Ethics/Morality
Our topic definitely deals with morality and ethics. One of the morality components of our topic deals with the idea of revenge and taking sides in the international world. After the United States was attack in 9/11, many civilians felt that it was the moral thing to do to get revenge from those who attacked the country. Others believed that it was wrong to kill people as a punishment for killing your own people. This was a moral decision that our country had to make. Does two wrongs make a right? Was revenge deserved? Also, other countries had to decided whether it was in their national interest to align with the United States or not. Was it moral to back up a country that was wrongfully attacked or was it unneccessarily putting your people in more danger than neccessary?
Emily Monich said,
April 11, 2008 at 7:37 pm
I think another important moral aspect of the post 9/11 world is how the West has been forced to address Islam. Simply because the terrorist attacks were executed by people from the Middle East, Muslims gained a bad reputation in our country. Some Americans came to the conclusion that all Muslims are terrorists, proving how naive, ignorant, and prejudice people in this country can be sometimes. In terms of political morality, the U.S. was forced and is still in the process of dealing with how Islam and liberalism can function together. Some expect Muslims to completely adapt to our customs and traditions, but that in itself is immoral. We cannot ask people to change simply because they are different.
richmond11 said,
April 11, 2008 at 9:48 pm
Very good points and interesting questions to raise. This compliments Amstuz’s notion that moral values have three important and distinguishing features. These features include universal allegiance, impartiality, and self-reinforcing. The point of universal allegiance and self-reinforcing goes well with your idea of whether or not other countries should aid in helping America while risking their own citizens. Impartiality also goes along well with this idea in that many countries did not want to take part in other countries battles in which they were unlinked to and hence remain neutral.