Re: and this is from, um, an e.u. member

begin  Tim Jansen's  quote:

| There are 'traditional' ways of handling that. If someone breaks
| the law he can be punished. But in this case it seems like the
| person did not break the law. So what do you do with a person that
| you want to get rid of? You say that he acts against the interest
| of the state and effectively ban him. Sounds like a cheap way of
| getting rid of your political opponents. Certainly nicer than what
| the Iraq did with them. But right? I dont think so..

that is where two issues cannot be escaped: motivation and degree. for 
as long as we live in an imperfect world, issues of good and bad will 
arise -- perfect freedom is possible only in conjunction with perfect 
responsibility. and as is always the case, the perfect can be a 
bigger enemy of the good than is evil. this encompasses, literally, 
everything. had developers waited until kde was "perfect" to release 
it, it would never be released. nor would they then have anything to 
do, because perfection equals paralysis -- any movement therefrom 
could by definition be only toward the imperfect.

now, that's fairly high falutin' stuff to bring into this sort of 
discussion, but it is so fundamental that to avoid it is to miss the 
only road map we have. our choices are between good and bad, though 
in practice it comes down almost always to good and better, or, put 
differently, the lesser of evils. only with that foundation can 
anything very useful be discussed.

returning to the instant case. here we have a fellow who, according to 
the report, which i have no reason to doubt, is wanted in yemen on 
terrorism charges, and apparently there are similar charges pending 
against him in egypt. perhaps from his point of view his actions are 
good and right. certainly from my point of view they are not.

for the "good" he seeks to come to pass, i would need at minimum to 
become islamist and probably would need to be killed. the "good" i 
seek is for this not to come to pass. how, then, to reconcile the 
two? can we escape some common definition of "good"? are we not stuck 
in a place where his freedom implies the ending of my freedom? (and 
remember, we're not going to have "perfect freedom" in this world.)

in that people are going to define "good" differently, surely we need 
to establish -- as i believe we largely have -- some basic attributes 
that a thing must have in order to be thought of as "good," don't you 
agree? and i think, and i suspect that upon reflection you'll agree, 
that any group of attributes falling into this larger definition must 
include acknowledgement that things which would otherwise be 
universally considered evil can be embraced when they are necessary 
to prevent even greater evil, and that one attribute of that which 
may be thought of as "good" would be pursuit of the least evil. which 
is to say the recognition that in this world "good" and "perfect" do 
not and cannot coincide.
-- 
dep

http://www.linuxandmain.com -- outside the box, barely within
the envelope, and no animated paperclip anywhere.

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