Anders provided a detailed response to my supposition that he
might be a "moral relativist". I would cite his summary:
> To sum up, rights only get voided when actions make your rights
> interfere with the rights of others, and even then the decrease in
> rights is partial, temporary and ideally should be minimal.
So the key point seems to be "actions" from his position.
If one does not take "actions" then one can only loosely be
accused of violating the rights of others.
By this argument, it would seem that Mr. bin Laden is nowhere near
as guilty as the pilots of the recent planes turned into bombs.
He has supplied funds to and trained terrorists but has not
really committed any terrorist acts himself. It would seem
that from the "action" perspective that conspiracy to commit
acts of terrorism is a less heinous crime than acts of
terrorism themselves. And yet we now know that conspiracies
can cause a much greater loss of freedoms than any single
act of terrorism.
I would be interested in solutions he might propose for solving
problems of individuals such as bin Laden who seem likely to
retain positions of promoting actions that will cause the loss
of freedoms for the forseeable future.
An interesting counterpoint to this is an about Sara Jane
Olson: http://www.nytimes.com/2001/11/07/national/07OLSO.html
In essence she has been forced to enter a guilty plea to plotting
to bomb two police cruisers 26 years ago because she feels it
is impossible to receive a fair trial after recent events in
spite of the fact that she did not make, hold or plant the bomb.
Robert
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