The real difficulty of making a moral decision is, as I have said before, that of finding some action to which one is prepared to commit oneself, and which at the same time one is prepared to accept as exemplifying a principle of action binding on anyone in like circumstances. This is what makes the moral life, for one who takes it seriously, so appallingly difficult.
(R. M. Hare, Freedom and Reason [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963], 73)
Here is the text of Bernard Lewis‘s 2007 Irving Kristol Lecture.
Sean Pelette just informed me that Iggy and the Stooges will be performing live on National Public Radio this evening. Here is more information. Check it out! The Stooges will knock your socks off.
Addendum: I listened to over an hour of the concert on NPR.org. The Stooges sounded just like they did 30-odd years ago! Iggy was his usual profane and unpredictable self. I hope you caught some of it.
To the Editor:
In “More Than a Feeling,” you say that “President Bush and his advisers have made a lot of ridiculous charges about critics of the war in Iraq: they’re unpatriotic, they want the terrorists to win, they don’t support the troops, to cite just a few.”
Fair enough. But the war critics have likewise made a lot of ridiculous charges about Mr. Bush and his team: that they purposely lied to start a war for personal reasons, that they are the real terrorists and so on. Such charges are a daily staple in the news media.
You also say that war critics whose children are in Iraq are not too emotional to form valid judgments about the war.
Fine, but then neither are Mr. Bush or Vice President Dick Cheney unqualified to make war decisions just because their own children are not fighting in Iraq, as many critics have charged.
In short, there are plenty of ridiculous charges on both sides. Shouldn’t you also highlight the absurd charges of the war critics when you condemn the absurd charges of war supporters?
Mark R. Godburn
Sheffield, Mass., April 4, 2007
Note from KBJ: This is not an April Fool’s joke, peeps. The preceding letter really did appear in The New York Times.
If this isn’t the best album ever made, then I’m a dung beetle‘s grandmother.
