Metsfanmax wrote:mrswdk wrote:I don't understand what gives you the authority to dictate morality but not them.
It is not about who we are, but about whether they are expressing consistent moral norms. I contend that there is no way to universalize the set of moral norms that permits one to execute a gay man. On the contrary, when it comes to murder, the only universalizable moral norm is essentially "don't do it."
Yeah, but murder is not a universally applicable concept in the first place. In some US states you can shoot someone dead just for entering your house. In other states that would be considered murder. People in every US state might say 'don't murder', but the way they apply that 'universal norm' varies considerably from place to place.
In other words, if they think that everyone should be permitted to kill innocent gay people, then they need to be prepared for a world where others can say that they're permitted to kill innocent Ugandan people.
If sodomy is a crime then anyone who engages in the act is by definition guilty. If sodomy is illegal in one country and someone in that country is thrown in prison for sodomy, it is fallacious to argue that he is 'innocent', because he's not - he's guilty of sodomy.
Intervention is justified at least in principle if you are defending universalized moral rules. National borders don't matter in that sense; your constant appeal to Europeans or Asians thinking different things from Americans is irrelevant when even Americans have widely differing moral perspectives.)
Same point I made at the start of this post: how can you argue for universalized moral rules while acknowledging that moral perspectives differ from place to place?
I'm not making a moral point though. I don't think people or governments have any place interfering in a society that they are not part of because a) they probably don't understand that society as well as they need to in order to make informed decisions, and b) they have no real stake in the society, and so are not making decisions that they will have to live with the consequences of. Maybe Zimbabwean people don't care as much about Mugabe as the outsider does, and maybe the people who do care would rather deal with Mugabe in a way that doesn't involve suffocating their economy. It's not a decision for an outsider to make.
Even in cases where you might think there is a 'moral duty' to help the people of a country, you have to question whether or not forcing change will ever actually work. Trying to stop communism from spreading in Vietnam and removing 'bad' governments in Iraq and Libya all left those countries significantly worse off than they were before. Putting sanctions on countries like Russia, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe has penalized all citizens of those countries for the actions of a few people in their government, and have failed to bring about any change. Interfering clearly doesn't work.
I accepted that there may be empirical arguments that cause us not to intervene in the affairs of other countries. However the arguments would have to take the form that we do more harm than good by intervening. "Leaving people alone" is not a valid argument in this case.
That is my argument. The use of sanctions or violence to try and force other countries to follow your rules almost always makes things worse for the people of that country, and in most cases fails to precipitate the change you wanted to see anyway. I don't understand how someone could say there is a moral duty to resist communism or oust authoritarian governments, when the result of doing so is almost always to make life worse for everyone in that country.
lol. Well I don't believe in moral rights, so I guess we've reached a dead end here.
Most people who are not fully sociopathic do believe in moral rights, at least instinctually. It is possible that you don't, I suppose, but I don't accept that at face value.
I believe I have legal rights. I don't believe I have any such thing as a 'moral right'.