I've seen you oppose anti-war and broader economic justice organizing before, and I don't quite get it.

People are focused on the war right now (1) because, it's happening now, it's in the news, and (2) it seems more responsive to popular pressure than global AIDS policy, etc. The first reason is understandable and the second is understandable and probably correct.

Do you really think that if more people get involved with anti-war organizing, it will make it harder to organize people around global public health? I'm quite confident that in the long run it will make it easier.

One thing that broke my heart after 911 was how much those who had been organizing around global justice work dropped so much of that effort to go after the war buildup. I was against the war in Afghanistan and against the war in Iraq, but they were both less important than the globalization organizing that, markedly, was deemphasized. In fact, rallies that had been called specifically for protesting the World Economic Forum were turned into anti-war rallies by groups like ANSWER.

It's not clear to me that antiwar organizing is needed precisely because it is in the news-- big rallies are sometimes effective in calling attention to issues little discussed in the media, but I am perpetually skeptical of their effect on issues already being widely discussed. The power of the Seattle event was that it focused attention on little known organizations like the World Trade Organization, making a household name of the IMF and the World Bank when they weren't on the public agenda.

Short-term organizing around the war is actually likely to have little effect, but long-term organizing around AIDS and global poverty is far more likely to pay off.

Your moral scandal seems to be based on utilitarian principles, not on rights and duties. While it might be the same number of lives at stake there is no moral equivalence between failing to save a person's life and intentionally murdering them. That is the difference between Iraq and the AIDS situation. While out governments that supposedly represent and defer to our interests are contemplating another genocide it is a moral duty to try to prevent them.

But even on a utilitarian principle I dispute the AIDS priority. The deaths ascribed to AIDS could as easily be ascribed to war going on in Africa currently. It is war, that brings hunger, and hunger that brings desease in the classic cycle. AIDS no doubt makes this worse, but there will always be some desease when people have no food because of war. The wars in southern Africa currently are traceable to US imperial ventures in Zaire in the 70's.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/CIA%20Hits/Zaire_CIAHits.html

Now what if there had been no such destabilisation of southern Africa by the US?

I've discussed extensively why I find this whole sin of omission versus sin of commission distinction irrelevant here and more recently emphasized the very active role of the United States in blocking cheaper drugs for the third world to save lives.

Our intellectual property laws and their imposition on the third world through the TRIPS rules in the 1980s and now through the World Trade Organization is a far deadlier imposition of death than any wars that have happened in recent decades-- far worse than any fixation on gun-based adventures by the US in African wars.

Are you serious about this moral equivalence? Is this just a way of drawing attention to a good cause? Also are you against or for the war in Iraq?

I'm not making a moral equivalence. While I am against the war in Iraq (read the post praising Sheryl Crow and many others and I am a poster at NoWar), I think that the arguments in its favor has some substance a la Hitchens. Allowing children to die because of greed on behalf of pharmaceutical companies has no justification, so is a far more henious and immoral act.

Ok I think I just asked you about Iraq twice by accident, but from my perspective a lot of what you are saying doesn't sound too progressive OR populist so it's a bit puzzling for me and I am wondering about it. Anyway what I mean by "moral equivalence" was this,

"Omission of action is often as deeply evil as deliberate action."

...and now of course you just said this,

"XXX has no justification, so is a far more henious and immoral act."

And the first seems clearly false and the second nonsense to my mind. But what I am saying is -- am I making too much of this? Are you actually saying you believe the two above are moral principles? For example the first one would imply that murder is no worse than letting any one millions of people starve. The second one (where "justification" means "pretext" ie. an excuse which is offered but fails to change the wrongness of the act?) I just can't begin to see.

I said they are moral principles-- failure to act when you have the ability to save lives is as great a moral failing as deliberately killing people. The Good Samaratin rule applies morally.

And those who want to invade Iraq do have some moral arguments on their side, since Saddam Hussein has killed many people, both in Iran and Kuwait, and among his own people, do deposing him arguably could save lives in the long term.

Letting millions die in Africa to boost drug profits has no such moral good on its side, so is a far more evil act.

So yes, those are moral principles that I believe are valid.

I grant the consistency of your position, but I don't share your perceptions.

My political work over the past couple years has been focused on labor and local economic issues--living wage camapigns, higher ed funding, etc. Anti-war activism hasn't diminished the energy going into this kind of work at all. What it has done is bring in large groups of people who were not politically engaged at all before.

Nathan are you much of a philosopher? You really aprove the principles not just the examples of them...?

On this basis you'd have to oppose theft as a crime - in fact the person who had goods stolen should be locked away for not making them available? Murderers would be no different from any other member of society since everyone is equally responsible for the vast majority of deaths.

Unless of course the murderer could come up with some half-assed excuse for killing someone. In that case by principle (2) they would be *less* guilty than ordinary members of society.

Btw the first principle is not the Good Samaritan rule. Jesus said you should help, he didn't say that if you failed to help you were guilty of murder or a crime as immoral as murder.

I actually don't have much hostility to theft by those in desperate need and think that there is a moral obligation to redistribute wealth from those who have excess to those in need. So no inconsistency there. Theft of personal property, which is unneeded by the thief but of great personal value to the victim, is bad, since it harms the victim far more than any justified benefit to the thief could ever allow.

And of course murderers are more responsible, since they have the most power to stop the deaths from their murders. Moral culpability goes with those with the greatest ability to act and who fail to do so.

And murderers are often considered justified in their actions- self-defense being a primary example -- but all of war gets justified on various reasons of higher purpose.

As for the Good Samaratin rule, I'm not sure talking in terms of "guilt" is that useful, but the positive injunction to "Go and do as he did" (Luke 10:37) is there. That positive rule for moral action to save life seems just as strong as the negative prohibition on taking life.

None of these moral rules are that odd-- people act on them pragmatically in all sorts of ways, from decisions on what wars are justified to how we enact public policy.

No one is saying that eg. You should ignore AIDS as an issue, but the principles you are suggesting contradict every basis of law and what's commonly seen as morality in ... well any country I would guess. To my mind it also is counter to basic ideas of justice, namely that people should be punished for doing evil things.

Under your rules no one could be punished because almost everyone would be guilty of mass murder. I think you didn't get my murder point. Since there are millions at risk of dying all the time that most people, certainly most people in America, could have conceivably saved, under what you propose almost every America would be guilty of the equivalent of the mass murder of thousands, perhaps millions of people.

In that situation how would it be possible to judge someone who kills another face to face?

Your position gets no backing from the bible. Certainly Jesus was as radical as these WPP guys could hope to be, saying things like "if you have two shirts give to the one who has none". But the bible also commands people not to steal. There are commandments against theft and murder, and they are punishable.

In law a criminal's motivation is often considered. That's the difference between murder and manslaughter for example. But you would not take this into account at all. It doesn't seem like you are taking into account people's natures as human beings. Your moral principle might make sense in some perfect world but it doesn't in a world with people in it.

Since Jesus has been brought into the discussion, I'd just add that He may have meant that sins of omission were just as bad as sins of commission. In a couple of his parables (one involving a rich man who dies and goes to hell and the other about Judgement Day), the people who are condemned are the ones who could have saved lives and chose not to do so.

Speaking for myself, I despise the term "moral equivalence". It's always brought in when people are discussing two horrible crimes, A and B, and someone then says "Surely you're not saying that B is the moral equivalent of A?"
To me it always comes across as a way of saying that the deaths of some innocent people are somehow more important, more worthy of attention, than the deaths of others.

And usually the "moral equivalence" argument is invoked by conservatives trying to whitewash some American war crime--it's unusual to see it used to pit one American crime against another.