Principles For Bad Guys

See also PrinciplesForGoodGuys.

This page was originally intended to show that the USA was being hypocritical with its standards. The context of the discussion against the pain of the September, 11, 2001 was too much for some of the wiki participants who changed both this page and the PrinciplesForGoodGuys. The original author wisely realized that this discussion was nearly impossible to have at that time and stopped trying to mold the pages back to his original intent.

Because of this, an interesting discussion arises about whether it is reasonable for the strongest, most powerful nation in the world should have different standards for itself in some areas from those it has for other nations. At first, this sounds unreasonable. One very popular ethical standard is that the same standards should apply evenly to all. But perhaps at a higher level of abstractions, we could find the proper standard that when instantiated at the lower level looks different. Is this mere justification or is it possibly valid?

For example, no citizen should have a gun but police can have guns. Is this an example of an invalid standard? Either people can have guns or they can't? Or is there a higher standard that might make this valid?

This is an important subject. It should have it's own page, but probably better not on this Wiki. (May be WhyClublet?)

Principles that apply to the bad guys:

Intolerance
Aggression
Revenge
Claiming to be the good guy

We don't need an explanation of what is bad, and this also wasn't the intention of the original creator.

The original creator seemed intent on furthering the pain the USA felt.

No, he wanted to make people think more about what are the best solutions. But he had a hard time making his intent clear, and probably was being very insensitive and careless with his rhetoric. See PrinciplesForGoodGuys.

Countries are not either Good Guys or Bad Guys. Only individuals can be.

Who is in the position to claim that he is good, when even Christ didn't accept to be called so? And who is in the position to classify someone else as bad? People act in good or bad ways - and so do nations.

Who dares to claim that he is good, when even Christ didn't accept to be called so?

Not everyone accepts Christ as the ultimate example of good.

And who dares to classify someone else as bad?

Who? I do. -- MikeSmith

If you make no distinction between good and bad - acceptable and unacceptable - then what do you care who dares?

Actions are acceptable or unacceptable, not human beings. All human beings are children of God or whatever.

I like this "or whatever" part! Hilarious!

Some rules:

Find a scapegoat to blame. (If there's no cause for blame, burn something to the ground and blame it on the scapegoat.)
Remember TheSecretOfPower
Find and cultivate a master propagandist. See [Goebels, 193x]
Free speech isn't generally a good thing for your cause. Intimidate or buy the press & media.
If you have to work with a largely free press & media, use lawyers assertively.
Remember the power of language. You can get literally get away with murder by finding a socially acceptable term for it. (Remember you don't do "propaganda", it's "re-education".)
Under the right conditions most people can be made to do terrible things. See [Milgram, 196x] (The electric shock experiments.)

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