White Lightning Axiom: Redux

Ouch. Trolling through the blogosphere today, I found that one of my favorites got something caught in his craw. Now I don't consider my self exactly a Conservative nor a moderate. Somewhere in between with a peppering of libertarianism. When it comes down to brass tacks though, I find my self in the camp of the war-mongers. Sure, I simper and cry every time I see a horrible waste of life or when a child gets hurt. When I think of the gassing of the Kurds or the Killing Fields of Cambodia or the ravages of the Huns, it makes my stomach twist. I try not to think of what men do to each other, they are self deterministic. Its when men do things to children that I fall into a moral funk. How could Saddam think that burying 30 thousand children in pits to save on the bullets is 'OK'. It takes a pretty hard heart to tolerate, let alone instigate and commit violence against the innocent or the defenseless. It brings me to the same place though. If I had to slap a man to save my children's life, could I do it? If I had to slap 2 men to save one of my children's life, could I do it? If I had to kill a dozen men to save my son ... a very destructive path. I'm sure there are moralists and intellectuals that would somehow pull a logical theorem out to show the fallacy of my argument, but this is not a institutional question. It is a matter of love and ethics. And we know which one usually loses when we need to pick between the two.