Talk:Moral equivalence
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
Moral equivalence is part of WikiProject Palestine - a team effort dedicated to building and maintaining comprehensive, informative, balanced articles related to Palestine on Wikipedia. Join us by visiting the project page where you can add your name to the list of members and contribute to the discussion. This template adds articles to Category:WikiProject Palestine articles. |
| NB: Assessment ratings and other indicators given below are used by the Project in prioritizing and managing its workload. | |
| Start | This article has been rated as Start-Class on the Project's quality scale. |
| Mid | This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the Project's importance scale. |
 |
After rating the article, please provide a short summary on the article's ratings summary page to explain your ratings and/or identify the strengths and weaknesses. |
 |
This article is within the scope of the WikiProject Philosophy, which collaborates on articles related to philosophy. To participate, you can edit this article or visit the project page for more details. | ||||||||
| Start | This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale. | ||||||||
| ??? | This article has not yet received an importance rating on the importance scale. | ||||||||
|
|||||||||
Contents |
[edit] Page one
'there can be no moral or ethical hierarchy decided between two sides in a conflict, nor in the actions or tactics of the two sides.'
This first paragraph is not very illuminating. The "explanation" needs its own explanation. Can you at least cite the source of this quote? It sounds like if I accuse my opponent of "moral equivalence" I am saying that, in this situation, he is morally equivalent to his enemy? Or am I saying that he belives in any given conflict both sides are equally bad? The latter sounds like a very untenable position.
- They accuse those who describe acts of Palestinian terrorism, such as suicide bombing (many of which are against civilians) and the retaliatory acts the Israeli security forces as equally reprehensible of arguing for "moral equivalence."*
This is very hard to parse. I interpret it as:
Person A: The Palestinians and Israelis are equally reprehensible.
Person B: You're arguing for moral equivalence!
So if I accuse my opponent of "arguing for moral equivalence", I say he has the idea that both sides are equal (implying that this is a *mistaken* idea). In general, or in this particular situation? The latter is not a very strong claim for B (since A would readily agree that this is his idea), while the former sounds like straw man.
confused person, 24 Aug 05
I'm afraid I don't think much of Stevertigo's edits to this article. They are jargon-laden, confusing and contain the usual WP anti-American bias. I will have a go at rewriting them when I get time. Adam 07:55, 15 Feb 2004 (UTC)
[edit] Liberal
- In the Cold War context, the term was and is most commonly used by political conservatives, as an implied accusation of logical fallacy, for liberal' criticisms of United States foreign policy and military conduct. Some liberals contend that US power in the Cold War was used only to pursue an economically-driven agenda.
What does liberal mean here? I would guess that is is an American English usage of the word not Commonwealth English usage. But whatever it is it is confusing. --Philip Baird Shearer 13:54, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Traditional liberals don't generally agree with the conspiracy theories that the US fought the Cold War for "economic advantage". Actually that's what communists like to argue. There is a difference between the two, despite what some conservatives may suspect.
- Conservatives cannot help suspecting it when, you know, liberals sympathized with Communists. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.146.15.172 (talk) 01:20, 25 April 2007 (UTC).
[edit] Cuba
Removed reference to Cuba from the list "the crimes the US committed happened while striving to bring democracy to places like..." - which crimes? Plus Batista was elected in his first term. To call him a dictator is too sweeping, regardless of how he may be perceived by many in his later years.--Zleitzen 00:46, 21 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Big revert
There are multiple meanings of moral equivalence, and one side in the culture wars seems to have hijacked this article. I reverted to the Lee Daniel Crocker version.
From here, we can add the views of those who believe that the cry of "moral equivalence!" is just a debating tactic. --Uncle Ed 01:39, 1 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Added OR tag
This article looks like original research, has no supporting sources, and appears to be written by people who have not given the key points any serious consideration at all. --Zleitzen 02:42, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
- I agree with Zleitzen on this. While the essay that makes up this article might well be plausible—perhaps even something I would personally agree with—it reads like a personal essay on the topic rather than an encyclopedia article supported by neutral and verifiable sources. I'm tempted to say that AfD is the best course for this article; but possibly it could be made into something of nominal encyclopedic weight if it eschewed all the personal essay stuff, and relied solely on cited external uses. There would be a long way to go to get to that point of avoiding OR though. LotLE×talk 04:22, 25 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] False Dilemma?
"Those sympathetic to the Soviet Union contended that US power in the Cold War was used only to pursue an economically-driven agenda."
Read in the context of the article, this is still a false dilemma. I have changed 'Soviet sympathizers' to "Many of those who criticized US foreign policy at the time,...". One did not have to sympathizers with brutal dictator Stalin (or Mao), to reach such conclusions.
Though this may be a weasel sentence ("Many of those..."), I am not sure, it is definitely better than the false dilemma, and also lie, placed in the article thus far.
A lesser point, moreover, is that if it is intended to use a term describing 'leftwingers', than 'Soviet sympathizers' should absolutely be avoided. This is so since you didn't have to be sympathetic to the Soviet Union to support a government with leftist policies (eg. Giving unused land to the poor for much need (by the poor) utilization).
Every Wiki user should be taught logical fallacies, to avoid such...
- It's funny what company the Marxists keep, though. 208.111.222.96 02:31, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Criticizing great evils
I dispute the neutrality of the intro. Please leave the NPOV tag up there, until this is resolved RATHER THAN simply deleting the tag and claiming that "there is no dispute". The fact that I'm disputing proves that there is a dispute.
The Intro implies that (1) there is no such thing as moral equivalence but that (2) it's merely a term thrown IMPROPERLY at good, stalwart, upstanding world citizens who are criticizing great evils.
We need to clarify the positions of those who (A) apply the term morally equivalent and (B) those who protest or criticize applications of the term. --Uncle Ed 14:13, 29 October 2007 (UTC)
[edit] WikiProject class rating
This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 04:18, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
