Alasdair Macintyre is a brilliant philosopher whose positions challenged many of my (back then) dearly held libertarian/liberal beliefs. Here’s a talk where he discusses the justification of coercion and restraint. This will be a provocative lecture for those operating within the American political paradigm almost exclusively – conservative, or liberal – and shows (I think) just how detached our political discourse and policy decisions have become from deeper, underlying principles.
Homedika says
Failure to acknowledge and accept that conscientious judgements can be seriously mistaken, may only promote situations where one’s conscience is manipulated by others to provide unwarranted justifications for non-virtuous and selfish acts; indeed, insofar as it is appealed to as glorifying ideological content, and an associated extreme level of devotion, without adequate constraint of external, altruistic, normative justification, conscience may be considered morally blind and dangerous both to the individual concerned and humanity as a whole.