I was listening to NPR's Talk of the Nation the other day, wondering when the next caller to mention Ron Paul not getting enough exposure (someone needs to do a study on how often his name was brought up on NPR call in shows. There was a stretch there where someone would call up and mention him on any show, no matter what the topic. "Do you have a question for famed French Chef Jaques Bicotierre?" "Yes, what does he think of Ron Paul not getting enough media attention?" Seriously, the man who needs to be pissed is Mike Gravel. I don't think even he realizes that he's running anymore. The same people who woke up Fred Thompson need to find him and let him know.)
Where was I? Oh, hijacking my own blog post. The point of this, after the jump.
So this guy show up as a guest, and for the next half hour or so I'm pretty much convinced that he's my guru. I need to go buy his book, because what he's saying just makes sense. That your situation ethical choices depend on your situation, and that it's more expedient to help people's situation than try to get them to react morally in any certain situation.
I think it really struck me because I'm currently reading The Bloody Shirt: Terror After Appomattox, a book about how badly we managed to screw up reconstruction in the South, and basically how we missed a huge opportunity to ease our race relations in one fell swoop. It's the most depressing historical read I've had since Max Hasting's Armageddon, which dealt with the Eastern Front in Europe in 1945 (not a good time to be Polish or German.) Both books reference people doing absolutely horrific things to each other, and in the back of my mind I'm always wondering what I would do in the same situation.
I'm looking forward to reading the book, Experiments in Ethics, which I'll be picking up on my way home. One step closer to true enlightenment, through science.
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