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Ah, hang on... I think I get the problem. You believe that the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights actually *is* made up of inalienable moral laws, and thus that "morally good" and "according to the European Convention for the Protection of Human Rights" are in effect interchangeable descriptions. Therefore, presumably any other legal statements are both moral and legally enforceable insofar as they are common in aim and expression with the ECPHR. This is a tricky idea to hold in one's head - that legally and morality are both precise and nterchangeable, whereas there is a sort of secondary legality that is concerned with discussion of legal points but not with the making of the law - a kind of parasite. Hence statements like:
In legal terms you might argue that they should be treated differently but in moral and ethical terms I see no difference. If you torture someone then you should understand that you can expect to be prosocuted.
Where you come around to the idea that any *moral* or *ethical* transgression should lead to prosecution, whether or not the *legal* case is arguable - that is that what is moral and what is legal are potentially different, but that legal action should be determined by what is moral rather than by what is legal.
Now, since morality can be represented as universalisable even more easily than law (even the ECPHR is only strictly speaking a European work), this means that we can apply the invalidity of the defence that they were only obeying orders even to those who ipso facto are not only obedying orders, such as the President of the United States of America. That is, that not having a defence is no defence in law, which is in fact morality, which is in turn European legislation...
Ahem. Dude, it's lovely to have you here, but if you are going to do "thought experiments" in the Head Shop, could you be a *little* less rude to people when they are confused by your incoherent positions? It's not likely to stimulate discussion or progress. A few more question marks might not go amiss either... Like the one at the end of this:
OK, sdv, so you are saying that people should be aware that they must conduct themselves in the light of the fact that, shoudl they be arraigned for human rights violations later in their lives, they will not be able to claim that they were following orders, especially if they were not following orders. It might be worth at this point looking at what constitutes an "order" - for example, Blair could never be said to be "ordered", per se, because no chain of command exists between himself and anybody, except arguably parliament or the Queen. Likewise the PotUS. However, if Americans show through their television programmes that they are not only ready but actively eager to infringe the human rights of others, *whether or not* they have been ordered so to do (Keifer uses Koersion without the necessity of orders from on high), then it seems they are *not* supposing that the claim that they were only following orders wil be a defence, as they are ready to commit human rights violations regardless of whether they were ordered to or not. Unless by "ordered to", we mean something more diffuse - that is, compelled either by their own corrupted (albeit homuncular) instincts, or tacitly by the society in which they exist... so what sort of "order" are we talking about? |
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