , and it's a small country, which almost certainly means they come in contact repeatedly with the same crappy roads, the same power outages , the same generally lousy facilities as the common folk.
Nor can this, in the case of the elite, be chalked up to ignorance of alternatives.
For Common folk North Korea may indeed be the hermit kingdom.
But the elite unavoidably comes in contact with the outside world , the elite has spent years or even decades living in the outside world.
So, clearly, the North Korean elite deliberately tries to appear like down-at-heel school teachers, rather than trying to appear like caricatured Caligula and Nero.
An esthetic with some altruistic and transcending ( transcending solely and exclusively personal whim that is ) value , even if utterly false. ?

or -

Respectable women hitch-hike in North Korea, and /or go for strolls alone in the late evening, ( evil secret police and concentration camps apparently not withstanding ) and most don't wind up in dumpsters, not because North Korean propaganda says so, but because former residents and visitors tell us that's the case. ?



I dunno, were you gonna praise North Korea ( if however validly ) ?

It wouldn't hurt my feelings if you did , that , it seems to me, would serve my narrative better than yours.

I won't even comment on the Nazi stuff, .

You already did.

Or maybe you didn't ?

" Saying war didn't end the Nazism problem is like saying vaccines didn't end the Polio problem. "

Sounds remarkably Socially Darwinistic , like ( paraphrasing ) , " Saying war won't end the Jewish problem is like saying anti-biotics didn't end the syphilis problem. "

( I won't even comment on the anti-Semitic stuff. I'll just point out that Hitler's problem-solving , the glass is half full, science / evolution / enlightenment solved the syphilis problem , DIDN'T. )

But, I'm willing to concede that there is a difference, that they are not quite the same, it won't hurt my feelings ,

Because I don't think that's particularly damaging to the narrative ; " The outcome of WW II was primarily that Stalin and Mao gained the most from it, and consequently a lot of non-white types got it in the neck. While the good guys did NOT adopt ALL the methods of their adversaries, they DID adopt MOST of them. Ambiguous outcome at best, lousy outcome at worst. "

But it is damaging to the narrative ; " Roosevelt and Churchill gained the most from it, and consequently a lot of non-whites got saved. Un-ambiguously positive and progressive moral crusade. Total victory. hooray ! " ( Kesa throws up here. )

In a city like London, all hell would break lose. Its a very diverse city, it would become "us vrs them" very quickly. I'm not picking on London though, just about every major US city would have the same issue. .

Given that I already agreed with this it strikes me as an odd final comment.

But, as previously it was hard to say whether you were praising or condemning totalitarianism, here it's hard to say whether you are bragging about this or bemoaning it.

either way, thanks for the reply. You are an interesting an appealing fellow on paper at least.

[Dragus]

To state that all violence is wrong is understandable and your heart is in the right place, but force is unfortunately a necessary component for society. Military power is the final determinant of all things. We can always shape society to be more conductive to the pursuit of individual happiness, but the requirement to back up our society with force needs to be accepted.

[kamikazee786]

Well according to Julius Caesar:

"If you must break the law, then do so only to seize power. In all other cases observe it !"

I like Julius Caesar. He was a top lad

[OnnaBushido]

No. Just because one faction is weak doesn't mean it's right. Look at insurgents in Iraq during the occupation, ETA in Spain, and Contras in Nicaragua during the '80s. They all did terrible things and are no better than the governments they set out to undermine.

It's tempting to see all rebels as plucky freedom fighters. The little guy with his love for hearth and home standing up to the soulless state. That's why you still see Che Guevera on t-shirts. But they're just as capable of atrocity as the most oppressive government.

A healthy democracy is kept that way through checks and balances. Think separation of powers.

If the mob is skeptical of powerful institution then it acts as a check against the power of those institutions. The institutions are held accountable for their actions and thus will be less likely to abuse their power. In the absence of this, governments (and any powerful institution) will be corrupted by power because that is simply the nature of power.

[Swiss Army Cheese]

All governments maintain sovereignty via threats of violence, now you are getting it.

Your sensibilities don't really matter there. The more drastic the offenders, the more drastic the response has to be. Sometimes that will include assassinations.

Not doing them could be seen as morally reprehensible. If you knew the IRA's main bomb maker was visiting his brother in Limerick, and that he was going to build more bombs to kill your civilians, how could you not assassinate him in good conscience?

The difference between good and evil is sorted out after the conflict.

That depends on the circumstances of the visit. Are we talking about stopping over for a cup of tea or planning a gay wedding?

[Phier]

That depends on the circumstances of the visit. Are we talking about stopping over for a cup of tea or planning a gay wedding?

Its a gay tea party, but thats not important right now, Paddy needs to eat a bullet.