I never mentioned any such scenarios, but for some reason you kept bringing them up; hence my attempt to preempt that particular brand of idiocy from rearing its malformed cranium in my poll.
I cannot remember your exact posts but you and others posited or implied such situations. I'm not sure you did it much or I or others mentioned it much to you. The only time I directly remember was when you tried to defend Celticlord who certainly was guilty of the charge. It is fine for you not to want it said but to try and score points where you think you have less chanced of being called on it by labeling it idiotic is not.
You see, the timeframe is of little consequence to me. If a known terrorist is in possession of actionable intelligence concerning enemy operations that will take place twenty-four hours from now or twenty-four years in the future we should make every effort to extract that information. Moreover, I wouldn't limit such extraction to information directly concerning terrorist operations; any actionable intelligence that could conceivably disrupt their chain-of-command or money supply would be subject to forcible extraction as well.
The time-frame is very important to me.
Didn't answer the question.
You owe me an apology, I most certainly did answer the question, look in the poll. I was simply giving my reasoning there and maintaining that this simplistic moral ideas put about, particularly by the likes of Celticlord, are not helpful or a good thing.
No surprise there. If you don't know what you'd do in such a situation then you don't know anything important about yourself.
Not really, these scenario's are simplistic, they don't capture the complexities of life and human nature. One can learn very little from thinking about them.
If you want to learn about morality and the problems it poses in life read Shakespeare.
I'd do it. I certainly wouldn't enjoy it, nor would I want to remember it, but I'd do it. My family's safety means more to me than my own life, dignity, or honor; anyone who can't say the same thing is a pitiful coward.
See such simplistic problems lead to such simplistic assertions. They are of little worth in dealing with real moral problems.
Values and principles are to a degree formed in us through our families, friends, communities and such small-scale associations to be willing to say that these mean absolutely nothing compared to them coming to absolutely no harm is in my opinion to a degree to neglect the real worth and love of one's family, friends, community et al. It is my family, my community, my country that made me who I am, that taught me right from wrong and for me to completely surrender this just to grant them the basest kind of security is to me a far greater betrayal and cowardice towards them than to stand up for the principles they helped instill in me.
I'm the most particularlist of men but even I would balk at simply asserting through simplistic scenarios that I would stop at nothing to make sure no harm came to them.
