Librarian, I appreciate your command of English! Salute!
My dear Mr. Lancer44 - meticulous precision and fastidious sense for philosophical treatment are undisputable characteristics of your posts. I am honored and enriched with this simple, but wonderful proclamation of yours. Thank you. 
Who are you surprising Mr. Librarian ?
No, actually I’m not surpsising anyone, my dear Mr. Chevan – simply – I’m a little bit old-fashioned personality from another, long-forgotten time. All the best!
Librarian, I applaud your last post
My dear Mr. Digger – allow me to take advantage of this occasion once more to express my personal gratitude for the many marks of affection you have shown. I shall be happy to learn that I have succeeded in inspiring you with confidence and interest. All the best!
I think you’ve got the wrong idea from my point. The one I was trying to make is that applying law to all aspects of warfare leads to a situation where the legality and morality of an individual act alone are considered. From a moral standpoint, it is imperative that the effects of an action (or of not taking an action) are considered, rather than the action itself. Legal examination of merely the action leads to consideration of the immediate effects (both geographically and chronologically) and so usually misses the most important ones. The result is that I think you’re better off considering the great moral thinkers like Thomas Aquinas or Augustine of Hippo than legal minds like Holmes or Cicero.
My dear Mr. Pdf 27 – I cannot refrain from expressing my personal appreciation of your indeed eloquent address. However, I think that we are actually confronted not because of individuality or collectivity of certain human behavior – final effects of human actions are nothing but summation of all single actions undertaken by individuals. Therefore genuine reason for our intellectual confrontation we share here is the very old philosophical problem – the quandary of so called ethical relativism.
Ethical relativism is the theory that holds that morality is relative, furthermore directly adjective to the specific norms of one’s culture. That is, whether an action is right or wrong depends exclusively on the moral norms of the society in which it is practiced. The same action may be morally right in one society, but completely morally wrong in another. For the ethical relativists, there are no universal moral standards - standards that can be universally applied to all peoples, at all times. The only moral standards against which a society’s practices can be judged are its own. However, in that case there can be no common framework for resolving disputes or for reaching agreement on ethical matters among members of different societies.
Most ethicists, however, reject the theory of ethical relativism. Some claim that while the moral practices of societies may differ, the fundamental ethical principles (please, note the important difference between ethics and morality!) underlying these practices do not. For example, in some societies, killing one’s parents after they reached a certain age was common practice, stemming from the belief that people were better off in the afterlife if they entered it while still physically active and vigorous. While such a practice would be completely condemned in our society, we would agree with these societies on the underlying ethical principle - the duty to care for parents. Societies, then, may differ in their application of fundamental moral principles but they always do agree on the principles. Only in that case a completely artificial, obligatory sociological construct – Law – is possible.
And actually the ideas of John Locke – philosopher of the Puritan revolution in XVII century England – have filled-in both the Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the Constitution of 1787 as basic cornerstones of Law in USA. To Locke, man - no matter where and how he lives - was and is amenable to reason and susceptible to the claims of conscience. Endowed by his Creator with these potentialities, man can shape his role in society and determine the kind of rules to which he will give his consent.
Locke believed that the good society is a free society in which men live by “right reason” – clearly a completely ethically based orientation.
John Milton - great puritan poet – brought reason and freedom together in Aeropagitica when he spoke for liberty of the press before the English Parliament: “Man is born free and rational”. This basic tenet of the Puritan Revolution was also the basic tenet of American legal theory.
Thus you can congratulate yourselves that you live in a country that purely ethically takes for its norm “liberty and justice for all under law”.
You Americans do not have concentration camps, my dear Mr. Pdf 27, only because the writ of Habeas Corpus is a constitutional, utterly absolutistic, intrinsically ethical presumption and guarantee available to all. You have no Gestapo – when law-enforcement officers act too brashly or brutally, they cases fail in court. Due process of protection under law is embedded into the supreme law of the land as an stringent ethical value. You have no secret or mass trials. Every man accused is entitled to a speedy, public and impartial trial. He is entitled to know the charges against him, to be confronted with the witnesses and the evidence against him, and the government will subpoena witnesses for him. Over every court presides “His Honor, the Judge”. And “Judges,” as observed by Justice Douglas in a contempt – of – court case, “are supposed to be man of ethical fortitude, able to thrive in a hardy social climate.”
And indeed, my dear Mr. Pdf 27, they really are. Furthermore – they have to be! Especially in the hardy climate of today. More than that – they are generally men of “right reason” devoted to their calling. And the law they serve always was and still is – “What a reasonable man would think just!”
Incidentally, where did you learn your English? It’s been years since I’ve seen the word “scrupulously” in normal usage.
Well, I think that I was just lucky with my old Alma Mater, University in Novi Sad. In those ancient times we were treated with utmost benevolence, completely free to discover intrinsic beauty of English.
I like
“And hast thou slain the Jabberwock?
Come to my arms, my beamish boy!
Oh frabjous day! Calooh! Callay!”
-I’m chortling in my joy! –
Or allowing the devil to take over sir? Perhaps by killing thousands through the bombing, many more thousands were saved.
And perhaps by killing millions through the bombing there would be no fatalities on our side at all, my dear Mr. Nickdfresh? In spite of everything that’s completely logic - all potential enemies that are jeopardizing our undoubtedly righteous side are permanently evicted toward reaching a possibilllity to do us any harm! Therefore – why not? It is not incontestably forbidden by law. Yes, there are some post-WW2 regulations about that issue, yet again within International law, but back there in 1945 the whole thing was completely legal.
Or perhaps there really is something inherently erroneous within that previous proclamation of mine, my dear Mr. Nickdfresh? Yes? Oh, my goodness! What, if I may ask? Perhaps a forcefully emphasized outcry toward ethical relativism? Or perhaps that blatant reduction of human morality and ethics heritage into a shiny sophistic hootchy-kootchy dancer’s tights? Yes, my dear Mr. Nickdfresh, you are right if you think that.
Because – basically - I’m simply pronouncing that "What is right for you is not for me" – and our common denominator in this whole issue we are sharing is the posture that “There are no universal ethical norms.” Ergo – whole concept of legal adjunction is impossible - law therefore is incapable to control human behavior. In addition, different questions could not be settled equitably under law. Only problem with that stance of yours, my dear Mr. Nickdfresh, is the verity that human civilization in that case is completely impossible too.
But in any case, you’re getting muddled in semantics.
Oh no, my dear Sir – those semantics are only an expression of my vividly flamboyant but in the very same time delicate tendency not to be treated as a personality that is belligerently exalting his own inarticulateness. That’s all.
