Search This Blog

Monday, July 04, 2011

The evil of honesty.

I was intrigued by a comment that followed Yid with a Lid’s “Confessions of a Jew Basher (Eric Boehlert is Almost Right)” that mentioned the problem with people who set up one virtue to follow at all costs.

For example, if one chose to be honest, no matter what the consequences, one commits all sorts of grave errors, such as telling an axe-wielding maniac which way his screaming victim has fled. The sensible person would try to misdirect the maniac, but the honest-at-all-costs person tells the maniac the truth, puts the victim in grave danger, and walks away saying to himself, "I've been a good boy today-- how can God find fault with me for having told the truth?"

This is the kind of virtue that leads inexorably to extermination camps and genocide. After all, exterminating the evil ones is the ultimate societal good.  It’s the decision to prosecute the CIA interrogators because you can. Given the statistic that thanks to the complexity of the criminal code people commit about three felonies a day, the Javerts among us can arrest each of us and prosecute all of us and feel virtuous.

No comments: