Quote:
Originally posted by Undertoad
I guess the point is that I'm not really all that concerned with WHY they want to kill me. If they want to kill me, that is enough. I'm not going to fucking study why I should be killed or enslaved. To me, after they decide they want to kill me, their philosophy is no longer deserving of study. It's deserving of termination wth extreme prejudice.
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That's all well and good -if- you have some way of guaranteeing your moral superiority. Even if you intend to avoid pissing people off, what's to say something out of your power wouldn't compell people to want to kill you? Diplomacy goes both ways; if you don't want people trying to kill you, it would probably help to not kill them at the drop of a hat.
Mind you, I fully understand what you're saying in the current context. I just think it's a particularly limited and short-sighted policy, applicable only to situations in which you're clearly on the side of Good and Light. How well will 'terminate with extreme prejudice' work when you're not dealing with morally ambiguous small countries or terrorists?
My biggest gripe about politics is the short-sighted and self-centered approach most people seem to have. If our goal is to <a href="http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/bb/pd.html">survive</a>, wouldn't we be best off doing some sort of mutually-beneficial-make-people-like-and-respect-us thing?
--Sk
(edit: I suck at the grammar.)