tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post3814827993293361998..comments2024-03-27T17:15:37.606-04:00Comments on Triablogue: Skin in the gameRyanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17809283662428917799noreply@blogger.comBlogger64125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-45606702035506325442016-02-26T12:54:21.014-05:002016-02-26T12:54:21.014-05:00This is just a stepping stone to trans generals an...This is just a stepping stone to trans generals and admirals ordering combat troops *male, female, or other depending on gender-identity* into battle. <br /><br />The obvious problem is the benighted idea of male/female traditional gender roles, so the obvious solution is to speed ahead with the full implementation and enforcement of gender neutrality.CRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03231394164372721485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-51016135474360733472016-02-26T01:59:44.181-05:002016-02-26T01:59:44.181-05:00Lydia, your reaction is simply paranoid. I said: &...Lydia, your reaction is simply paranoid. I said: "As for nonfeministic women, unless you view women has passive little waifs who can only stand by helplessly as they are overtaken by events, it's up to women to get involved in the political process and oppose the coed military."<br /><br />That should be a perfectly unobjectionable statement to anyone who thinks women are capable rational agents. <br /><br />Out of that statement you weave a whole conspiratorial theory about how that begins to look "more and more disturbing" and "downright perverse."<br /><br />To deny that women are "helpless, passive little waifs" is "profoundly disturbing" and "downright perverse."<br /><br />Apparently, I'm supposed to affirm that women really are "helpless, passive little waifs".stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-25098076824529077402016-02-26T01:49:28.615-05:002016-02-26T01:49:28.615-05:00"...as was your repeated, convoluted, and wei..."...as was your repeated, convoluted, and weird attempt to get around acknowledging that non-feminist women harmed by a draft scenario would, in fact, just be victims of it, period, and not to blame for it at all."<br /><br />What you're pleased to brand "convoluted" is a case of me drawing relevant analytical distinctions. I'm doing what you ought to do. You go straight to conscripting women. But there are several possible outcomes, each of which invites political intervention by the electorate:<br /><br />i) A bill mandating a universal draft is proposed in Congress. <br /><br />That might well not pass if Democrats (and Republicans) anticipate a public backlash. If so, that would be a conservative coup in the culture wars. It would be a repudiation of the unisex ideology that underlies the coed military.<br /><br />ii) Democrats in Congress might consider voting for the bill until their angry constituents burn up the phones. <br /><br />iii) The bill might pass, but be vetoed by the president, for the same reasons.<br /><br />iv) The bill might become law, at which point somnambulant voters might finally wake up and say, "What the hell?"<br /><br />v) There might be no public backlash until draft-age American women are officially and individually notified that they must register for the draft. At that point all hell breaks loose.<br /><br />vi) Women become draft dodgers, which becomes a political cause célèbre. The law is repealed. And the effect is to discredit the rationale underlying the coed military. <br /><br />At every stage there's an opportunity for the electorate, including the female voting block, to kill it.<br /><br />And if, in a worse-case scenario, the electorate refuses to exercise its prerogative, then the tactic failed because the electorate is too corrupt. Does that mean we should do nothing to challenge the status quo (coed military)? stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-22227744858168158612016-02-26T01:05:41.034-05:002016-02-26T01:05:41.034-05:00I haven't read through this entire debate in t...I haven't read through this entire debate in the combox. However, I've read large swathes. From what I have read I can only see a couple of viable options, given women already serve in the military today:<br /><br />1. Continue to make pinprick attacks against liberals while liberals continue to tinker with the military in ways which are favorable to them. This may include eventually allowing a universal draft of women. In the end, however, women will serve in the military, but in roles or capacities which ultimately undermine the US military's function or performance. At best, this maintains the status quo. More likely liberals will continue to win inch by inch. Worst case scenario is the US military itself is completely undermined by liberal tinkering and experimentation. As such, this is quite possibly an existential threat against our military and thus our national defense and security. <br /><br />2. Force the issue so that liberal tinkering and experimentation with our armed forces becomes so odious to the public that liberals can't continue. In this respect, I'm entirely agreed with Steve's position.<br /><br />Or is there a third viable option? If so, I'm all ears.rockingwithhawkinghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10550503108269371174noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-36811581431606521432016-02-26T00:49:40.270-05:002016-02-26T00:49:40.270-05:00You say women would be victims. I deny that women ...You say women would be victims. I deny that women are "helpless waifs." You find that "profoundly disturbing".<br /><br />So it's "profoundly disturbing" for me to deny that women are "helpless waifs". Does that mean it would not be disturbing for me to affirm that women are helpless waifs?<br /><br />You explicitly cast women in the role of victims. Doesn't that mean you think they'd be helpless to prevent a universal draft? So how is your own position different than calling women helpless waifs? In substance, you affirm the very thing I deny.<br /><br />You find it "profoundly disturbing" that I view women as strong actors in the political process. You think I should view women as weak?<br /><br />BTW, I grew up around three very strong women. How I sound to you was never my standard of comparison. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-41796161983540495582016-02-25T23:56:47.997-05:002016-02-25T23:56:47.997-05:00Nice to see Nick model confirmation bias. Nice to see Nick model confirmation bias. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-32175086271931723012016-02-25T23:49:35.912-05:002016-02-25T23:49:35.912-05:00a) Since my Facebook feed is not only not public, ...a) Since my Facebook feed is not only not public, but aggressively private, with high privacy settings and a comparatively quite small number of FB friends, it's not interpersonally kosher to quote it in a public setting. Perhaps no one has ever told you this, but that's the case.<br /><br />b) I stand what I said above, to you, in this feed, explicitly. Your repeated, sneering, and downright odd statements that women aren't "helpless waifs" (when I never implied or said that they were) are profoundly disturbing, as was your repeated, convoluted, and weird attempt to get around acknowledging that non-feminist women harmed by a draft scenario would, in fact, just be victims of it, period, and not to blame for it at all. If it bothers you that I am bothered by that, I say frankly, too bad. It's bothersome, and should be, and you should hear what you sound like and how disturbing that is. If I gave you a heads-up relatively nicely, you should be grateful for my restraint, not fossicking around in my Facebook feed to dredge up comments where I *might* have had you in mind when I made them (though mentioning you to no one) and then getting outraged that I would ever dare even *possibly* to think any ill of you. Worry more about whether the shoe fits than about whether I might ever *think* it fits.<br /><br />d) My reluctance to use a phrase like "It is unjust to exempt female officers from combat duty" arose throughout from the fact that such a sentence, to my ear, communicates the idea that "Something must be done" about it or that it must be rectified at all costs, which I emphatically do not agree with. Moreover, I do not agree with a _general_ principle that it would always be _intrinsically_ unjust to have a commander who was exempt from combat duty. One can make up strange, exceptional scenarios in which some blind guy is an incredible strategist or whatever and in which it turns out, surprisingly enough, that he makes a brilliant general. Obviously no one builds a military system around such exceptions, though, and the situation with women in the military is in general a pathological result of the entire mess of the co-ed military. I am, however, highly reluctant to use the same terminology that you use to describe it because of the absolutist connotations that seems to me to have concerning the imperative of doing _something_ to change it, when I grant no such imperative given the actual circumstances.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-29389678971482444002016-02-25T23:45:04.035-05:002016-02-25T23:45:04.035-05:00And the male soldiers I quote at the bottom of my ...And the male soldiers I quote at the bottom of my post don't share your opinion. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-498767100241810652016-02-25T23:33:02.908-05:002016-02-25T23:33:02.908-05:00I for one thought your first comment was right on....I for one thought your first comment was right on. And contra Steve's low blow response, I'm a man: a dad of two girls and a boy. Your comment was 100% right.Nickhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04813599592004928506noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-36300101219550856782016-02-25T22:16:10.812-05:002016-02-25T22:16:10.812-05:00"But I have to say that I'm really intens..."But I have to say that I'm really intensely weary, and actually quite saddened, by your persistent, aggressive, personally insulting manner in pretty much every comment here."<br /><br />And I find your lawyerly modus operandi wearisome. This is your problem Lydia: you're an advocate first and a philosopher second. Good philosophers don't wait for a critic to raise a counterexample to their position. Rather, good philosophers ask themselves if there are obvious counterexamples to their position, then qualify their position to take that into account. Good philosophers anticipate objections. <br /><br />You, however, behave like a lawyer rather than a philosopher. You constantly oversimplify. You constantly fail to consider counterexamples. You wait for me to force concessions from you that you should have made allowance for in your original formulations.<br /><br />For instance, you originally denied that there was any injustice in exempting female officers from combat. It took a lot of time for me to finally extract a grudging concession from you on that score. And that's been your pattern all along.<br /><br />If you wish to have a constructive exchange, be a philosopher first and an advocate second, not the other way around. You're a published philosopher. I shouldn't have to spend so much time drawing basic conceptual distinctions for you. That's something you should be doing from the get-go. <br /><br />Instead, like a lawyer, you're utterly one-sided. You doggedly argue for your side without doing what good philosopher are supposed to do: consider an issue from different angles, then build proper qualifications into their position.<br /><br />For instance, a way you might have framed the debate is to acknowledge the systemic injustice female officers who are exempt from combat, but make this a question of how, in case of conflict, to prioritize competing claims to be treated justly. Present some criteria for how to rank them. <br /><br />Finally, you need to drop the innocent routine. On this very thread you were laying the groundwork to fabricate a malicious narrative about how my position could only be motivated by ill-will. And you made that move explicit on Facebook, although that wasn't in exclusive reference to me:<br /><br />"Being blinded by bitterness…stupid, stupid, stupid…perverse half-borrowing of the idiocy in the name of 'men's rights.' It's creepy…Good sign you're dealing with someone with a misogyny problem…"<br /><br />Compare that to what you said on this thread:<br /><br />"I hesitate to think (really, I do) that you are somehow saying that they deserve what they get because there was some grand scheme of 'banding together' with other women that they didn't implement that *would have worked* to prevent them from being drafted, so obviously they weren't trying hard enough. That would go so far out of the way to be sure, by golly, to blame the women for whatever happens to them, that it would start to look downright perverse…It just looks, and begins to look more and more disturbingly, like you are trying to find some way to say that there is."<br /><br />So spare me the "butter wouldn't melt in your mouth" defense. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-51035078407448174522016-02-25T21:57:22.879-05:002016-02-25T21:57:22.879-05:00I'm certainly implacably opposed to putting wo...I'm certainly implacably opposed to putting women in combat, because I think it will be a disastrous policy, with far more bad consequences than good (if any good).<br /><br />I'm rather surprised that you seem to think some good-outcome version of your ii is a plausible scenario--successfully combat-trained, strong *female* commanders. I won't say it's a logical impossibility, because almost nothing is, but I think it unlikely, and combined with all the crashing and burning and collateral damage (as it were) if there were a few such successes it wouldn't be worth it. And I mean to the men, by the way.<br /><br />I also see a tension between your idea that putting women in combat would "raise the internal pressure on the sorry arrangement until it explodes" and your apparent prediction that doing so will give us successful female commanders with combat experience. After all, if putting women in combat would *work out well*, in practical terms, it wouldn't raise the pressure on the situation! On the one hand you (like me) seem to anticipate that it would lead to very bad outcomes. That's how it's supposed to raise the pressure on the sorry situation until it explodes.<br /><br />I'm not willing to pay that price, including in men's lives. You, it seems, are. In the hopes that it will bring reform in the long term. That hope is not only implausible but worth it, to my mind, and it would be irresponsible for anyone in charge to be a party to the plan. <br /><br />Of course, as it stands, the intent of the DoD is to put women in combat and--you and I both know it--cover up their failures, as their failures and the human cost of the co-ed military have been covered up again and again in other areas. The people who are _actually_ proposing this aren't going to blink and are all prepared to keep it propped up indefinitely at whatever cost. They are gearing up for that right now.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-79226450329760929912016-02-25T21:43:41.320-05:002016-02-25T21:43:41.320-05:00"I can tell you right now that giving them co..."I can tell you right now that giving them combat experience for which they are ill-qualified is not going to make them competent. It may, however, make them and the men around them dead."<br /><br />1. Lydia, you're not trying very hard. There are three scenarios:<br /><br />i) Not having female commanders<br /><br />ii) Having female commanders with combat experience. <br /><br />iii) Having female commanders without combat experience<br /><br />(i) is best. That, however, is not the status quo. Due to the coed military, we have female commanders. Given the status quo, it's a choice between (ii) and (iii). <br /><br />You think a commander at CENTCOM or the Pentagon whose knowledge of combat is limited to computer simulated war games isn't going to get men killed when she orders them into battle? <br /><br />Moreover, not only does combat experience give a commander essential hands-on know-how, but it also helps to weed out graduates who have no actual talent combat from natural leaders. Indeed, that's what field commissions are based on. <br /><br />2. An alternative is to challenge the status quo (coed army). However, you haven't offered any practical proposal along those lines. Instead, you've been implacably hostile to raising the internal pressure on that sorry arrangement until it explodes. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-91517536680128668162016-02-25T21:01:25.291-05:002016-02-25T21:01:25.291-05:00For what it is worth, and for the record, I do apo...For what it is worth, and for the record, I do apologize for the sarcasm of my first comment on this thread. It would have been much better had I waited to post and written a non-sarcastic comment making the point I wanted to make.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-56152762620194791272016-02-25T21:00:44.870-05:002016-02-25T21:00:44.870-05:00"What is odd to me is that you do not address..."What is odd to me is that you do not address the issue of the further harm done by integrating women into combat units."<br /><br />Because that's yet another one of your simplistic objections. Sometimes the way to make a situation better is to make it worse. That may sound contradictory until we tease it out a bit: sometimes the only way to make a situation better in the long-term is to make it worse (or let it worsen) in the short-term. <br /><br />Voters are crisis-driven. Many voters have to be face-to-face with a crisis before they act. <br /><br />The alternative is to let it stay bad for years or decades, maybe becoming incrementally even worse over time. <br /><br />For instance, you had stupid voters who elected a lesbian mayor of Houston. It's only when the political establishment tried to impose a transgender ordinance on the citizens that they rebelled. It had to get worse before it got better.<br /><br />Or take Obamacare. As passed, the bill contained timebombs. So HHS unilaterally rewrote deadlines and made partisan, ad hoc exceptions to delay the politically onerous consequences. <br /><br />But it would be preferable to let Obamacare self-destruct. Unfortunately, the only way for some voters to figure out how bad something is is for them to personally experience how bad it is. They have to get their fingers burned.stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-41751037048909543042016-02-25T17:06:51.129-05:002016-02-25T17:06:51.129-05:00Oddly I actually LOL'd at the paraplegics anal...Oddly I actually LOL'd at the paraplegics analogy. Thankfully I was alone in a hotel room traveling on business when I did, so I was spared the potentially awkward and embarrassing need to explain my sudden outburst to a curious neighbor. CRhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03231394164372721485noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-51246041949838668102016-02-25T16:44:18.439-05:002016-02-25T16:44:18.439-05:00There are various possible scenarios that could fa...There are various possible scenarios that could fall under the category of "baiting homosexual businesses." I've given you my opinion on a couple of them (both of them come up with by me). As my responses have shown, sometimes doing so _would_ be wrong, though I would be inclined to say not as disastrous, and not as wrong, as placing women in combat. I would have preferred that you would have specified exactly what you had in mind, because the rightness or wrongness of the actions will vary with the scenarios, so it would be preferable to have known from the beginning which ones _you_ were advocating. In any event, such "baiting" could be carried out (by people trying to create test cases) on an individual basis, so that just adds to the multiple disanalogies between the situations. For example, one could choose only to "bait" homosexual providers who, one had reason to believe, were activists and hence more deserving of such baiting.<br /><br />But I have to say that I'm really intensely weary, and actually quite saddened, by your persistent, aggressive, personally insulting manner in pretty much every comment here. If you look back, or if anyone looks back with a fair eye, I think such an observer will see that beyond the initial sarcasm and anger in my very first comment, I have not met your personal attacks in like kind. I have debated and presented my reasons, repeatedly, but I have not attacked your integrity.<br /><br />Moreover, you have known me for quite some time on the Internet and have had, I think, ample opportunity to know that I am not a disingenuous person, that I fight hard in Internet debates, but fair. I have a temper, but I try to control it. In fact, it is generally my honesty that gets me in trouble through lack of tact. That is, of course, a fault, but it is not the fault, or the set of faults (deliberate misrepresentation, disingenuousness, etc.) that you keep persistently attributing to me in this thread. And that's highly unfortunate. I think we could have debated these matters much more profitably without the constant, repeated sneering and personal attacks. Moreover, there's a kind of recklessness toward Internet friendships manifested in that sort of repeated, relentless, personal attack, that refusal to climb down and calm down and stop taking personal pot-shots, and that is also really sad.<br /><br />I've said my say repeatedly here, and I think I've made some really good arguments, and I don't think you have refuted them. Some of them you do not appear to me to have grappled with. But I can't _make_ you do so, and it's getting darned depressing coming back again and again just to pick up more insults, more of this "you're feigning x" and "this is more of your disingenuousness" and "this is another of your cute little rhetorical tricks" and on and on. There's really no profit in doing so. My arguments are here for others to read if interested. I wish it could have gone differently.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-5293980820468922582016-02-25T15:26:31.734-05:002016-02-25T15:26:31.734-05:00"Incompetent commanders with no combat experi..."Incompetent commanders with no combat experience isn't something to play around with." I can tell you right now that giving them combat experience for which they are ill-qualified is not going to make them competent. It may, however, make them and the men around them dead.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-85275453125098469672016-02-25T14:14:38.820-05:002016-02-25T14:14:38.820-05:00i) The status quo (coed military) generates a mora...i) The status quo (coed military) generates a moral dilemma. Given a moral dilemma, there may be no unproblematic options. Given a moral dilemma, there may be no one clearly preferable way to resolve the dilemma. That's what makes it a moral dilemma in the first place. Each resolution has unenviable tradeoffs.<br /><br />You can treat the coed military as irreformable in practice, accept the fact that this engenders systematic injustice, and simply try to mitigate the evils of an unjust system.<br /><br />Or you can challenge the coed military by demanding consistency, in the hopes that the electorate will rebel when the experiment becomes manifestly untenable or alienates too many voters. <br /><br />ii) And, no, I don't "just keep saying over and over and over again that the current situation is unjust."<br /><br />Beyond the question of justice I've mentioned the problem of incompetent commanders. What makes them incompetent is their lack of combat experience. <br /><br />I've also mentioned the problem of commanders whom soldiers can't respect, because the commanders put their men at risk while exempting themselves from the same risks.<br /><br />But as is your wont, you chronically misrepresent my actual argument by oversimplifying the argument, as if there's only one principle in play. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-32464975137731076732016-02-25T13:11:18.720-05:002016-02-25T13:11:18.720-05:00"Combat isn't something to play around wi..."Combat isn't something to play around with."<br /><br />Systemic injustice isn't something to play around with.<br /><br />Incompetent commanders with no combat experience isn't something to play around with. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-51103848458394208392016-02-25T13:06:23.996-05:002016-02-25T13:06:23.996-05:00Lydia, this isn't your first time around the t...Lydia, this isn't your first time around the track. Surely you're aware of critics who have, in fact, proposed parallel actions. If Christian businesses are compelled to service homosexual weddings, then let's make homosexual businesses service events which they find offensive. Consistently enforcing a policy can be a way to repeal the policy, when the policy begins to antagonize too many voters or special interest groups. <br /><br />So for you to feign incomprehension of the scenarios is unconvincing. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-77134380994609003882016-02-25T13:05:24.390-05:002016-02-25T13:05:24.390-05:00" the choice is between requiring him to do w..." the choice is between requiring him to do what the job demands or else lose his job."<br /><br />This is not the only real choice. It depends crucially on what the job is and on whether you _should_ being trying to induce that person to do those particular actions. If you happen to know that the person is not capable of doing them well and that lives are at stake and more harm will be done, not only to him but to others, if he attempts it, then you should not try to press him to make the attempt. That would be reckless and wrong.<br /><br />In that situation, if you are not _allowed_ to fire him for being incapable of doing the further duties, you may just be saddled with the unjust, messy situation. But since you are not given the option of reforming the whole thing, it would be _worse_ to try to get him actually to go out and do what he cannot do well, where that will do more harm.<br /><br />Combat isn't something to play around with. It would be less bad for women to be allowed to "shirk" combat than for them to be put into it. Less bad for *everybody*, men included. Sure, they then shouldn't be commanders either, but those in charge aren't being given the option to change that part of it. And pushing the women to go into combat will only expand the harm done.<br /><br />The concept of conditional duties that you are employing cannot do the work you are trying to make it do. See my example of the paraplegics, above. The DoD has the responsibility to think in terms of military readiness, of the safety of all troops, and the like. Assigning women to ground combat is bad for all of this. Even the concept of conditional duties cannot require them to make that assignment, and unfortunately in the current situation they are not being given the option of wider reform.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-23192057310752706972016-02-25T12:59:34.988-05:002016-02-25T12:59:34.988-05:00" I've never said that government should ..." I've never said that government should never do anything that might indirectly harm the innocent! For some reason you've tried to attribute such a principle to me on the grounds of _one_ of my objections to a bill that would require women to register for the draft. But that is not my position and never has been."<br /><br />Instead, you failed to consider obvious counterexamples, because that would complicate your argument and make it harder for you to make your case. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-58595858395883654332016-02-25T12:58:36.773-05:002016-02-25T12:58:36.773-05:00You appear to be saying, quite explicitly in this ...You appear to be saying, quite explicitly in this latest comment, that in our situation, it *is* a requirement of justice in so absolute a sense that to exempt them from combat in this situation is *wrong*. <br /><br />Sometime we do not have the option to rectify an injustice. If it would harm military performance to lift the combat exemption, then it is not wrong to fail to do so. The current situation of injustice that you highlight may have to be left in place if the only option given to some person to change it is to lift the female combat exemption. What is odd to me is that you do not address the issue of the further harm done by integrating women into combat units. You just keep saying over and over and over again that the current situation is unjust and _assuming_ that, if the only option given for changing that is lifting the combat exemption, then that is incumbent upon those in charge to do.<br /><br />But sometimes one is saddled with command over an unjust situation but given no wise, moral options that will make it better. That does happen. In that case, it's better to leave the situation as it is than to worsen it in the name of increased justice.Lydia McGrewhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00423567323116960820noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-5577072858733542652016-02-25T12:56:35.878-05:002016-02-25T12:56:35.878-05:00"The actual parallel in the firefighter case ..."The actual parallel in the firefighter case would be _sending women into burning buildings under the very same circumstances as men_."<br /><br />Naturally you're laboring to dodge the comparison. But the comparison needn't be analogous at every point, only at the relevant point. The question at issue, as you yourself framed it, is the claim that if it's wrong for X to do something, then it's wrong for X to be required to do something. I provided a counterexample, which you don't challenged directly, thereby conceding that your original argument fails.<br /><br />"This would mean not sending them into a burning building in a situation where he would send a man. It means not deploying them as firefighters in the 'front lines,' because you know they aren't strong enough to do the job well. There are lives at stake."<br /><br />You continue to duck the issue of conditional obligations. It may be wrong for someone to do a particular job. If, however, he takes the job, then it's incumbent on him to either do the job he signed up for or else lose his job. <br /><br />The real choice is not between letting him keep the job, but allowing him to shirk basic job requirements; rather, the choice is between requiring him to do what the job demands or else lose his job.<br /><br />If a Muslim applies for a job as a municipal bus driver, but refuses to allow kafirs to ride on the bus, it was wrong for him to be a municipal bus driver in the first place. However, having become a bus driver, he incurs a conditional liability to do his job. <br /><br />The proper choice is not to let him keep his job while refusing to service kafirs, but to either require that he not discriminate against paying customers or else be fired. It is wrong to give Muslim bus drivers an exemption just because they are offended by certain kinds of passengers. <br /><br />"*Ideally*, the whole co-ed firefighter thing would be dismantled."<br /><br />And one way of challenging the coed military is to force a consistent policy, to provoke a popular backlash. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6789188.post-56119994856648669132016-02-25T12:38:45.225-05:002016-02-25T12:38:45.225-05:00"Where it would seriously harm military perfo..."Where it would seriously harm military performance, it is not a moral requirement for commanders to deploy people in a certain way. Hence, it cannot be a requirement of justice. Hence, it is wrong-headed to state that women _should_ be sent into combat even under the present circumstances."<br /><br />The way you frame the issue deliberately skews the real issue. This isn't just a question of "sending" women into combat. At most, that's only one of several scenarios.<br /><br />There's also the issue of women who volunteer for combat units. Likewise, there's the addition issue of female commanders. <br /><br />It is unjust for female officers to order men into battle if the officers are exempt from the same hazards. <br /><br />And, unsurprisingly, you once again evade the issue of conditionality. The question at issue is not whether it's an "requirement of justice" absolutely, but whether it's a requirement of justice given a situation where you already have women who pursue military careers. stevehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16547070544928321788noreply@blogger.com