Most of us draw the distinction – and thankfully the law does too – between celebrating an illegal act and advocating one, and then between advocating one and inciting one. For example, I’ve made no secret that I thought 9/11 was one of the most brilliant – not to mention most cost-effective – military operations in human history. Nor need I apologise for fantasising that the Palestinian resistance should some day acquire and deploy a half dozen smallish nuclear weapons and then threaten to render everything “from the river to the sea” inhabitable by neither Palestinians nor Jews if not by both.

So there! I’ve both celebrated one illegal act and, I suppose, advocated another. Though it’s to be noted, and not just in passing, that one can advocate an illegal act, which I’ve just done, without celebrating it should it come to pass, which I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t because my hope would have been that the threat would have sufficed to achieve its desired end. But, as we learned from Gregory Kavka’s Moral Paradoxes of Nuclear Deterrence, threats are inert if carrying through on them isn’t reliably and transparently hardwired.

But incitement, it seems, is something else entirely. Or is it? What’s the difference between my saying “Kill all the Jews!” and my advocating that we kill all the Jews? Since, being Jewish, I’m probably not going to kill any Jews myself, in both cases – incitement and advocacy, that is – I must be hoping for an actus novus interveniens, namely that someone else is going to either heed my call in the case of incitement, or be convinced by my argument in the case of advocacy.

Of course context is everything. So yes, in some cases the distinction collapses. Where I can count on my listener being sufficiently biddable, advocacy just is incitement. Think of Henry II’s “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?!” After all, he could claim, it was an interrogative, not an imperative, right? Well no, probably not. On the other hand, one of my schticks has been telling my students we should kill all the Scots. (And yes, I tell them, it’s because of the haggis.) But no one has ever taken me seriously. Though what could I say if someone did?

Still, there is a distinction. And it probably hangs on the number and reliability of the intervening acts required to bring my fantasy to fruition. I can say about Donald Trump with impunity that “Someone should just kill that fucker!” But it’s at least questionable that I can say the same about Justin Trudeau. And certainly not about one my of colleagues.

Why am I bothering to say all this? Because I have said, in a YouTube video lamenting the effects of woke-ism on the academy, and opining on what I think would put the kibosh on it, that “It would be nice if some day someone went postal on these people.” Now I certainly didn’t take myself to be inciting anyone to go postal, or advocating that someone go postal. But, unlike the nuclear blackmail scenario cited above, I’m not at all sure I wouldn’t be celebrating if someone did. How could I not, given what I’d just opined would be its salutary effect?

And I say all this, in turn, because what I want to argue is that domestic terrorism – and I’m more than happy to call it that – can be, and often is, morally defensible. Worse yet, in some cases morally mandatory. And, I want to add, you think so too, as evidenced by the fact that, like me, you shed no tears, crocodile or otherwise, when notwithstanding the villain’s already been bested, in the final reel the hero “shoots the fucker right between the eyes!”

If I weren’t a goddam philosopher – but unfortunately I am – I could just let right and wrong mean what we all think they mean and move on. But I can’t. I can’t because there can be no disagreement between us about what’s right and wrong unless it’s been made explicit, at least for the duration of any current dispute, what we both mean by right and wrong. So, at least for the duration of any dispute we might have here, I’m just going to stipulate. By right and wrong I shall hereafter mean – and so we shall hereafter mean – abiding by or violating rules under which we’ve agreed to live together.

Of course living together doesn’t tell us under what rules this is possible. Or that in our particular case there are any rules under which it’s possible. Or possible or not, that we’d want to live together in the first place. So as Thomas Hobbes puts it, in the absence of our having a reason to live together and agreeing on the rules under which we’ll do so, “the notions of right and wrong, justice and injustice, have there no place.” But if we agree on the rules – or, as John Rawls would have it, at least on the rules for establishing the rules – and if one of us violates those rules, then and only then, according to Hobbes, does he do the other an injustice.

By which is meant – by ‘injustice’ that is – nothing more than having violated a rule we’d agreed upon. It does not mean we’ve done anything unjust in any other sense one might want to assign to the word in the privacy of her own mind. Such as? Such as in accordance with the will of God. Or as ineluctably carved by the cosmos into our souls at conception. Or any other such nonsense.

So yes, there are facts-of-the-matter about what’s right and what’s wrong. But they’re social facts. Their being a fact requires the acknowledgement of at least two of us. So, for example, it would still be three strikes you’re out in the game of baseball – because that’s what we’ve decided – even if God Himself thought it would be better if it were two or four.

Nuff said. So now I want to go out on a limb. I want to suggest, not that any two people – because I can’t speak for everyone – but that you and I in particular have agreed that some killings – not all but some – are wrongful. We may not agree – in fact I’m pretty sure we don’t – on the full list of which are and which aren’t. I’d like it to be okay to kill Scots. But Ol’ Haggis Breath over there won’t hear of it. You’d like it to be not okay to kill foetuses. Neither of us is going to get his way. So we need to compromise.

The current compromise is: I’ll refrain from killing Scots and you’ll allow women to control their own reproductivity. But that can change. And the question I want to ask is, What does one do when that change is not to his liking?

Damn philosophers and their endless distinctions! Well sorry, but I have to draw another one. It’s an axiom of law, be it legal or moral, that all is permitted save what is prohibited. So by a rightful killing I just mean one that isn’t wrongful. For example, most of us will allow killing in war, in self-defence, in defence of another … Some of us will allow euthanasia. Others will allow, though I won’t, capital punishment. And so on. But I want to reserve the term ‘righteous‘ for a certain kind of rightful killing. More particularly, killing in response to a change that falls short of warranting a wholesale return to a state of war, but is deemed too far off what he regards as an equilibrium that the aggrieved can let it stand. What I have in mind are cases like these:

CASE ONE: As it happens I’m not pro-Life. In fact I’d prefer a world consisting of nothing but inanimate objects. But suppose I’ve had a religious conversion. Or a secular one. And so suppose that, though all other terms of the social contract I’ve signed on to remain acceptable, I can no longer abide a woman’s right to have an abortion. It’s not that all bets are now off. I might even be prepared to trade something of mine for the protection of the foetus. It’s just that for me the protection of the foetus has become non-negotiable. And let’s suppose further that a) I can reasonably hope to deter the killing of foetuses by killing an arbitrary selection of abortion providers, and that b) I can get away with it at least until discretion proves the better part of valour and abortion is no longer being widely provided.

I want to say that, in the sense defined above, this would be a righteous kill. And that I’d say the same even though I’m not pro-Life. That it was a righteous kill for him. In short, that righteousness is an indexical.

CASE TWO: Some of the things we do – featherbedding, for example – are only seemingly stupid. Others – tax-adding rather than tax-embedding – really are stupid. I’m opposed to capital punishment, not because it’s stupid – though it is – but because it makes me fear the state rather than cherish it. I’m not willing to die on this hill. Or any other, for that matter. But suppose I were. Suppose I felt about capital punishment the way our pro-Lifer feels about abortion. What should I do?

The idea that a human life is something one should politely lobby over strikes the pro-Lifer and abolitionist as morally obscene. I don’t share that view, but I certainly understand it. And so I’d likewise understand it if some abolitionist with the strength of his convictions were to file notice with every media outlet in the state that within 24 hours of the next execution, ten randomly selected Texans will be killed. No doubt the state will call his bluff and try to hunt him down. But suppose to no avail. And so the scenario repeats itself. Just as with the case of abortion, surely at some point discretion will prove the better part of valour. And that, I would argue, would be, in the sense defined above, a righteous way to put an end to capital punishment were one so committed to doing so.

If someone were to act out this abolitionist fantasy, would the unreliability of the requisite actus novus interveniens protect me? I think it would. If someone were to be convinced by my argument, would freedom to fantasise protect me? I would hope so. And if I celebrated my fantasy having come to fruition? How many talk-the-talk-only abolitionists would celebrate with me?

I’m going to assume that, thus indexically understood, most readers would accept that these are righteous kills. But it’s at CASE THREE where this dialectic becomes a tad sticker.

Capital punishment has been abolished in Canada – and in pretty much every other civilised country in the world – for decades now. But even in the U.S. the number of executions is a tiny fraction of the number of people killed by lightning. So what’s the big deal?! In fact capital punishment, even by my own assessment, pales in comparison to the damage done by, well, let’s just list the most obvious: fly by night aluminium siding salesmen, internet scammers, the proliferation of cancel culture in universities …

Let’s take the case of the latter. Suppose someone did go postal on these people, and that he got away with it long enough that discretion proved the better part of valour and academic freedom was restored in our universities. Would these killings have been any less righteous, in this indexical sense, than those of Cases One or Two?

One man’s proof is another’s reductio. So I suppose one could say that these are not righteous killings, and so neither are Cases One and Two. Or one could try to find some grounds to find the cases disanalogous. But I’m inclined to say that if one thought that cancel culture is doing as much damage as does the pro-Lifer or abolitionist thinks abortion or capital punishment are doing, and if he believed he could get away with going postal on these people long enough to put an end to cancel culture, while at the same time maintaining his moral and mental health, then it seems to me that for him, at least, these would be righteous kills.

By saying this am I inciting these righteous kills? No, because the requisite actus novus interveniens is too unreliable. Am I advocating these righteous kills? No, because I don’t think one could get away with it long enough to put an end to cancel culture while at the same time maintaining his moral and mental health. But would I celebrate these kills, provided they were righteous in the sense outlined above?

I think I would. I’m pretty sure that makes me a very bad person. No worse than having celebrated 9/11. Or more recently October 7th. But that’s pretty bad.

Categories: Everything You Wanted to Know About What's Going On in the World But Were Afraid to Ask, Social and Political Philosophy

Tags: 9/11, abolitionism, abortion, cancel culture, capital punishment, domestic terrorism, October 7th, pro-Life, Woke-ism