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Message: <blockquote data-quote="barsoomcore" data-source="post: 1284860" data-attributes="member: 812">Sorry, you've changed my statement. I never said that a King who views the defense of his land as an act of war was crazy. I said that a King who makes accusations against those defending his kingdom might be crazy.To say that somebody started a war is not an accusation. It is either a true or a false statement. You and Trickstergod both seem to trip over this issue -- you keep bringing in notions of accountability and blame that only confuse the issue of who actually started the war.So if the King recognizes that the Count who put his army into the field to meet the invaders is in fact the fellow who started the war, that's just the King being clear about the facts. But if he accuses the Count of some heinous deed, says, "Why would you do such a thing?" and is generally an ungrateful sod, I'd certainly wonder about his mental state.Sorry to be unclear. Questions were not dodged -- they're irrelevant to the point I'm making. Your questions asked things like "Do paladins lose their powers for resisting?" -- my answer was, "I don't care." Sorry if I was too flippant, but I don't. One the one hand, I don't deal with paladins, so I don't care, and on the other, the issue of who started the war is not the same issue as who is to blame for the war.One of the problems with Evil/Good is that you have to blame somebody for stuff like this -- because somebody's got to be the bad guy.And worrying about who's the bad guy BEFORE you understand the facts is only going to get you into trouble somewhere down the line.At the very least, it's a clever play on semantics that's caused you to think deeply about the issue. Not all semantic arguments are useless.But if by this statement you're trying to say that the idea "defender starts the war" contains no intellectual content, I'd have to disagree. The point of thinking this way is to assess conflict in a factual, not a moral, manner.Once you can disassociate the moral issues from the factual issues, your decision-making becomes simpler and the correctness of your decisions will (all other factors being equal) increase.Interesting. History certainly suggests that cultures that do not find ways to incorporate "righteous violence" into their philosophies do not survive very long.I hope it's more clear to you now the point I'm making -- the point is to separate fact from morality. Determine the facts, then (if you are so inclined) make your moral judgements.</blockquote>

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