stonedog:

You pick up the shotgun you keep in the closet by the front door and say, "If I have commited a crime, then arrest me. Otherwise, get off of my property." The LEA's reply, "You just made a big mistake, bud." Twenty minutes later they return with a fifty agents with automatic rifles and orders to shoot to kill the "spy".

Of course, if he just "went along quietly", he would have spent a few years rotting in an "internment camp" while his business failed or he lost his job to someone fortunate enough to have immigrated from Italy or Germany instead of Japan. That's better than endangering the lives or yourself and your family, right?

Good description of the problem. Nicely drawn.

You might feel that the example that you responded to was a bit too simplistically polemic, but I think for many people, especially those in this forum, your hypothetical situation is not at all an ethical dilemma.

The real ethical dilemma was with the principle that you are ethically justified in shooting if you think your life is threatened. I chose this example as one in which both sides feel that way. There are many other cases I could have chosen. Between the two examples given earlier, the armed prowler and the rude jerk in the next car, there are a whole range of difficult cases. In the case at hand, you seem to be saying that it is unwise for the Japanese man to shoot, especially if he has family. But is it wrong? Suppose he has no family, and he chooses to shoot, then gets killed himself for his troubles. Can you say who is at fault? There is something wrong with an ethical system which says both sides were justified in shooting. Yet both sides feared for their lives, and that was what was suggested as a justification. Keep in mind too that we should try not to rely too much on hindsight. Camps like Manzanar were relatively benign. But instead of a Japanese American, consider a Jew in Poland. He's in the same situation. Hindsight tells us that maybe he'd do better to drive off the cops and then try to escape before they come back. Few Jews anticipated that the internment they were sent to was going to be any worse than how it turned out for the Japanese Americans. So if you want to say that the Japanese was not justified in shooting because the camps were likely to be safe, the same would apply to the Jew. "John ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com