I have on occasion said that analytic philosophy can and should be used to deal with the absolute mush that so many on the left have for brains these days. This is certainly true of the recent incident in which Chelsea Clinton was attacked by leftists for her rhetoric because it somehow caused the massacre in New Zealand. This is mind-boggling, of course. She criticized Ilhan Omar for being anti-Semitic, but according to leftist logic she herself must be Islamophobic because she criticized a Muslim. All of this is just so distressingly stupid.
At this point, we definitely need some hard-headed analytic philosophers to force them to consider the implications of what they are saying. For example, here are some points for them to ponder:
• What exactly is your conception of blameworthiness? The ordinary conception follows the legal conception, which is that someone is blameworthy if he or she actually committed this massacre, and that the only others who are blameworthy are those who deliberately planned it, deliberately financed it, or deliberately helped with it. But everyone else is off the hook.
Why should we abandon this conception?
• Your conception seems to be nothing other than “if people I like are slaughtered, I can blame any one of my enemies” or else “if people I like are slaughtered, I can blame anyone who ever said anything against that type of people.” Why should anyone else accept such a ridiculous conception?
• If you can blame Chelsea Clinton for the massacre of Muslims in New Zealand, isn’t it then fair for your opponents to blame you for the recent massacre of Christians by Muslims in Nigeria?
• Are you or your allies ever to blame for anything? If so, give an example. If not, does that mean you are morally perfect human beings?
• What if the person you are blaming has explicitly condemned all political violence? Do you think they are still to blame?
• The West has been largely free of religious violence (except in Northern Ireland), but that changed with the fatwa against Salman Rushdie. Since it was Muslims who introduced religious violence into our culture, isn’t it fair to blame them for this incident?
• Some people in China have more or less approved of the attack, saying that it was about time that Westerners stood up for themselves. (See a comment by J.Ross at this post for examples.) What do you think?
I’m sure that any competent analytic philosopher could come up with a lot of other questions for these people.
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