Differences of opinion over things like politics, society, laws, and other similar items are to be expected, and even encouraged – otherwise, individuals’ opinions will not be tested, improved, and verified. However, sometimes, some opinions express a deepseated set of beliefs that are simply intolerable, insurmountable, or otherwise irreconcilable between other people’s basic beliefs.
Unfortunately, today brought forward such an opinion, from a source I never would have expected.
At this post over at Snowflakes in Hell, Bob S. left this comment:
Sebastian,
And would we worry about the backlash when people realized that we didn’t believe that angle but was only using it to manipulate them into doing what we want?
Would you feel comfortable taking that type of approach instead of something that more accurately reflects what you values are?
I’m not sure that I would feel comfortable with that level of manipulation. I think it would resemble too much the tactics of those opposing our rights.
Caleb addressed his comment, saying:
Bob S. – who gives a damn what our tactics are as long as 1) we win, and we 2) don’t sacrifice our personal integrity in so doing?
Sebastian followed up with:
I think Bob’s complaint was along the lines that it falls under your number two category. My retort would be that Caleb’s number one trumps number two. The point is to get the sign down. If I had to manipulate someone into looking at it another way, that they might not have thought of, I’m fine with that. I have no qualms about adoption the tactics of my enemy that work.
Seeking some understandable clarification on the issue, The Packetman asked:
So winning trumps personal integrity?
Sounds like, Ends justify the means.
Either one is bad.
Sebastian responded with:
Considering what’s at stake, yes winning trumps integrity. Politics and social change are not a process of integrity. Do you think the progressives won by patting themselves on the head for their integrity?
I am not at all sorry, but “winning” (no matter the competition in question) never trumps integrity.
To begin with, what, exactly, is “integrity”? Well, it is commonly defined as “adherence to moral and ethical principles; soundness of moral character; honesty.” A fair synonym for it is honor: “honesty, fairness, or integrity in one’s beliefs and actions.”
To say an individual has integrity is to indicate that the person in question is reliable, trustworthy, honest, responsible, just, and countless other adjectives that describe a “man of honor”, a man who’s “word is his bond”, a man who will “do the right thing, even when no one is watching”.
Integrity is, in my opinion, one of the cornerstones of any society – contracts require it, conversations require it, citizenship requires it, employment requires it, and countless other things require or rely on it. Granted, it has been subdued and subverted in modern society, but the need for it still exists, regardless of people shoving their fingers in their ears and proclaiming otherwise.
And, again, I am not at all sorry to say that I will never sacrifice my integrity in order to “win” anything, not even further protections and expansions of a pre-existing, natural, Constitutionally-protected right.
I will never knowingly lie about something in order to further a goal, no matter how noble that goal may be. I will never intentionally “fiddle with” the numbers in order to coax them into providing me a salutory outcome. I will never engage in or support questionable voting/business/financial practices, even if they get a person/law I approve of elected/enacted. I will never use another person’s grief, rage, fears, or other irrational emotions as leverage to get them to support my own causes, no matter how “right” I think them to be. I will never utilize a host of the anti-rights advocates’ tactics, simply because my integrity keeps me from doing so. (If it has ever appeared as though I did any of these things, it is entirely due to an error – please point it out to me, and we can correct it.)
And I simply will not tolerate those who do employ those tactics, or admit they would if they thought it would work.
If Sebastian wants to adopt the methodologies and practices of those who would deprive us of our rights, then I will hande him the same way I do them, for the same reasons – I will no longer link to him, nor read him, nor otherwise support him in any way.
To be certain, Sebastian has provided and, no doubt, will continue to provide substantial support to the cause of bolstering and strengthening the Second Amendment… but everything he has ever done, or will ever do, has now been colored with the knowledge that he may or may not have been entirely honest, responsible, or honorable in doing so. That is simply unacceptable.
Am I making too much of an issue of an offhand comment? Perhaps. But that is my perogative. Am I happy about doing this? Not at all. But that is the way things go sometimes. Would I allow a cause I firmly and ardently supported to fail, simply because I would not lie? Absolutely. If something can only be attained by sacrificing your word as an adult human, then it simply is not worth having. Or, as ex-Senator Alan Simpson said:
If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don’t have integrity, nothing else matters.
(Unfortunately, things like this seem to be going around lately…)
What about deception in wartime? What do you think of spying on our enemies? Would that be a violation of your integrity?
Linoge,
Once again, you eloquently capture what I was trying to say. Great response and I agree.
If we use shady tactics just to get “our way”, how are we any better then the people we oppose?
I have no qualms about adoption the tactics of my enemy that work.
Mass murder works to silence opposition, so does terror tactics like burning crosses or having cudgel armed people at polling places. I’m not willing to stoop to the tactics of my opposition if they violate my personal values and principles.
Great post.
Joe: Coming from a military background as I am (both by family and by previous profession), I whole-heartedly object to the notion of applying peacetime rules to wartime, and vice versa. This is not me suffering from a bout of relativistic integrity/morals, this is me acknowledging that jumping on the moon might just send you into an unstable orbit, while jumping here on Earth will not get you far.
The best example I can provide you is that in a time of war, or within a defined war zone, a boat looking a certain way at a certain distance from a Navy ship could end up with its hull and crew quite perforated, for no better reason than that it was in that location, looking that way. Outside of that arbitrarily-defined area, or a declared state of war, though, such an action would be unconscionable, and any sailor or officer executing such an act would likely face criminal charges.
Do I find active espionage during peacetime to be offensive? Yes. Intelligence-gathering, however, is not a problem for me – if the enemy is stupid enough to broadcast sensitive information in the clear, it is their ass.
During wartime? Again, the rules, all the rules, change. Things become acceptable that would never even be legal in any other circumstances.
And no, we are not “at war” currently with those who would strip us of our rights – we may be fighting a figurative war, but then only figurative rules change.
Bob S.: I think Nietzsche had something specific to say about that, along with quite a few other philosophers, thinkers, and speakers. If he wants to win at any price, then more power to him – I am simply not willing to go down that road with him. I refuse to turn into the people we are fighting against.
Be very careful what you say. I’m deliberately leading you down a path…
Intelligence gathering is only acceptable if they broadcast in the clear? Breaking of encrypted transmissions and other eavesdropping on what were thought to be private conversations, between say North Korea and Iran, is unethical?
What about telling Iran if they don’t back down we will supply Israel with enough nukes and encourage them to kill even all the cockroaches in Iran–even if we wouldn’t actually do that?
And moving a bit closer to my real goal… What about when dealing with a rapist, or other violent criminal? Is it wrong to lie to them? “I have HIV” might dissuade some rapist. Or would it be wrong to tell them (even if you wouldn’t actually do it) you won’t call 911 if they proceed–you (or Special Forces husband/boyfriend) will hunt them down and torture them to death?
What about the men who appear to be Arab and take over control of the plane/yacht/office building you are in. When they ask everyone who is Jewish to identify themselves would it be unethical for the Jews to lie?
And what if the law says all Jews/homosexuals/gun-owners must register with the state and wear a yellow Star of David, pink triangle, or GPS-ankle bracelet? Is obeying the law the ethical thing to do? If you know of a Jew or homosexual that has not registered is turning them in to the authorities the ethical thing to do?
No worries, Joe – I knew you were taking this conversation places the second you asked the questions. I am not quite as dumb as I look.
To bounce around and answer some things out of order, though, I very carefully, and very intentionally, made absolutely no mention of “laws” anywhere in my post, or my subsequent comments. There was a reason for that.
As for the rest, I will put this general statement forward, and then answer a few of them specifically: I draw a distiction between “expedient” and “unethical”, in that a chosen course of action can be both, one, or neither. If a person decides, of his or her own free will (which pretty much describes all choices we make) to follow an unethical course of action for expediency’s sake, and they are willing to live with that action and themselves after the fact, then more power to them.
I will not follow them down the same path.
Neither will I judge them, and I tried to make it clear that I was not necessarily judging Sebastian in this case either – it is not my place, and it is not my business. However, lack of judgement does not mean I have to support them either, and whether or not I do is entirely dependent upon my own personal ethics and integrity.
Yes, I do find the listening-in of supposedly private conversations to be unethical. Yes, I do find the use of other people to do violence on your behalf to be unethical (be it Israel and Iran, or be it anti-rights advocates and the police). And yes, I not only find a fallacious threat to an aggressor to be unethical, I would also find following through on that threat to be unethical.
As such, I will not personally do them. If someone else wants to, that is their decision – but I refuse to condone it just because it happened to be expedient.
How is it that you determine ethical from unethical?
You could have saved yourself the time and asked that question at the beginning
.
.
Me personally? Based on upbringing, a fair bit of religious influences (though not solely Christian ones), and a few other details.
But I do maintain that it is a personal matter, unlike a lot of people – what may be ethical for me may not be for someone else, and vice versa. But do not expect me to support someone else’s actions just because he thinks it is ethical
Maybe I could have saved some time. I expected something a little different and then realized I had to backtrack and get to something more basic. My mistake. I don’t think the time was wasted however. I think the data gathered will ultimately be useful.
I find it odd that you think ethics is a personal matter yet find fault with someone else’s ethics. And could not they also find fault with your ethics and each of you think you are the one who “holds the higher ground”?
Can both simultaneously be correct?
Probably. They could also both be incorrect. I confess to being unable to come up with an adequate hypthetical to either (apart from the thermodynamic thesis on religions, of course), but neither would surprise me greatly.
As for how I view someone else’s decisions and ethics, if I disagree with them, what is so unsual with finding fault with them? There had to be something for me to disagree with, after all.
[This discussion is pretty heavy duty philosophy and smart people have spent their lives studying these topics for thousands of years. So don't think that I have good answers of my own or that I am being critical of you if you don't have good answers either.]
Both being wrong is an easy case and not particularly interesting.
My main point is that for most people there are times when lying is considered ethical and other times when it is not. It is an extremely rare person that will say one should never, ever, lie. And for those people it is relatively easy to demonstrate cases where their refusal to lie could cost the lives of many innocent people. Hence a dilemma exists–which is more ethical: Lie and save innocent lives or tell the truth and enable their deaths? And nearly all would say to lie is the more ethical response. Or did you really mean it when you said:
You admit there is some sort of situational ethics in your value system. War versus peacetime for example. But where is that line drawn? How is that line drawn? What is the process by which you make those decisions? Is it an enumeration of situations given to you from your upbringing and religious sources? Is is some set of concrete rules from your upbringing and religious sources? Or is it more nebulous and just what feels right at the time?
If you can’t articulate where the line is and how it should be drawn, let alone conclusively demonstrate that you are drawing it in the correct location, how is it can you justify a claim that Sebastian’s behavior is “intolerable”?
Is it because it’s just what you feel is right? If that is the justification then any number of people can claim gun control/slavery/genocide/whatever is ethical because it feels right to them.
I think you are in the middle of a intellectual minefield and somewhat overstated the case against Sebastian.
Something being more ethical does not, necessarily, make it ethical.
Lying is unethical.
Murdering is unethical.
Handing people over to other individuals who are bent on murdering them themselves is tantamount to murdering the first set of people yourself – the difference is logistical, not moral.
So you are left with a Morton’s Fork – no matter what you do, it is unethical. Even standing by and doing nothing would be unethical, since the latter party would undoubtedly search your abode and find the former party.
Just because you have to do something does not make it ethical, and just because option A is less unethical than option B, that does not make A ethical either.
At that point, your integrity is already compromised, through, undoubtedly, your own actions (sheltering the first party) – the question simply becomes which unethical action you can live with. Is that anywhere near a good answer? Not in my opinion. But it is also the only one I have at the moment.
Am I advocating that the first party should have been turned away from your door when they initially showed up? Well, life is not guarantees, so that is a matter for you to decide – they might or might not get caught otherwise, and they might or might not be found in your house.
As for the line, I significant tend more towards the “concrete set of rules” – granted, they are certainly not all-encompassing, but no set of rules ever is.
It is quite likely that I both overstated my position, and did not adequately explain it. It is also quite likely that Sebastian did understated what he meant by “adopting tactics of my enemy that work”. However, when taken at face value, for whatever that statement may or may not be worth, it includes a set of tactics I simply will not partake in, nor be associated with, nor support, based on the aforementioned rules I have lived my life by thus far – that makes them intolerable for me.
As for the specific nature of the rules in question, you will forgive me for not articulating them in full detail – it is actually something I had been considering as a post, but it is also something that deserves more time than just this comment.
Unlike Linoge, I don’t believe that ethics and morals are wholly “personal”. I think the realm of “right” and “wrong” are, for the most part, pretty objective.
The problem is Joe is drawing moral equivalence between actions that have no unethical intent and actions that do. Intent makes all the difference in the world. Is self defense unethical? You’re potentially going to kill someone. Isn’t killing unethical? Not if it’s in self-defense.
Spying on other governments is not unethical if it is done for purposes of defense and not offense or fraud.
Lying to to a criminal to save your life or another’s is not unethical. Lying in a way that would endanger someone else IN STEAD of you in such a situation, would absolutely be unethical.
Sebastian’s scenario was a blatant attempt to deceive for no other reason than to get his way. He had alternatives: try to convince the business owner to take down the sign by addressing the issue honestly and forthrightly. Refuse to patronize the business. Heck, picket outside the business in protest.
His proposed tactic is unethical on its face.
I realize that the reason you brought it up is because Linoge spoke in absolutes in his post, which is always hazardous, and the engineer in you requires you to take everything as literally as possible, but I think most everyone understood what he was saying.
You also spoke about “passing judgment”. Linoge was being judgmental and well he should have. We are supposed to exercise judgment in our relationships. Linoge didn’t say that Sebastian should be arrested, censored, or censured in any way, he just said that he was going to exercise his personal judgment and refuse to associate with someone who’s integrity doesn’t meet his standards. Sounds imminently reasonable to me.
What’s wrong with being judgmental anyway? How can one judge that being judgmental is inferior to being non-judgmental and avoid hypocrisy?
The whole “I won’t associate with people who lack integrity” issue (which I agree with wholeheartedly) aside, Sebastian’s tactics could easily bite us all and damage the gun rights community as a whole. He just advertised the fact that he is considering this tactic on the internet. Do you think anti-gunners don’t read our blogs? They do. They like to claim that we are dishonest already…nothing like serving them up some prima facia evidence on a gilded platter.
legally losing friends
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