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Really? Integrity and character, fairness, tolerance and equality under the rules matter on little things such as wikipedia articles too. When a clique, gets ahold of a page, the wikipedia rules no longer apply, they make the rules. Sometimes you can shame them a bit with their hypocrisy, sometimes they are shameless. But being a clique or a "consensus" doesn't make them right.
Leave it to the anti-Castro clique to declare that principles should only be applied when to do so would be of minimal consequence.
No, but applying them in small things is good practice. For instance, the police and prosecution in the OJ Simpson case knew from the beginning that the media glare would be on them because of Simpson's involvement, yet they were so out of practice that even knowing their every move was watched they couldn't behave correctly.
Similarly police officers that lie in a traffic case will have no qualms about doing so in a murder case also.
Guantanamo is an embarrassment, but wars are messy, I'm probably a pacifist myself (I'm not quite sure), but what seems plain is that the non-pacifists who oppose the war in Iraq and who somehow have supported some other war and how that war was fought, are probably among the worlds greatest hypocrits. The U.S. has liberated Iraq without using conscript/slaves, with careful targeting to avoid unnecessary damage to civilians and civilian infrastructure, with no territorial ambitions, and without using "allies" that are beneath contempt such as Stalin, certain warlords in Afghanistan or the U.N.
So you would have us believe that the warlords with whom the U. S. has allied itself in Afghanistan are more virtuous than the ones it opposes! That may be the case on your planet, but not on earth.
I was referring to the warlords that were US allies, it was as immoral for the US to associate with them as it was to aid Stalin in WWII, and as it was to conscript innocent US civilians in WWII and the Vietnam war.
Some of us do believe in respecting the views of others, and I do know that there are others here who might share some of your POV. The point is that this started off with your, "What matters is what is right." As much as I may disagree with that position, I can recognize it as being relevant to writing an encyclopedia. But what do Fidel Castro and the Iraq War have to do with it? Do these topics represent your extension of Goodwin's Law? If you have nothing better to do than attempt to inflame passions maybe you should just go away.
No more than your mention of Guantanamo was. Goodwin's Law hasn't been proven yet any way. Sorry I inflame your passions, I meant to stimulate you to question your assumptions, since you seemed so sure that your moral relativism would be accepted without question. -- Silverback