Hi David & MD,
I really don't know where this subject is going to end up, but I can't help
interjecting some comments on your recent post, David.
In an English class one time we discussed 3 different ways of forming an
argument. Logos is an appeal to logic, ethos an appeal to ethics or values,
and pathos is an emotional appeal, such as Nixon's Checkers speech. We learned
that an appeal to logic is the only one of the 3 that doesn't have some
manipulative element to it.
----- Original Message -----
From: David Buchanan <DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org>
To: <moq_discuss@moq.org>
Sent: Sunday, July 25, 1999 5:54 PM
> ... And the bombing of Hiroshima clearly demonstrates a lack
> of concern for human rights. There's not much point in mentioning our
> strongest ally, Joe Stalin.
Stalin our strongest ally? Given the context of the paragraph, in saying that
Stalin was our "strongest ally" you seem to imply that he was our most
supportive ally, when actually he was our least supportive (and least trusted)
ally, stongest in a military power sense only. You seem to be trying to imply
that our behavior was 'bad' because we had Stalin for an ally, and not just any
ally, but our 'strongest' ally. I may be completely misreading, but I think
this is an emotional argument, given what we know of Stalin's activities now,
designed to stir feelings of revulsion for America.
>
> Clark, I won't even try to turn the tables and use the "you had to be
> there" argument in defence of my view of events. I won't ask you to
> imagine what it would have been like "to be there" in Hiroshima when the
> bomb went off. I won't ask you to picture your entire hometown bursting
> into flames. To say "you had to be THERE" is just too cruel.
In a previous post Clark said "you had to be there" to understand the tenor of
the times in which the war took place. Your response here, however, completely
ignores that point and attempts to make an emotional appeal. Of course it was
pretty bad news to be in Hiroshima on August 8th, 1945! Does anyone disagree
with that? It was also pretty unpleasant to be in a concentration camp, on the
Batan death march, on a US destroyer hit by a kamakazi, in Dresden during the
firebombings, etc. That was not Clark's point.
His point was that our culture was quite different in 1945 than it is today.
The kinds of things people would find acceptable then are not necessarily
acceptable now. I can give you one small example from my own family's oral
history. My grandmother, a good bit Cherokee, had a brother who applied for an
"Indian Card" around this time. If you could prove enough Indian blood, you
could get on the Indian roles. People on the roles qualified for a free
"Indian house" courtesy of the BLM (Bureau of Land Management) on a
reservation. However, at that time it was quite shameful to admit you had
Indian blood. So my Grandmother never applied. Her brother, who did, however,
never heard another word from the BLM after turning in his application - and he
never questioned it - because (get this) he figured they "knew what they were
doing". Imagine that today. People are anxious to claim even the slightest
drop of Indian blood, and no doubt a savvy Indian of the '90's would certainly
follow up to find out what happened to their paperwork!
>
> And Roger makes a good point. Most "things" are multi-layered. But if we
> can't sort these things out, then the moral codes and consequently the
> entire MOQ is rendered useless. If we can't see what values are at stake
> in any given situation, then we can make no moral judgements about those
> situations. That's an impossible and paralyzing state of affairs.
So, my thoughts on it are that before you can use the MOQ to decide what's
right or wrong about a situation you first must make every effort to understand
the culture and social level extant at the time. It is never safe to assume
that a society, even your own, is the same now as it was then.
Does this make any sense?
Best wishes to you, David. I'm just trying to clear things up.
- Mary
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