Once you learn something new, your perception on what is going on around you is broadened. When a child learns about crayons, they then recognize walls, doors and windows, and their potential to be great canvases. When one learns about trans fats and high fructose corn syrup, suddenly a nutrition label becomes daily reading material. When I started to think about the differences between killing in vain versus killing as a defender of humanity, I found myself in conversations about it constantly. Discussing the death penalty and our judicial system with friends, or the laws of war with co-workers and even how we justify murder with a stranger. It sounds deviant, but it is no different than learning about how ice cream is made and wanting to tell someone what you know.
It was my friend’s birthday the other day and we went to the bar to celebrate life, accompanied by car bombs (no pun intended) and jokes with an occasional current event. My friend Preston is a writer, therefore a debater. He was sitting next to this extremely odd guy and somehow they came across the topic of guns, murder and war. Preston likes to do this when he has been drinking, bring up a deep topic and see how far the conversation will escalate until I burst out in laughter at the other people’s ignorance. I know you are probably reading this, thinking okay, get to the point, but to truly paint the picture you must be patient and observe the details. We were all feeling good when I overhear Preston and the strange fellow’s conversation.
Dude: “Ya man, I used to want to be a Navy Seal just for the reason that I wana kill people!”…“It may sound mentally ill man, but it’s true. Being a Navy Seal would be awesome because it justifies murder.”
What did you say sir? Justifies murder? How so?
Karl Heinzen’s article “Murder” opened my mind up to a new way of thinking about the person holding the dagger. Growing up we are taught that killing is wrong, but human history contradicts that philosophy. Our blood stained past and present is defined by murder, betrayal, and the glory that follows the victory over our “barbaric” enemy. So, as a result, we have been conditioned to accept certain justifiable murders, whether it is one person or it is mass murder, and condemn the wrong murderers.
“No clear-thinking, rational person can accept the hair-splitting distinctions by which certain methods of obliterating the enemy are justified and other condemned; such distinctions rest on theological and legal fictions and do not in any way alter the facts of the matter, which are that in each case it is purely and simply a question of obliterating one’s enemy.” (Heinzen, 54)
Perhaps it is not the actual act of ending one’s life that is a crime, but the failure to end an immoral person’s life. Karl Heinzen stresses the point that the man who would not give up his own life for the satisfaction of ending a million barbarians’ lives is not a Republican (Heinzen 59). Once murder is justified dependent on the morality of the enemy, everything is blurred. The philosophy we were taught as children that killing is wrong is no longer a thought in our minds, but rather our thoughtis, is killing this particular person wrong. Once we have accepted this thought, it will quickly turn into, is killing these particular people wrong. Hence, “the greatest benefactor of mankind will be he who makes it possible for a few men to wipe out thousands (59).” Once were have accepted justifiable murder, the only solution to prevent our enemies from destroying our system is to wipe them out as fast as possible. We have come so far in this moral acceptance, and now when you as an adult turn on the television and listen to stories of mass murder it hardly fazes you. You do not feel that indignant pulse your once innocent mind would have felt.
So here lays the problem and the solution, the heroes and the villains, the Good and the Bad. If we are to defend the good, we must destroy the bad. This is the new “Thou Shalt Not Kill.” This is the nothing new philosophy of the powerful, and the validation of the terrorist’s actions. If everyone is using the same reason to wage war, when will the war be won? The nuclear bomb could very well be our world’s greatest benefactor, in a way it is keeping us still for a moment. We have created that solution to our problem of bad. A simple way to kill millions, but now even our barbaric enemies has gained control over this tool. This blurs the line even more. According to Heinzen, the only choice we have is to either be murdered for freedom’s sake or murder for it (59). This seems to be our enemy’s exact philosophy. We call our murders victories, our deaths, sacrifices and their murders, terrorist acts, their deaths martyrs. Their justification is not valid in our minds and eyes; so the laws of war continue to wage on and trump other laws of morality and ethics, for without this war, there would be no blood, and as time continues, it seems that our mother earth yearns for that blood.
Laqueur, Walter. ""Murder" by Karl Heinzen." The Terrorism Reader: a Historical Anthology. New York: New American Library, 1978. Print.
Laqueur, Walter. ""Murder" by Karl Heinzen." The Terrorism Reader: a Historical Anthology. New York: New American Library, 1978. Print.
