I went for occasionally. The classic example is the police officer that shoots someone in defense of an innocent or himself.
Trust and morality are the very fabric that binds individual rights / liberty based social constructs together. Compromising either to achieve political or ideological ends ultimately unravels it.
I'm not sure if your definition of morality matches mine. So its hard to answer. Lying to me...is wrong. But I have never considered it a morality issue...just a right and wrong issue. My understanding of morality has to do with rules of social behavior and conduct for a society. Rules of social behavior that establishes or promotes righteous values. Doing what is best for others or that society even if you would rather do something else. Anti self-gratification in otherwords. Can you give specific examples of what you are talking about?
I'm not sure I can, CKW, until you clarify something for me first: How can you believe that something is wrong, yet not immoral? That's very confusing to me. Morality is all about what you feel is right and wrong; that pricking in your conscience you get when you know you've violated the proverbial golden rule in some way.
All means ultimately have consequences it's up to a person to decide if they are worth it. Some means may be terribly amoral but the goal that's being obtained may be worth it. While sometimes we don't act or go far enough because we are afraid of crossing a moral boundary this may lead to failure or horrible consequences because we refused to take the situation into our own hands. It's all down to personal choice to weigh the consequences and deal with them.
The left believes that any unscrupulous strategy is fair game as long as it results in them seizing power in the end. That is why Bill Ayers and Bernadyne Dohrn feel comfortable in saying that 25-30 million Americans would have to be slaughtered in order for their dream society to take root. That is why leftists are scary, sick bastards.
To me morality is more about a set of codes for social behavior within a society. For instance...back in the day--a woman who showed her ankles might be considered "immoral". But basically what you are lookig for is "right" vs "wrong".
I would have preferred to vote RARELY. Letting the means justify the ends has been abused more often in history than almost any other concept. I would want an almost black and white issue (kill one guy, save a million people) in order to pursue such a course.
Morality is broader than personal behavior. For instance, I would certainly consider bankrupting posterity to be immoral - yet the American people have made the choice that "the ends", i.e. their SS check, or farm subsidy, or Medicare coverage, or environmental cause, or war, or whatever - justifies the means, i.e. political gain, ideological victory, thievery, etc. The American people don't even consider "right vs wrong"... they steal, bomb, and bully without conscience. You see?? - http://www.usdebtclock.org/ Ignorant, arrogant, immoral... without conscience.
Imagine yourself in the historical situation where a Nazi is asking "Do you know where any Jews are hiding?", when you do know such a thing. Do you lie, or do you declare the ends never justify the means and tell the Nazi the location of the hidden Jews? That question is mainly for the people who say the ends never justify the means, with the example illustrating the absurdity of that claim. Of course the ends sometimes justify the means. Sometimes a small evil is necessary to prevent a large evil.
But it's not a sin to lie to prevent harm to an innocent person. And it is not a sin to shoot someone who is about to harm an innocent person. This is not an example of the ends justifying the means. It is defense of others, which is always justified. Ends justifying the means is something like this: I want to build a perfect, utopian world. But in order to do that I must send 1 million people to death camps.
MY VIEW: mamooth's argument that lying in order to potentially save the lives of innocent people, using the example of Nazi Germany's historical persecution of Jewish people, clearly illustrates the point that ends do at least sometimes justify means. The vast majority of us here would tend to believe that lying is wrong, yet would also surely believe it justified under said conditions because, under said conditions, one would be committing one sort of evil to prevent the occurrence of a far, far worse one. The true moralist, by contrast, doesn't believe in the existence of multiple levels of evil, just a generic 'evil'. To the true moralist, all evil is equally wrong, be it lying or genocide. Therefore the only true answer to this situation for the true moralist is the contention that if everyone was a true moralist, this situation would never have developed in the first place. As far as most of us are concerned, that would be an absurdly naive position to take. But conversely do ends always justify means? Just how pragmatist should we be? Let's consider the example of the Cold War. Whichever socio-economic system you might prefer (be it capitalism or communism), not many people on either side of that ideological divide would actually believe that the victory of the one system over the other might have merited the nuclear annihilation of perhaps 80 percent or more of the world's population. (That's why we didn't actually go into a nuclear war, despite the development of numerous flash points with plenty of potential to have set one off.) Most of us would rather accept a system we hate than be wiped out. Thus most of us would surely believe that the ends do not justify just any means. Certain means are completely off-limits in the minds of most people, regardless of how righteous one might believe the goal is. So I think the correct answer falls somewhere in-between the poles. As to exactly where, I'm not exactly certain. I would have to be provided with the individual circumstances of a given decision. However, I will say this: when polled on such matters in scientific surveys, people are shown to be qualitatively more lenient toward causes they believe are being undertaken for essentially selfless reasons. For example, surveys have found that large majorities of people believe that the employment of certain shock tactics in advertising (e.g. showing graphic footage of violence and suffering) is morally justified if the cause being advocated is the prevention of animal cruelty or the alleviation of poverty or disease or something of this nature. Surveys also show that if the same advertising tactics are undertaken to simply sell a product commercially, people are qualitatively less lenient toward that. So whether one's motives are considered essentially selfless or selfish plays a significant role in whether ends justify means for most people. It depends not just on the particular means, but also on the particular ends. People often understand and forgive your means if your cause is sufficiently selfless. They don't if you're just trying to get richer or something.
This is a moral catch phrase which confused me for a long time. So much of our existence is a product of ends justifying means after all. We imprison people which is bad, but it is necessary to keep the population safe from criminals. We kill during wars which is bad, but necessary to keep our nation safe. We destroy our environment which is bad, but we need food, housing and energy to survive. "Ends justify means" is better stated "Winning is the only thing that matters"
Morality is often subjective. Was Truman moral to nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Was FDR moral to firebomb Hamburg and Tokyo? The end was satisfactory.
A politician must have means to ends. To have good means is good, but when one has only bad means, they must suffice for it is the end that matters. In politics, there is no excuse for failure, and no need for excuse for success, however achieved.
So if a person follows such codes not because it comes naturally but out of fear of getting caught, is that person acting morally? No it isn't. Ever. There was nothing morally wrong with any of those orders, as long as they were in good faith deemed necessary for an Allied victory.
Check out my previous post to see a couple examples I provided, as well as some explanation for the position I take. Others have also provided some examples of why they take their own views. Just read over this thread.
yes because if people want welfare the rich must lose their liberties of keeping their wealth its the same the other side the republicans want oil wars for money but that means soldiers must lose their liberty for life or risk it
If you do not have concrete standards of integrity that you steadfastly hold your actions to, then your objective becomes worthless. People who aim to win by any means necessary become the bad guys by default. Because they can and inevitably will end up rationalizing all kinds of unjust, violent, and oppressive behavior in order to bend the world to their views. This is how tyrants are created.
