[ExI] war is peace

Stefano Vaj stefano.vaj at gmail.com
Sat Feb 6 09:48:41 UTC 2010


2010/2/5 Frank McElligott <Frankmac at ripco.com>:
> If your Government tells you it is right, you accept it, as we did with Bush
> and his Weapons of Mass Destruction, in Russia they are  no different, or in
> EU for that matter.

Mmhhh, just for the sake of discussion, there is a difference. If the
government X says that WMDs exist in a given place or that global
warming exists and is largely anthropic, either it is empirically true
or it is not. If a given government wants to nationalise a given
company, and makes use of its power (or implements legislation
granting it the power) to do so, it is hard to say that such
nationalisation is not "legal". At most, it may not be "right"
according to one's socio-political views.

But there again, there are a lot of illegal activities (say, writing
Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in 1632, or
starting the US war of independence) that one is ready to condone, if
one likes or approve them.

This is why, being a jurist myself, I am especially wary of invoking
legality or illegality as a value judgment... :-)

-- 
Stefano Vaj



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