What’s Wrong with the World

merely letting their blind hatred for the latter cloud their judgment

Yep. That's what I think.

Why is it that we’re supposed unequivocally to condemn and despise Nixon, Reagan, Thatcher, and Bush as moral monsters, and yet when some of the “heroes” in a movie like Watchmen carry out acts far more heinous than anything these real-world statesmen have been accused of, we are supposed to “understand,” or at least to revel in the purported moral ambiguities?

The answer is simple. Leftists are not "relativists" at all: they are absolutists who believe in their own moral order -- and that order is anti-white and anti-West. Just because they may not be able to provide a coherent positive articulation of what their order entails, doesn't mean they don't have one and don't believe in it. The main thing they care about is its negative properties: anti-white, anti-West, anti-Capitalism, anti-Christian, anti-Jew. Now on the horizon for them, since the rather cobbled-together alternative system of Communism has lost its traction & luster, is coalescing a ready-made alternative anti-Western macrocosm with a richer tradition and longer history than Communism: Islam. It even has its own economics which they gullibly swallow as non-capitalist and "just". And furthermore, Islam has the extra spice of having a membership of mostly brown "ethnic" people many of whom wear cool ethnic clothes. How can Leftists resist?

I'm not a big fan of the modern consequentialist/deontological distinction, believing instead that "there is a universally valid hierarchy of ends, but there are no universally valid rules of action." I think that the left's distaste for Nixon, Reagan, Thatcher, etc. can in some sense be explained in those terms, namely, that the ultimate ends or the kind of regime that those political figures advocated are inherently repulsive to the left (so the means they employ are necessarily tainted) whereas superheroes are not associated with such nefarious ends. Indeed, superheroes tend to transcend the city like a pagan patron god or hero whose devotion to the city may (usually) be taken for granted.

I just want to second your opening thought.

I am continually frustrated by the levels of violence in today's movies. It just seems like each new movie has to top its predecessors in explicitness of its violence.

Mr. H
http://www.allhands-ondeck.blogspot.com/

To any group the means justify the ends. But that is always assumed to be a bad thing. The means often do justify the ends.

God thinks so or he wouldn't have created a world that has death and competition built into it. Because without death, life could not proceed from single cells to complex organisms that bear his image. Without competition, organisms would not develop more complex systems of behavior and consciousness.

God is all about consciousness. Creating children who take after him.

To any group the means justify the ends. But that is always assumed to be a bad thing. The means often do justify the ends.

Did you mean the ends (goals) justify the means (actions taken to achieve those goals)?

Anyway, the Apostle Paul disagrees with you in Romans 3:8 -

And not rather, (as we be slanderously reported, and as some affirm that we say,) Let us do evil, that good may come? whose damnation is just.

I own Watchmen and have seen it twice, and I actually took a somewhat conservative or traditional message from the movie. Dr. Manhattan is a monstrous character, and both he and Ozymandias epitomize the attitude of liberals over the past 300 years. They are powerful and brilliant but they lose their humanity in attempting to do what is best for the world as a whole. They care for no one in particular while feigning concern for the human species.

Dr. Manhattan is not even moral as a normal human being and his portrayal is an accurate depiction of what would probably happen if mankind could ever become like God. Rorschach is obviously dangerous even though he does have a relatively decent sense of justice, but I thought that his greater purpose was to show that man, whether virtuous or vicious, is unable to stand above others and decide for himself what good and evil are. He only stops crime in New York, and he does so by simply walking the streets like a normal human being. He never once assumes the position of an angel hovering above Earth, while Ozymandias and Manhattan might as well be disciples of William Godwin. Even Rorschach looks like a hero when he stands next to men like Manhattan and Ozymandias, two "superheroes" who see the earth as one giant ant hill.

I think it was Steven Greydanus who said that Watchmen is a superhero story without any heroism.

After hearing for years that Watchmen was the pinnacle of superhero stories, I was completely underwhelmed when I read it about 10 years ago. At the time, I thought maybe the novelty wasn't there because grim 'n gritty had become the norm in comics. Looking back, however, reading the story post-Cold War underscored the bankruptcy of consequentialism in a practical sense. At the time it was written, I suspect many people did think it would take some sort of radical intervention to avert a nuclear holocause. In the event, we were able to avoid nuclear war with the Soviets without the sort of monstrous Final Solution carried out by Ozymandius. For me, the chin-pulling ambiguity that Dr. Feser refers to is replaced by the feeling that what was done was evil AND unnecessary.

I think Marvel Comic's Squadron Supreme is a much better study of consequentialism as it applies to superheroes.

If you take St. Paul's admonition, I don't see how ends could justify means. The only means you could use under the St. Paul option are either good means, or neutral means. Neither of them need moral justification (they are either already good, or they are neutral).

John C. Wright's ambivalent, but tending negative, review is here. A highlight: "And then there is Dr. Manhattan’s big blue penis. This is a penis movie, and there is a lot of penis. Lots of buttocks. Blue buttocks. Giant blue buttocks."

BLAM! Sound of hand slapping forehead.

Yes, the ends justify the means in a great many situations. We are told, spare the rod and spoil the child. Using the rod is the means to instill compliance in a child and to direct them to self-control. But smacking a child or punishing them isn't really nice is it?

Or in medical care where we torture people, subject them to agonies, to make them well.

Or the matter of it being a terrible thing to fall into the hands of a living God. Being dragged through the hell of selfish being, falsehood, error, shame, etc., in order to become one with the One.

And don't we try to assuage God's guilt for Creation by placing the blame for all the evil in the world with two mythical humans in a mythical Paradise? How long are Christians going to maintain that tale as metaphysically and physically operative opposing natural history and the Reason God gives us to find it incongruous with reality?

This is one of the reasons intelligent secular folks cannot cross the threshold into faith and never will; too many dogmas no longer make any sense and act as barriers to the Kingdom of Heaven rather than invitations.

But some might say pride is the basic stumbling block, in any event, which no doubt has a good deal to do with hostility to faith.

I think we lose a lot of people of faith over time, though, by making it more complicated than need be and hemmed in with many absurd claims that do nothing to advance revelation and prayer.

Did you mean the ends (goals) justify the means (actions taken to achieve those goals)?

Anyway, the Apostle Paul disagrees with you in Romans 3:8 -

No, I think Mark B has it right - as long as you add the context: a means that is not of itself evil, is not intrinsically evil, is justified by the end. A neutral means partakes of righteousness when used for a righteous end.

Though I don't go along with all of the rest of his comments.

What gives?

What gives is that one is a acting as an agent of the state or setting state policy, the other is engaging in vigilantism. Try a more apt comparison like the Jack Bauer series and see how many liberals celebrate the moral complexity of it.

Edward,

To some extent I agree with you, though your description only seems to fit Ozymandius. (Maybe the movie differs; I’ve only read the comic book.) I never invested much thought into Dr. Manhattan’s humanity since I took Allan Moore at his word that he is a recapitulation of Captain Atom who, in turn, can be read as a recapitulation of Superman. Granted, I haven’t kept up on comic books over the years, but Moore was able to use Dr. Manhattan as a means of asking, What if Superman really existed? Perhaps, for a time, he would feel attached to his (adopted) “home,” defend and uphold its order, and “believe” in it. But would that last? Dr. Manhattan remains “in the loop” of humanity for a good number of years after his transformation, but as the full breadth of his powers become evident and his inability to relate to others wanes, both because he is treated as “godlike” and also because he is given a different perspective on space and time, he ceases to care. Recall that one of the key moments in the comic is the plot to sever him from his last ties to humanity, prompting self-exile and a feeling that he no longer belongs (hence does not have any obligation to care) about what humanity does. By the end of the comic, he comes around (of a sort), though only within the confines of a very world-immanent revaluation of human beings which passes itself off as a transcendent value. (I will fault Moore’s imagination here, but the effort is noble enough.)

Ozymandia, on the other hand, is in every sense human; he has no superpowers (supernatural, scientific, or otherwise). He could exist and, if he does, he exists as a human being. But he chooses to recreate himself, to “rise up,” and anoint himself as humanity’s new lord protector. Dr. Manhattan may have been “deified” (and eventually demonized) by those around him because of what an accident bestowed; Ozymandias is self-deification run wild. He has not detached from the world; he is in the world and seeks to recreate the world based on his own knowledge (gnosis) of how it always ought to be. There is something disturbingly pathological about his character, but less because of what some powers allow him to do and more because he exhibits “the triumph of the will.”

As for Rorschach, he is the moral grounding in the comic. There are many ways one can disagree with his application of his absolutes, but his violence is not bloodlust; it is not engaged in out of zest, but zeal. By the end of the comic, when faced with the choice of life in complacency to a terrible lie or death in pursuit of truth, he chooses the latter. It is not so much his redemptive moment as it is a confirmation of his character. He’s not a saint, of course. It would have been petty and self-defeating had Moore cast him that way. Moore does try to soften his reader’s judgment of Rorschach by exploring his past, but it’s interesting to note that how the shrink in the comic tries to understand Rorschach fails to come in the orbit of how he understands himself.

The other characters in Watchman have their own traits worth reflecting on. The Comedian’s nihilism appears almost rational in the face of Ozymandias; Night Owl tends to get undercut in the analysis of the comic despite the fact he falls closer to an “everyman” than most of the “extremes” featured in the work.

I remember a great many conservative writers going apoplectic over V for Vendetta. That is despite the fact that the main character was fighting a government which was not only undeniably violent and oppressive, but corrupt to the point that it brought itself to power through an act of mass-murdering terrorism against its own people.

Vigilantism may be generally wrong, but the criticism of vigilantism usually assumes a government that at least tries to do its job and isn't as criminal as they very people it is supposed to be dealing with.

In response to Ed, I don't think the fictional character defense holds up, because liberals were (and are, to an extent) also apologetic for Stalin, and continue to be for today's mini-Stalins.

In response to Step2, I don't think that the vigilantism-vs-setter-of-state-policy interpretation holds up either, because liberals were (and are, to an extent) also apologetic for Stalin, and continue to be for today's mini-Stalins.

The bottom line is that liberals don't have a problem with wire tapping, authoritarianism, torture, mass murder, etc per se. All of those things can be overlooked (or aren't even considered bad) if employed by a liberal for liberal ends. What liberals have a problem with is conservatism, and it only upsets them if those things are used (or if they fantasize that they are being used) for conservative ends.

...because liberals were (and are, to an extent) also apologetic for Stalin, and continue to be for today's mini-Stalins.

Two can play that game. Conservatives were (and are, to an extent) also apologetic for Pinochet and Central American death squads, and continue to be supportive of military coups and tyrants who are favorable to US economic interests.

The bottom line is that conservatives don't have a problem with wire tapping, authoritarianism, torture, unjust wars, etc per se.

Fortunately, I know that last sentence is false as a blanket statement about conservatives, despite plentiful evidence in support. The question for Deuce is whether he knows it is also false as a blanket statement about liberals?

In our own not so distant history, law enforcement was a public duty of the posse comitatus (the law enforcement cousin of the citizen-soldier), thus many of the acts we lump in as vigilantism today were actually consider civic duty and responsibility in traditional America. Go back to the 19th century and even parts of the 20th century, and I doubt most Americans would find it the least bit controversial that Batman would privately fight crime, and their main objection to the Watchmen would be the methods, not the goal of the Watchmen to privately protect society and preserve law and order.

The difference between a private citizen who tortures to get information and the Bush Administration, is that the private citizen may lean on the aid of a jury for mercy after the fact, while the state can excuse itself by fiat. Thus the concern is that with the private citizen, their action can never become public policy and part of the rule of law, but anything the government does can be not only excused, but made legal without any practical recourse (if you believe elections are a practical recourse, you've drunk the social studies class kool aid).

Conservatives were (and are, to an extent) also apologetic for Pinochet and Central American death squads, and continue to be supportive of military coups and tyrants who are favorable to US economic interests.

If you had only two choices, Castro or Pinochet, who would you choose? It is true that conservatives are guilty of supporting people who do these same bad things, but their thugs are rarely anywhere near as enthusiastic at tyranny as those of the left. Pinochet could, at least, be convinced of the necessity of loosening the Chilean market to give the Chilean people a real measure of economic freedom. Latin American leftists tend to categorically deny liberty to their people.

The question for Deuce is whether he knows it is also false as a blanket statement about liberals?

Another thing: When conservatives do side with thugs like Pinochet, it's because they are the least bad option - the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" principle. Liberals have typically gotten in bed with dictators not out of practical necessity, but out of their own volition, because they share an affinity with them and are sympathetic to their goals.

Another thing: When conservatives do side with thugs like Pinochet, it's because they are the least bad option

Conservatives, maybe, but Christians? Please. That regime's foundational principle was torture;We work in the Shadows So our Children Can Play in the Sunlight and deserves only contempt, Milton Friedman paens to its "capitalistic impulses", notwithstanding. In fact, it was the precursor to the Pink State brutality of Russia and China with there thuggocracies presiding over mostly free markets.

To Mr. H:

Doesn't Jesus/God "top its predecessors in explicitness of its violence" when He returns? Blood of his enemies up to His knees, that sort of thing?

If you had only two choices, Castro or Pinochet, who would you choose?

Neither.

As a general statement (ie, about the majority of liberals and the liberal movement), it is true.

They must be very tricksy, these liberals. They get the conservatives to initiate various state tools of control and oppression, because the liberals secretly want to use them. If only conservatives had seen through the ruse.