Well, actually, that's NOT what Tom said. He said that, by the
standard that ONLY the person who actually fires the gun is guilty,
Pol Pot isn't guilty, because he had a hired corps of murderers to do
his killing for him.
Tom's main point was that any participant along the chain of evil
events shares the guilt; so BOTH Pol Pol AND his cruel assassins are
evil.
Anyway, that's why a lot of us find it problematic when corporations
and politicians embrace courses of actions that, in the end, result
in really bad outcomes for a lot of people. For example, there are
pretty substantial stats that 3,000 people die from lack of insurance
every three months--that's four 9/11's per year. What does this say
about the efforts of the insurance industry and certain politicians
to scuttle insurance reform bills in Congress? They aren't
equivalent to Osama Bin Laudin, but are they entirely innocent?
Another example: I recently met a woman at the bus stop who had a
broken wrist similar to mine. I had surgery, and my wrist healed
perfectly. This woman's insurance wouldn't pay for her surgery. She
has a permanently crippled hand and constant pain; she will never
work again. (Given her level of education, there are no jobs she
could be hired for that don't require the use of two hands.) She
may well die early because of poverty and ongoing complications of
her injury. Was the insurance company's refusal to pay for her
surgery, equivalent to Pol Pot's conduct? No. Was it right? What
they did to her was entirely legal, and they had a pretty good idea
of what would happen to her if they refused.
Evil? You be the judge.
--Constance Warner
P.S.: it would be nice if we could pay for our own surgery, but when
I had a very simple broken wrist, the cost of repairing it was more
than I earned last year.
On Nov 3, 2009, at 12:20 PM, mike wrote:
I never gave a set of standards, Tom, but then you know that. And
I'm not
surprised a leftist like you would consider Pot free of evil, the
track
record for progressives embracing guys like this are abundant.
On Tue, Nov 3, 2009 at 10:07 AM, tjpa <t...@tjpa.com> wrote:
By your standards I don't know that Pol Pot would have been
considered
evil. He merely gave the orders. Other people followed them so the
evil is
on those other people, not on Pol Pot.
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