From kragen@dnaco.net Thu Aug 20 13:30:03 1998
Date: Thu, 20 Aug 1998 13:30:00 -0400 (EDT)
From: Kragen <kragen@dnaco.net>
To: sdenbest@qualcomm.com
cc: dave@scripting.com
Subject: conscientious objections
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Steven Den Beste said:
	And my grade school classmates would say "Well, what if you're
	in the front line with a machine gun and the enemy are charging
	and the only way you can save your life is to fire? What would
	you do, huh? Huh?"

	. . . It wasn't until I was an adult that I finally understood
	and had an answer: If I was in that situation as a conscientious
	objector, then I had already committed an immoral act even
	before pulling the trigger.

The situation you describe is one variant of a larger problem, though.
If I'm alone in my house with my fists and someone breaks in and begins
to beat my face in, I'm in a similar situation -- but I haven't done
anything immoral to get there.

Your answer, which appears to be that the burglar has put me in a
position where I have the choice of dying or fighting, and thus it's
the burglar's responsibility if I do either of these immoral acts, does
not seem right to me.

The right thing for Mr. Clinton to do would have been to not screw
Monica Lewinsky in the first place -- not to be silent about it later.
The right thing to do later would have been to obey the law and tell
the truth to the millions of people to whom the President's honesty is
a matter of life and death.  This is not the responsibility of the
special prosecutor.

In any difficult situation, I can find misdeeds of others without which
my situation would not be difficult.  This never absolves me of
responsibility for my own actions in that situation.

Kragen