China is dependent on exports for now. In a few decades it will be self sufficient. In perhaps a century or so it have by far the world's largest military. None of the other BRICs are able to match it's growth rate. Ever heard of the democratic peace theory? Well, that doesn't apply to China. If they ever believe they have a shot at taking over the world, there is nothing stopping them from taking it.
As for the fate of democracy, ask why this particular system is able to exist. Republics are maintained because the army and police will refuse to defend the government if the constitution is revoked. Now what happens once automation replaces labor and the executive comes to have a direct monopoly on the use of force? Sounds like a lame idea for a science fiction novel, but consider the possibility that sooner or later technology may come to increase the amount of power a small group of individuals can wield. Now considering the idiocy of the modern electorate and phenomenon such as the Tea Party I am not fully sure of the people's ability to sustain democracy when their collective hold on power weakens further.
It seems like people today believe that liberalism will last forever and the future is Star Trek. Consider for a second whether or not there is such a thing as social progress, or whether we are living in a brief historical interlude following millenia of slave societies where the particular conditions and balance of power happen to favor democracy and peace.
This might deserve its own thread, since I don't really see what bearing it has with this one, although the topic is interesting.
I might just mention old quote from a German philosopher:
"Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird. Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein."There are various translations of the quote in English, but their basic idea is that when you're fighting against something that goes against your values, you shouldn't allow yourself to abandon your own values, or there's no point in the fight at all.
Your argument is essentially that since Factor X is a threat to your values and way of living, you are justified in abandoning your values and way of living in order to counter the threat.
What's the point in that? It seems like Factor X succeeded in ruining your values and way of living by
making you do their work for them.
Feel free tu substitute China, Communists, Terrorists, Nazis, Muslims, Christians, Scientologists, Liberals, Conservatives, Republicans, Democrats or whatever you wish as "Factor X".
But that's a better option than simply assuming all suspects are guilty and thus all suspects of serious enough crimes would never see the light of day as free men or women again.
Then you can argue from a liberalist basis. I will argue from a utilitarian basis. In particular crimes where the danger of letting individuals go is too high, then due process should be circumvented. Are we arguing over values or social welfare?
Liberalism is a political view. Utilitarianism is a branch of ethics, to be exact it's based on
consequentialism.
What you want to say is you view the situation using values derived from utilitarian ethics, while I use [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_Ethics]deontological ethics.
My argument is that utilitarianism falls apart when you
can't know the full consequences of your actions. The fact that no one is omniscient and thus can't know the absolute consequences of their actions renders utilitarianism useless for choosing how to act. The best you can do is try to predict what consequences each action will have, and then hope your damndest that your judgement of consequences happened to be correct.
Deontological ethics, well, Wikipedia says it very well so I'll just quote:
Deontological ethics or deontology is an approach to ethics that determines goodness or rightness from examining acts, rather than third-party consequences of the act as in consequentialism, or the intentions of the person doing the act as in virtue ethics.
This approach is, in my opinion, the most defendable and logically sound ethical system, because it doesn't rely on assumptions of what future will hold, nor gauge the (subjective) intentions behind an act (the road to hell is paved with good intentions, after all).
The point of trials, like I said, is to bring a third party to decide the matter between the defendant and the prosecution. If you simply drop the role of the judiciary branch, you end up with executive decisions spelling the fate of the suspects, rather than a detached third party.
Are you familiar with term "conflict of interests"? The police and prosecutors can't be allowed to make the decision between guilty and not guilty because their job is to investigate and prosecute, not to determine if they happen to be right or not. Of course they think they're right when they determine the most likely suspect and whether or not to prosecute. That's their job, and they can't be second-guessing themselves when they do their job. That responsibility belongs to the neutral third party - which is the judiciary.
You said you were tired of going in circles so I'm not going to just pull a copypasta of my previous posts here. Again, it appears we are arguing from different value systems.
Well, not so much values as different branch of ethical thinking. Naturally, I think that the branch of ethics I subscribe to is superior to others.
Can you defend utilitarian ethics, without claiming that those you would trust to make decisions are aware of the absolute consequences?
As I understand it, the social benefit of holding trials for captives is the prevention of the imprisonment of (at least some) innocents. The social cost of holding trials is that criminals will likely be freed and will commit further crimes. When the risk of the social cost of additional crime from wrongful acquittals exceeds the social benefit of not imprisoning innocents, then a utilitarian would say that the criminals should not be given trials even if the result is imprisonment of foreigners, kangaroo courts, a bit of dictatorship, and everything else you mentioned, Herra. Is this not at least an internally consistent act utilitarian argument?
The problem is, like I said, that utilitarian argument falls apart very fast under rigorous inspection. There are many, many ways to prove that utilitarian ethics should never ever be used as a basis for legislation.
Veil of Ignorance is perhaps the best example to prove this. Short version is this:
A group of people is gathered (on either volunteer or non-volunteer basis) and their memories and knowledge of their past life temporarily eradicated.
They are then given the task of governing the country for a year, examining and changing legislation, after which they are returned to their lives.
Now, an ethically problematic decision is bestowed upon them. Let's say they have a group of suspects, and they know some of them are definitely associated with terrorists, while some are innocents. They don't know who are the innocents, and they have no way to reliably define who of the people are guilty.
From your utilitarian standpoint, they should keep all of them imprisoned, because as you claim, risk of letting the dangerous individuals get away would result in a lot of damage to the rest of the population. However, what if when returned from the "governmental duty", some of our intrepid executives find themselves imprisoned suspected of terrorism, decreed by their own ruling?
Would they be willing to risk that? After all, they don't remember who they are and what they were doing before being selected into the temporary government.
They could have been unjustly imprisoned before their stint in governmental duty, and afterwards returned to same conditions.
Would
you be willing to be imprisoned unjustly for indeterminate period of time? If not, you can't justify anyone else being imprisoned indefinitely, since there is always a possibility that the imprisonment happens to be unjust, and a trial is the only even remotely valid way of determining their guilt or innocense, because it bestows that responsibility to a third party rather than some arbitrary probabilistic predictions about the consequences of releasing (or imprisoning) the suspects without certain knowledge of their innocense or guilt.
