Do unto others
From Thomas Sowell’s syndicated column:
So many “rights” have been conjured up out of thin air that many people seem unaware that rights and obligations derive from explicit laws, not from politically correct pieties. If you don’t meet the terms of the Geneva Conventions, then the Geneva Conventions don’t protect you. If you are not an American citizen, then the rights guaranteed to American citizens do not apply to you.
That should be especially obvious if you are part of an international network bent on killing Americans. But bending over backward to be nice to our enemies is one of the many self-indulgences of those who engage in moral preening.
But getting other people killed so that you can feel puffed up about yourself is profoundly immoral. So is betraying the country you took an oath to protect.
This conclusion is not an inevitable conclusion. If morality is a contract, then those who willingly leave the contract may not earn its protections. But if we’re duty bound to observe certain prohibitions (which is generally the argument against, say, torture), then the decision of another to ignore his duties may not absolve us of the obligation to observe ours.
–Sam
Related posts:
- What morality “means”
- This GPS thing keeps sending me to the police station!
- Skirting the real question
- No-mah
- I shall not tell a lie (unless I have to)
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