Eugine_Nier comments on Rationality Quotes October 2012 - Less Wrong

8 Post author: MBlume 02 October 2012 06:50PM

You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.

Article Navigation

Comments (298)
Tags: quotes

Comments (298)

You are viewing a single comment's thread.

Comment author: Eugine_Nier 02 October 2012 12:44:21AM 19 points [-]

Lastly, there is an attitude not unknown in the crisis against which I should particularly like to protest. I should address my protest especially to those lovers and pursuers of Peace who, very short-sightedly, have occasionally adopted it. I mean the attitude which is impatient of these preliminary details about who did this or that, and whether it was right or wrong. They are satisfied with saying that an enormous calamity, called War, has been begun by some or all of us; and should be ended by some or all of us. To these people this preliminary chapter about the precise happenings must appear not only dry (and it must of necessity be the driest part of the task) but essentially needless and barren. I wish to tell these people that they are wrong; that they are wrong upon all principles of human justice and historic continuity: but that they are specially and supremely wrong upon their own principles of arbitration and international peace.

These sincere and high-minded peace-lovers are always telling us that citizens no longer settle their quarrels by private violence; and that nations should no longer settle theirs by public violence. They are always telling us that we no longer fight duels; and need no longer wage wars. In short, they perpetually base their peace proposals on the fact that an ordinary citizen no longer avenges himself with an axe. But how is he prevented from revenging himself with an axe? If he hits his neighbour on the head with the kitchen chopper, what do we do? Do we all join hands, like children playing Mulberry Bush, and say "We are all responsible for this; but let us hope it will not spread. Let us hope for the happy day when he shall leave off chopping at the man's head; and when nobody shall ever chop anything for ever and ever." Do we say "Let byegones be byegones; why go back to all the dull details with which the business began; who can tell with what sinister motives the man was standing there within reach of the hatchet?" We do not. We keep the peace in private life by asking for the facts of provocation, and the proper object of punishment. We do go into the dull details; we do enquire into the origins; we do emphatically enquire who it was that hit first. In short we do what I have done very briefly in this place.

-- G. K. Chesterton, "The Appetite of Tyranny", arguing against pretending to be wise

Comment author: taelor 03 October 2012 01:33:23AM *  3 points [-]

WAR, n.

A by-product of the arts of peace. The most menacing political condition is a period of international amity. The student of history who has not been taught to expect the unexpected may justly boast himself inaccessible to the light. "In time of peace prepare for war" has a deeper meaning than is commonly discerned; it means, not merely that all things earthly have an end -- that change is the one immutable and eternal law -- but that the soil of peace is thickly sown with the seeds of war and singularly suited to their germination and growth. It was when Kubla Khan had decreed his "stately pleasure dome" -- when, that is to say, there were peace and fat feasting in Xanadu -- that he "heard from afar / Ancestral voices prophesying war."

One of the greatest of poets, Coleridge was one of the wisest of men, and it was not for nothing that he read us this parable. Let us have a little less of "hands across the sea," and a little more of that elemental distrust that is the security of nations. War loves to come like a thief in the night; professions of eternal amity provide the night.

--Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary

Comment author: novalis 02 October 2012 09:27:37PM 2 points [-]

Two WAITWs don't make a right.

In this quotation, Chesterton writes against people who compare war to vigilante justice. But his argument is not that this is a poor comparison, but that instead the analogy doesn't go far enough. So, he compounds the error of his opponents with an error of his own.

There's also some scenario slippage -- in the peacenik argument, the citizen "avenges" himself, but by the time Chesterton gets to him, the dead man was just "standing there within reach of the hatchet." That alone gives you a hint about you what kind of hearing the accused is likely to get in Chesterton's court.

Comment author: MixedNuts 02 October 2012 08:50:24AM 1 point [-]

The international equivalent is not a police and justice system, it's vigilante justice. Doing nothing is not much worse than killing the attacker, being killed by the attacker's friends who believe the victim had started it, and starting a vendetta. How do you arrest a state? Ask the UN for permission to carpet-bomb it?

Comment author: roystgnr 02 October 2012 08:01:14PM 8 points [-]

Under the assumption that a lesser power is unable to punish injustice done by a greater power, the three possible alternatives at any level of power are "Injustice is dealt with by a greater power", "Injustice is dealt with by peers", and "Injustice is dealt with by nobody". The first system sounds nice, except that infinite regression is impossible, and so eventually you end up at the greatest level of power, choosing between systems two and three. In that case, system two seems preferable, "vigilante" connotations notwithstanding.

Powered by Reddit Powered by Reddit