Moral Cowards!

[inthesomeday]

Not really. Racism is when systems or institutions discriminate against people based on things that might be called race, or the behaviors that support those systems, and since race doesn't exist national origin might sometimes be considered a basis of racism.

 

[Ryika]

So not giving social benefits to Russians is Racism in your opinion?

 

[Berzerker]

Ummmm. Yeah.

"My luxury is more important than your survival" is a racist sentiment.

Its another kind of cowardice to not admit that you consider these people undeserving because they are non-european/different culture group/wrong nationality or whatever marker of ethnicity/race.

to be fair we are posting on the internet while children starve

 

[Bootstoots]

I'm in favor of the way the OP thinks about morality. Namely, that the foreseeable consequences of an action or policy matter need to be included when considering whether something is acceptable or not.

The argument appears to be "Young men have high violent crime rates, our refugees are disproportionately young men, therefore the costs to our society include higher rates of violent crime including rape and murder. We must decide how many additional rapes, murders, etc. we are willing to tolerate in order to improve the lives of suffering refugees". I struggle to see why this would even be a controversial statement on its face. I mean, it comes from a poster known for making controversial statements, but I don't see any good counterarguments to the actual claim.

We have to balance and evaluate competing moral claims in order to decide a path forward. There are good reasons to think that a total open-borders policy is a bad idea, and also good reasons to think that pulling a Japan and almost never accepting poor immigrants is both immoral and suboptimal even from a national-interest perspective. And it is more or less trivially true that people will value their own fellow citizens over noncitizens. That's just how people work.

As a ballpark figure, I'd probably set foreign aid at 1-2% of GDP (a dramatic increase from its current ~0.2%) both for moral and national-security reasons. Helping refugees in camps near war zones would be a top priority, as would forgiving odious debt. I'd also set legal immigration rates to ~0.5%/population/year, a substantial fraction (25-35%) of whom should be refugees. Young single male refugees should be discriminated against versus all other applicants for reasons related to social dysfunction. The numbers can be fiddled with depending on what happens at a given rate. But moral concerns need to be balanced with pragmatic ones.

 

[Akka]

Not really. Racism is when systems or institutions discriminate against people based on things that might be called race, or the behaviors that support those systems, and since race doesn't exist national origin might sometimes be considered a basis of racism.

Really anything goes as long as it allows you to slap a "racism" label on something, right ?
Must be some sort of self-imposed challenge "what else can I manage to describe as racism ?". I'm waiting for the time when breathing will be racist because it deprives someone victim-dash-oppressed-dash-minority from oxygen.

 

[Traitorfish]

Humanitarian assistance is different of course and internationally we have decided that a certain number of rules are to be followed when it comes to refugees - and it's good that we did - but surely you realize that a person who thinks that these rules are wrong and that the state should primarily focus on its own citizens even when it comes to refugees is in itself still not a racist stance. It may be fueled by racism, but to say taking that stance is itself racism is just a gross misuse of the word.

Has anybody in this thread made that claim? It appears to me that people are arguing, rather, that the thoughtless assumptions made about the negative impact of accepting Middle Eastern refugees- they are prone to theft, rape and violence- are racist, or are the result of a willful misreading of statistics motivated by an underlying racism.

It's like, nobody is pissed that you don't want to adopt a violent dog. But they may be pissed if you dismiss the possibility of adopting a Staffordshire out of hand, because you've decided that Staffordshires are a naturally violent breed based on thoughtless prejudice and something you half-remember reading in the Daily Mail.

They even be pissed if you come down superficially in favour of adopting Staffordshire but demand as the price of that support an admission that they're a naturally violent breed, because that would be gross even if that support was wanted or valued.

 

[Ryika]

Has anybody in this thread made that claim? It appears to me that people are arguing, rather, that the thoughtless assumptions made about the negative impact of accepting Middle Eastern refugees- they are prone to theft, rape and violence- are racist, or are the result of a willful misreading of statistics motivated by an underlying racism.

Nobody has stated that Middle Eastern refugees are "prone to theft, rape and violence", quite the opposite, I have pointed out in my very first post, that the overall number of crimes is still reasonably low, and nobody has contested that:

basically say that refugees are overrepresented in pretty much every field of crime, and that that's to be expected because of the demographics of the refugees (many young men), but that the amount of crimes per capita is still reasonably low.

It is so very ironic that the reactions to this thread exactly prove my point, you seem to not even understand the concept and therefor interpret it as me wanting you to disown refugees, which is complete nonsense.

Instead of just acknowledging the negative part of the consequences of the overall good decision, people continue to claim that I'm "misreading statistics" (which I'm not, it is correct that refugees are overrepresented in all crime statistics, and that the crimes per capita of refugees are still within reasonably low numbers), and that I want you to admit that refugees are "a naturally violent breed", which, as evidenced by the analysis of the statistics, I am not. Most refugees do not commit crimes, but it is still a reality that they, as a demographic, commit more crimes than the population that was here before them, which means that crime statistics will increase, and if you want to be consistent, then you have to either acknowledge that or give good evidence that my reading of the statistics is wrong, which of course you have not done either. Those are the two ways you can actually make a coherent argument, because right now, your argument is basically:

"I don't like the things you say, so they're invalid, and you're being racist!"

All I want is for you to analyze the situation, come to a rational conclusion and be able to make an actual argument for your position:

"It is true that we will see an increase in crime, but this increase is small enough to be ignored and is vanishingly small compared to the help we can offer to people in need." (for example)

And that's an argument that actually convinces people who don't already agree with you. If a person comes from a point of view where they've been influenced by right-wing extremists who actually claimed that they're "violent dogs", you just saying "These statistics are wrong, you racist!" isn't going to convince anybody, showing them the actual statistics, acknowledging the drop of truth in the argument made by the right-wing extremist, but then putting it into perspective, and contrasting it with the help we can offer, that's something that can actually convince people.

So as long as you completely ignore the negative aspects of your decision, even claim they don't exist, your decision is not a moral one, it's a morally void appeal to emotions, that nobody who is not already on our side will fall for. That's moral cowardice.

 

[innonimatu]

It's like, nobody is pissed that you don't want to adopt a violent dog. But they may be pissed if you dismiss the possibility of adopting a Staffordshire out of hand, because you've decided that Staffordshires are a naturally violent breed based on thoughtless prejudice and something you half-remember reading in the Daily Mail.

The problem with this is that prejudice is what makes the world work. Society is too complex for people to go around making careful decisions based on facts investigated by themselves.

It is so very ironic that the reactions to this thread exactly prove my point, you seem to not even understand the concept and therefor interpret it as me wanting you to disown refugees, which is complete nonsense.

It's your history around here that makes you suspicious. Also, morals as a utility function is an absurd idea to most people: morals are absolute and utilitarianism has no role in them. Say, if you believe that people have a right to live in the home they were born in and grew up in, then no amount of "compensation" can force even a single individual to move to make way to a road or dam, he would have veto power over it. That is the reason why imho people should be careful when invoking "morals".
If you truly believe there is a moral duty to shelter refugees (disclaimer: I don't, because I believe that local people have a right to a veto on new arrivals into their communities) then you (and everyone) must accept them no matter what, and your logical arguments around crime statistics have no bearing on it.

Instead of just acknowledging the negative part of the consequences of the overall good decision, people continue to claim that I'm "misreading statistics" (which I'm not, it is correct that refugees are overrepresented in all crime statistics, and that the crimes per capita of refugees are still within reasonably low numbers), and that I want you to admit that refugees are "a naturally violent breed", which, as evidenced by the analysis of the statistics, I am not. Most refugees do not commit crimes, but it is still a reality that they, as a demographic, commit more crimes than the population that was here before them, which means that crime statistics will increase, and if you want to be consistent, then you have to either acknowledge that or give good evidence that my reading of the statistics is wrong, which of course you have not done either.

You are misusing statistics for a moral purpose, as if morals could be swayed by appeals to utilitarian considerations. Those are not real moral beliefs if they can be so changed.

So as long as you completely ignore the negative aspects of your decision, even claim they don't exist, your decision is not a moral one, it's a morally void appeal to emotions, that nobody who is not already on our side will fall for. That's moral cowardice.

It was not a moral decision to most people, and your argument could stand without all those references to morals: there are downsides to allowing in refugees, or indeed any newcomers, be they wealthy or poor, young or old, male or female. As well as upsides. The vast majority of people weight all those things outside the realms of morals, using practical considerations. And your argument makes sense in that context.

And you are also right to decry the wrongful "appeal to morals" made by some politicians, journalists, "opinion makers", in the issue of refugees. It's rhetoric, not reality - and they know it. But don't argue that in the deceitful field where the issue was placed, argue it by saying the truth about it: people pretend to be indignant over the washed up corpse of a baby (virtue signaling), but won't have refugees in their back yard.

 

[Ryika]

It's your history around here that makes you suspicious.

And that's fine. My history of being willing to entertain positions that I don't naturally agree with, my disagreement on some of the major issues that some people here hold very dear, and my tendency to sometimes say stuff "just because", are certainly things that make me a bad messenger for these things here, however, people are speaking out against the message itself.

Also, morals as a utility function is an absurd idea to most people: morals are absolute and utilitarianism has no role in them. Say, if you believe that people have a right to live in the home they were born in and grew up in, then no amount of "compensation" can force even a single individual to move to make way to a road or dam, he would have veto power over it. That is the reason why imho people should be careful when invoking "morals".

If you truly believe there is a moral duty to shelter refugees (disclaimer: I don't, because I believe that local people have a right to a veto on new arrivals into their communities) then you (and everyone) must accept them no matter what, and your logical arguments around crime statistics have no bearing on it.

I disagree strongly with this idea, and think that this idea is unworkable, as it would lead to contradictory stances. If you have the moral opinion that you need to save refugees, and you have the moral opinion that you need to prevent people from being raped, then what do you do if you have a group of refugees that has a higher-than-normal amount of rapists in it? You would have to take them, because that's your moral opinion, and you would have to deny them, because that's your moral opinion, too. That's where people like some of the guys who responded to this thread seem to end up, and their "solution" to that problem seems to be to deny the existence of one of the two problems. That's obviously a terrible solution, and moral cowardice by the books.

So what would you do? Obviously, you would compare the effects of both decisions, and then come to a conclusion on what has the worse consequences, that's not "ignoring morality", that is actually taking part in moral decisionmaking. In this case it is (imho) clearly not taking refugees, that has the worse consequences, because the things refugees face in their home countries is so much worse than what problems we can assume the few bad apples among the refugees to cause. That decision, and making this decision as neutrally as you possibly can, trying to not put oneself and the people close to oneself in a position of higher importance over people who need help and instead treat all groups as being on an equal level, that is the very essence of what being a moral person is all about.

The difference between how you and I see morality is interesting though. If I understand you correctly, then it seems to me that we agree how the situation should be tackled, but what you're labeling as "ignoring morality" and thinking about practical consequences is what I see as morality, and what you see as morality - taking a stance and sticking by it no matter what the situation is - is what I would call moral cowardice.

 

[Traitorfish]

The problem with this is that prejudice is what makes the world work. Society is too complex for people to go around making careful decisions based on facts investigated by themselves.

Then people don't really deserve a society free of rape, theft and violence. I know I'm supposed to be the token left-libertarian in these sorts of threads, but you can't claim all the rights of political society but reject the responsibilities of citizenship because: "but mum it's haaaaaard". Even if failure is guaranteed, you still have to make the effort, or we may as well turn things over to the man with the biggest epaulettes.

Nobody has stated that Middle Eastern refugees are "prone to theft, rape and violence", quite the opposite, I have pointed out in my very first post, that the overall number of crimes is still reasonably low, and nobody has contested that:

We're not stupid, we can identify a subtext when we see one, and a half-sentence qualification in a five paragraph is far from sufficient to convince people that you're speaking from a position of sincere cosmopolitanism.

Perhaps if the premise of this thread was an attempt to engage seriously with the m, and not a pompous declaration that people who think differently to you are idiots and cowards, you'd have been extended a bit more charity. And there's a real discussion to be had here, about the preoccupation of many otherwise well-meaning liberals with having the correct suite of opinions, rather than working out a coherent set of values and trying to implement them, and you could very easily take the refugee crisis as a worked example of that. But "boy did it upset him LOL" is not a declaration of good faith.

 

[Kyriakos]

Virtually all political or "political" (often they aren't really about the state or society) decisions can be picked up by people who view them in more particular way. I think that a major issue is that while on the one hand there is a terrible culture of trolling in such discussions, on the other there are real matters tied to them. Which is why, usually, lame politicians get to decide what happens, cause they can always rely on their crowd to make it seem as if they did something helpful to one of the sides.
Mass immigration would have to be defined, numerically. Some people seem to think that if 1 or at most 2/80 of your country's population are immigrants from Asia who came there in the last 5 years (as in Germany; they had other muslims before, but those were there for decades already) this is worth to be called "mass immigration". Yet Greece had more than a million illegal immigrants from Asia (mostly central asian, which imo are really not easy to integrate; levantine muslims tend to easily adapt in Greece), which isn't the 1/80 or 2/80 it is in the case of Germany, but a rather more problematic 1/11. That isn't the kind of mass immigration of illegal people any country can cope with, let alone under austerity as well.

Then compare with nice fascist countries in central or baltic Europe, who moan and are up in arms when faced with ten thousand illegals. That is racist. They easily could make them part of their society. They clearly do not want to.

 

[Ryika]

We're not stupid, we can identify a subtext when we see one, and a half-sentence qualification in a five paragraph is far from sufficient to convince people that you're speaking from a position of sincere cosmopolitanism.

I don't think you're stupid, but you surely are paranoid!

Perhaps if the premise of this thread was an attempt to engage seriously with the m, and not a pompous declaration that people who think differently to you are idiots and cowards, you'd have been extended a bit more charity. And there's a real discussion to be had here, about the preoccupation of many otherwise well-meaning liberals with having the correct suite of opinions, rather than working out a coherent set of values and trying to implement them, and you could very easily take the refugee crisis as a worked example of that. But "boy did it upset him LOL" is not a declaration of good faith.

Why would it need to be a "declaration of good faith"? It's me talking about a friend in a jokingly-condescending way, that should not be a personal declaration for you at all. So I'm not sure why you chose that quote - I could however understand if the last part of that first post upsets you if you're in the group of people that I'm calling out there, but that's... sort of the idea, right? I very clearly stated that it's my opinion that people who just take a position because it feels right are moral cowards, it's a call-out, and the task of people who disagree and feel like I'm representing them unfairly is to show call me out for flaws in my reasoning, or to show how I'm misrepresenting them.

Instead, people flocked in to attack the crime statistics, proving my point.

 

[Traitorfish]

Why would it need to be a "declaration of good faith"?

Because, in the context of an OP that takes visible glee in causing upset and annoyance, it's the difference between the reader assuming that you are making a reasonable and sincere point that you're just failing to articulate as well as you might, and that you're just being a combative troll. It's the difference between the reader believing that you want to have an actual discussion, and assuming that you're just trying to show off how clever you are.

 

[Ryika]

No, that was a statement that I made towards my friend, not a statement that I made towards the reader. My intend when I made that statement was to annoy him, and I said as much in the OP, but for some reason, you get upset over something that I have said to a friend (who btw, himself is not angry that I did it) as if I had said it to you when it was just part of the situation that made me want to discuss the issue. And that's just ridiculous, ironically, because again, I would even buy that argument if you were talking about the last paragraph, but the part that you're complaining about, is fine the way it is.

 

[innonimatu]

I disagree strongly with this idea, and think that this idea is unworkable, as it would lead to contradictory stances. If you have the moral opinion that you need to save refugees, and you have the moral opinion that you need to prevent people from being raped, then what do you do if you have a group of refugees that has a higher-than-normal amount of rapists in it? You would have to take them, because that's your moral opinion, and you would have to deny them, because that's your moral opinion, too. That's where people like some of the guys who responded to this thread seem to end up, and their "solution" to that problem seems to be to deny the existence of one of the two problems. That's obviously a terrible solution, and moral cowardice by the books.

You really think that people have many moral opinions? They have opinions, preferences, few could really count as moral in the sense that they'd stick by it no matter what the temptation or threat. Morals is though.

I have the moral opinion that people should rule themselves as much as possible, not be ruled by others claiming power. That's somewhat abstract, and rightfully so, I don't pretend to have the universal solution to make that a fact everywhere and everywhen. I am merely guided in the search for solutions by that moral opinion. That compels me to refuse refuse hoarding power myself, but regarding others I must (under this very same moral) not try impose any model to "fee" them. People live in society, they must cooperate, organize, establish stable relations, and will want to protect those relations, use resources to support their lives, defend those resources...

I also have the moral opinion that human life is very important, thus assisting refugees in need becomes high up the list of priorities. That assistance is not a moral end in itself, it is a consequence of the moral opinion about the importance of human life. Hot to apply it, how to balance it with other consequences of the same moral imperative and with other morals (such as the one about letting people rule themselves), is something to be found according to circumstances. That's life, for me, for you, for everyone - squaring the circle, every day.

So what would you do? Obviously, you would compare the effects of both decisions, and then come to a conclusion on what has the worse consequences, that's not "ignoring morality", that is actually taking part in moral decisionmaking. In this case it is (imho) clearly not taking refugees, that has the worse consequences, because the things refugees face in their home countries is so much worse than what problems we can assume the few bad apples among the refugees to cause. That decision, and making this decision as neutrally as you possibly can, trying to not put oneself and the people close to oneself in a position of higher importance over people who need help and instead treat all groups as being on an equal level, that is the very essence of what being a moral person is all about.

If you truly believe that some specific thing is a moral imperative, that becomes non-negotiable. Doy you believe that taking refugees in is a moral imperative? Or do you believe it should be dome because or some other moral imperative? Clearly the second. So you weight it against other things. As I said above that people do. Is this supposed to be surprising?

The difference between how you and I see morality is interesting though. If I understand you correctly, then it seems to me that we agree how the situation should be tackled, but what you're labeling as "ignoring morality" and thinking about practical consequences is what I see as morality, and what you see as morality - taking a stance and sticking by it no matter what the situation is - is what I would call moral cowardice.

You are the one using the expression "ignoring morality", not me. I am just explaining to you that moral beliefs have consequences, and those consequences must be adjusted to circumstances. That is not "ignoring morality", that is living with it the only way it is possible to live with it. Unless you want to be a saint or a martyr for a cause. And even those who picked causes and died for some, did so for one, not for a myriad causes. How many people have you met who actually believed that taking in refugees was a moral imperative it itself? There are bound to be some, but they will be rare.

Unfortunately moral it is a word that, like friendship, equality, etc, has been much misused. Cheapened in political discourse. So it gets thrown around where people do not really mean it.[/QUOTE]

Then people don't really deserve a society free of rape, theft and violence. I know I'm supposed to be the token left-libertarian in these sorts of threads, but you can't claim all the rights of political society but reject the responsibilities of citizenship because: "but mum it's haaaaaard". Even if failure is guaranteed, you still have to make the effort, or we may as well turn things over to the man with the biggest epaulettes.

I agree that an effort must be made, always. But I can see how hard it is, and how much escapes even those who do make an effort. It is best to keep in mind how vulnerable we all are to being fooled that way. Didn't intend to sound defeatist in this.

 

[inthesomeday]

This is the thing. Internal morality dictates all philosophical conclusions, and when somebody's internal morality is fundamentally inconsistent with somebody else's they will always be ideological enemies incapable of reconciliation or compromise.

 

[Katie88]

I think the OP is really inarguable if you accept its premise, i.e. that all human suffering has an equal value and that most people regard it as such. But if one doesn't accept the premise then it's much less clear.

One might, for example, put a much higher value on one's own compatriots, considering a raped and/or murdered German girl far more important than a murdered Afghan, etc. Or, alternatively, one could ask a different question, such as: how does letting in these refugees benefit the autochthonous people?

So it really depends on the premise.

 

[Terxpahseyton]

So whats a non-racist reason to get picky about who gets humanitarian assistance? If you want you can suggest general hypothetical ones and ones relevant to Germany.

You will have to explain what you mean by "humanitarian assistance" for me to accurately answer this question.
However, "humanitarian assistance" seems in any case like a very convenient scenario. Since you will find, that "racist" preferential treatment of domestic citizens is deeply enshrined in the world order and all the states and nations who inhabit it. "Humanitarian assistance" will always only be the very peak of that.

The world is a geographical apartheid regime. And for good (albeit possibly ethically bad) reason, not just "racist" sentiment. And good reasons have a way of challenging moral principles.

 

[inthesomeday]

Since you will find, that "racist" preferential treatment of domestic citizens is deeply enshrined in the world order and all the states and nations who inhabit it.

You might be on to something here...

 

[Akka]

And we might be on the FANTASTICAL discovery that mankind might be tribal.
What a totally breaking news.
Tomorrow, even more shocking : according to some hushed witnesses, water might be, under some circumstances, wet. I'm not kidding you.