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Marc2b -> RE: Fidel Castro Resigns (2/23/2008 3:04:10 PM)
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..that would be me.
Sorry if you felt left out. I was just tired and cranky and wanted to wrap up so I could go to bed.
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Any chance of a response to my post #110?
Fair Enough.
To recall...
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...only if we're going to apply the same principle to all, with no fear or favour....as in the rapist example you gave. All are equal under law. Problem is, when you have a country that has the ironically named Patriot Act, then it is too easy to say pot, kettle, black. Also, when that same country has propped up vicious regimes that oppressed their own people purely because they served US economic interests then clearly the same principle is not applied to all. i'm absolutely not saying that you supported this hypocrisy, but you can't ignore it......
I’m not saying to ignore it. I’m simply saying that (in my case anyway) it is insufficient reason to heap praise upon the man. As I said earlier, it is too much of an investment of mental energy to be pissed off at everybody all the time (okay, I didn’t say all the time before but I had meant to – I hate how the edit button disappears five minutes before you realize these things) so I am certainly not one of the perennially indignant (I stole that from P.J. O’Rourke, I think it aptly describes some people in the world). To be so would be to have no joy in life. As a general philosophical principle I give a pass (on being pissed off at) to people who’ve been dead at least a hundred and fifty years or so. I figure they’re long dead, their victims are long dead – no sense getting too worked up about it. Study the past, certainly. Learn from the past, by all means. Feel a little morally indignant and disgusted with the atrocities of the past, sure – but I save my moral indignation for more recent events and personages.
Castro fits that bill. The fact that others fit that bill is insufficient reason for me to exclude him. Saying that he was forced to jail people on flimsy excuses, saying that he was forced to torture people, simply isn’t going to wash with me. There is a difference between responding to a threat (real or perceived) and deliberately inflicting pain and injury on truly helpless people.
As for everyone being equal before the law, that is a goal I believe that we all should be working toward (I’m under no delusions that it will happen in my life time but hope springs eternal). How we should be working toward that goal are other matters for other debates.
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