Human Morals - After Reading Mr. Goodman's Paper

After Reading Mr. Goodman's paper I haft to say that I agree with him and disagree with him. He makes several points throughout his paper that he and I are in total agreement, then a few other points he makes we disagree on a small scale. During the course of this paper I intend to talk about some of his topics and explain my position on them. The topics I will discuss are; genocide, politically induced famine, and germ warfare; terrorism, hostage taking, and child warriors; slavery, polygamy, and incest. Even though these topics have been the subject of controversy for hundreds of years, they are still very much alive in debates today.

First off I will start with genocide, politically induced famine, and germ warfare. Genocide has had many names in history to include; Holocaust, ethnic cleansing and revolution. "Genocide targets individuals as members of a group, seeking to destroy a race, a culture, a linguistic or ethnic identity, even a class (Goodman 2010)". Famine and germ warfare have both played a part in genocide; some examples include gassing victims during the holocaust or poisoning the food supply in China. Regardless of the method the murders took place, because that is what they all boiled down to is a murder of a person of a different race, religion, ethnic group than other than the group committing the murders. All of these were committed with a false pretense of creating a better world. "Yet, for those who confuse power with violence, indiscriminate or discriminating violence is a source of power, a self fueling juggernaut that gains momentum with the escalation of its demands (Goodman 2010)." In all of these cases the leader or leaders so called goal was destined to fail from the beginning, due to the nature of the crimes being committed the rest of the civilized world could not stand by and let it continue as if nothing was happing. For this main reason is why these things are considered immoral and in plain and simple words just plain wrong. Not to mention that these acts are to me considered crimes against humanity and the personnel involved in such activities should be persecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

The second topic I will discuss is terrorism, hostage taking, and child warriors; this is a topic that I can relate to more than any other. Being in the military and having served over 6 years in a deployed location, combating terrorism at its very core. I have also seen child warriors in real life and seen those so called children take firearms and use them just like adults. I know that they were taught from a young age to believe in what they are told to. A of brainwashing of sorts, I have come to learn over the years that there are many cultures that impose this way of life onto their children whether it is right or wrong in their eyes has become immaterial in order to achieve the ultimate goal. "Peter W. Singer estimates that there are some 300,000 child soldiers, voluntary, semi-voluntary, or coerced, under arms today. (Goodman 2010)." In being able to witness the blatant disregard people have for their children in the name of a religious belief was extremely disturbing