“Or “And that is why the Geneva Convention was so obviously impossible that no one even bothered to attend the conference”—Geneva Convention prohibited mercenaries. And no one ever used them afterwards… except they did.
“Civilization didn’t conquer the world by forbidding you to murder your enemies unless they are actually unrighteous in which case go ahead and kill them all”—that’s… what usually justifies most wars including many civilizational wars.
“In particular, the history of the past few hundred years in the United States has been a history of decreasing censorship and increasing tolerance”—EXCUSE YOU? When was the last time US followed the original (modulo Ten Amendments) version of constitution in its anti-censorship? And, moreover, what about silent censorship (the kind Chomsky describes—effectively censored without any legislation for it)?
“And it kind of was. Just not the way most people expected”—yeah, by creating the Chalcedonian (Orthodox before the Orthodox/Catholic split) church which more or less abandoned all that and either consumed (like Dominicans) or destroyed (like Albigensians). What you may think of as a continuing tradition is Luther-Calvin rebellion against that, there is no way original Christians could have won over Roman Empire, even in its decay. The Sun religion was more powerful when Constantine decided to get some more followers by tricking Christians into obeying them.
“Or “And that is why the Geneva Convention was so obviously impossible that no one even bothered to attend the conference”—Geneva Convention prohibited mercenaries. And no one ever used them afterwards… except they did.
“Civilization didn’t conquer the world by forbidding you to murder your enemies unless they are actually unrighteous in which case go ahead and kill them all”—that’s… what usually justifies most wars including many civilizational wars.
“In particular, the history of the past few hundred years in the United States has been a history of decreasing censorship and increasing tolerance”—EXCUSE YOU? When was the last time US followed the original (modulo Ten Amendments) version of constitution in its anti-censorship? And, moreover, what about silent censorship (the kind Chomsky describes—effectively censored without any legislation for it)?
“And it kind of was. Just not the way most people expected”—yeah, by creating the Chalcedonian (Orthodox before the Orthodox/Catholic split) church which more or less abandoned all that and either consumed (like Dominicans) or destroyed (like Albigensians). What you may think of as a continuing tradition is Luther-Calvin rebellion against that, there is no way original Christians could have won over Roman Empire, even in its decay. The Sun religion was more powerful when Constantine decided to get some more followers by tricking Christians into obeying them.
I think it’s noteworthy that absolute laws are more easily respected when what you actually want are laws with exceptions.
The correct law may be “don’t kill unless it’s right” but just saying “don’t kill” will actually make people think about it twice before killing.