20th Apr 2009
Link for today
- Just Asking – a must-read 2007 musing by David Foster Wallace – a thought experiment on “what is the price of freedom”. It seems particularly prescient given the recent revelations of the torture policy. Quote:
What if we chose to accept the fact that every few years, despite all reasonable precautions, some hundreds or thousands of us may die in the sort of ghastly terrorist attack that a democratic republic cannot 100-percent protect itself from without subverting the very principles that make it worth protecting?
Is this thought experiment monstrous? Would it be monstrous to refer to the 40,000-plus domestic highway deaths we accept each year because the mobility and autonomy of the car are evidently worth that high price?
On the money!
How ever so stupid to compare dying accidentally on highways with deliberate acts of terrorism. Thank God most Americans didn’t feel the way you do during WWII, or there would be no Jews left on the face of the earth and we would all be speaking Japanese or German. You people can afford to be a pacifist because there are those of us who are willing to fight for your right to be so. You do it at the expense of someone else life.
Thanks for stopping by, Truth Seeker. Do I know you from somewhere?
I think David Foster Wallace’s point is valid, even if you object to the analogy of the highway infrastructure.
What about gun rights? Is it not deemed to be an “acceptable risk” that sometimes people abuse their “right to bear arms” by killing someone? Our response to the risk of gun violence is not (alas) to ban guns, because the U.S. so highly values individual liberty.
Is it not the same w/r/t our rights to privacy and due process? The fact that these may sometimes be abused to nefarious ends does not invalidate the goodness and value in the freedom we enjoy.
I’m not sure where you got onto pacifism, but that’s a discussion for another day. I’m not quite a pacifist, but I do admit to leaning ever closer.