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mmmmm! [you'd never guess I have Jewish blood in my maverick veins!]
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veteran
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On the other hand, or side, is a "martyr" still a martyr when he dies blowing up complete strangers in a crowded marketplace, or children on a schoolbus?
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No, I totally agree with you Bob. Actually the serious point that underlies my smartass question is this: if truth and other high values on which civilised society depends are to have credible meaning, does it not mean it is imperative that all men and women of sensitivity stay on rigorous guard against the depradation of debased language? In particular, loaded value judgements should be resisted unless thay are clear and overt. For example, in my personal system of belief, when the IRA blow up defenceless people without regard to their creed, colour, beliefs or even basic humanity, they are performing an act of irredeemable evil and the term murderer is the only fitting one to use. Conversely, when the UK government sends marksmen to shoot down Irish civilians on the rock of Gibralter in cold blood, in my view they too are committing callous murder. There is no escape from the language. There must be no escape. When a Palestinian kills and maims other human beings, it is an abhorrent act that should be denounced as murder; when Israeli agents or armed forces perform the same illegal acts it should carry exactly the same label.
Personally, I also feel the evil done by states is always more reprehensible still, because they owe, through the custodianship of power, a greater duty of care to all those living within the ambit of the exercise of such power. Which is just where I hoped to challenge some interesting discussion...
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I appreciate what you are saying, Mav. Funny, I had recently decided I wouldn't touch a topic in this forum with a ten-foot pole. But your angle is one I do have a comment on.
We know how to handle/punish individuals for crimes (or at least most civilized nations have statutes that do their best). How are nations punished for thier crimes? As a USn, I do feel at least some culpability for what my nation does to other nations, to our own citizens, to the environment, etc..
In short, we have a word for a matyr, an assassin, a murderer, and so forth. But what do we call that system that produces these en masse or leads them to battle? And what are these people themselves guilty of? Patriotism?
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Mav...Amen! Any random act of violence that targets innocent people in the guise of any so-called "cause," be it nationalistic, racial, religious, tribal, or class, is cold-blooded murder, pure and simple! No qualifiers here...no excuses! And is equally repulsive...whomever, wherever, however!  On a lighter note: Al Gored returned from Europe today sporting a full beard!
See his beard?
Ain't it weird?
Don't be sceared,
It's just a beard.
--George Carlin (I have to admit, Al's beard does look sublimely ridiculous!) 
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standing shoulder-to-shoulder...
Just retrieved this quote which should also be familiar to our brethren & sistren hereAWADabouts:
If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.
George Orwell (1903-1950)
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In reply to:
In short, we have a word for a martyr, an assassin, a murderer, and so forth. But what do we call that system that produces these en masse or leads them to battle? And what are these people themselves guilty of? Patriotism?
One such system was called National Socialism. At Nuremburg, it was decided that those people were guilty of murder and other "crimes against humanity" and they were punished accordingly. There are trials now going on at The Hague, and someone was sentenced just this week, for the same thing.
There are two difficulties with this, however. The first is that it is seldom possible to bring such culprits to book. Pol Pot and his unspeakable cohorts were and have never been held accountable or punished for their incredible crimes against the Cambodians, and there are plenty of other examples of totally inhuman behavior unpunished, as in the Sudan, Afghanistan, etc. The other difficulty is that it is often a question of who wins a war. If Hitler had won the war, or even been able to negotiate some kind of armistice, there would, of course, have been no Nuremburg trials and he would have gotten away with what is arguably the worst conduct in the history of the world.
There is no escaping the inevitable observation that much depends on whose ox is gored. The Civil War / War Between the States, was fought by one side motivated (at least in part) by a zeal to right the terrible wrong of slavery; while the other side saw themselves as defending their right to secede from the Union if the rest of the states refused to cease meddling in affairs which the various states had an exclusive right to decide without interference from the federal government. When all reasonable efforts to settle this controversy politically had been exhausted, a resort to arms was inevitable. And when the war was over, there were those who wanted to treat Lee and Davis in the same way the US treated the surviving Nazis; but, fortunately for us, cooler and wiser heads prevailed.
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Yes--but
Lee house and grounds, Arlington-- was made into a cemetary-- the dead of the war where burried at his door steps.
Lee was offered the command of the Union army at the begining of the war-- but felt he must be true to his state..
historians have pointed out a language shift-- before the civil war the common phrase was "these United States" after the war it was "The United States" -- and the idea of a national identity was formed.. no longer citizens of New York or Virginia, we became citizens of the United States..
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