Preach it! I knew you were a good man when I sat beside you during your signing at ArmadilloCon. Now, if I could only convince my students about “alright” and “alot” I’d feel like I’ve accomplished something in life.

Oh, the rest of your post is right on, too!

Law of War is a pretty big and interesting field. See this Air Force list for a start-but that’s not really where you want to focus when thinking what a legal order is. This Navy how-to is a basic heads-up for a junior guy figuring this stuff out.

Orders are lawful or not, even though the stress can be very difficult. Sometimes the lawful part happens in peacetime: commanders wanting someone to wash their personal car on weekends, someone wanting something signed to create a false official statement, et cetera. Sometimes it isn’t: Law of War violations, for instance, which include treatment of enemy.

I’m not so sure the “line gets moved around a bit” in quite the manner you mention. I think it tends to be more an inability to get or enforce perfection on a battlefield. We’ve seen officers have to deal with the real live ticking bomb scenario. It’s a loser no matter how you act and one option is to do something illegal and have people live (“rather be tried by twelve than have comrades carried by six”). I note than in at least one of those situations, the officer acted himself rather than issue an order and put the burden on the subordinate. One can make one’s own conclusions on that just as one can with, say, Mush Morton’s decision to man the machine guns in WWII.

I also note that the enemy uses media and lawfare to restrict us based on any deviation in such perfection, and truth isn’t a defense. Every Haditha Marine has been cleared, so far; every one of them is also career toast as well as guys in the same unit two hundred miles away at the time…and the chilling effect is beneficial to the bad guys.

But it’s perfectly lawful–and on occasion a moral obligation–to direct personnel to do something which may well kill them and others. That’s what we do, and that’s a significant difference in what makes a military culture different from a civilian’s.
[/off topic]

This is one of those things that I’ve always seen as interesting. What constitutes a “legal order”?

When I was in the service, it meant they couldn’t make you torture people, or shoot unarmed combatants, etc. All the regular stuff. But I’m sure in the fog of war that line gets moved around a bit as the situation warrants. While that may sound like one step away from fascism to those who either have never served or are unable to empathize with the plight of soldiers in combat (which is odd to me because there are only about a thousand war films that portray the choices soldiers have to make in combat under stress and fire), it is a very necessary part of war.

My question is, and this is more philosophical than anything; If you not only do not agree with a war but are sure it is illegal, lets say, because the burden of proof has not been met, etc. Does one have the ability to conscientiously object (I’m sure they would go to jail at first) but then find a way to prove the war is unlawful (not unjust but actually illegal) would they be vindicated? Would that stop a war deemed illegal?

Just a wondering out loud.

–Writing freedom about politics isn’t completely universal even here in the States. I’m military, so I try very hard to discuss my political views only in an environment that is appropriate (or, frankly, legal). As a more senior guy in a group of junior guys, it’s not appropriate to opine; I try very hard not to involve the uniform wearing at the political rally. My own blog is rather boring because of that (well, not really; let’s say more boring). Some of that is due to the oath I took and laws I have to follow. I have to separate my profession from my political views because I’ll still deploy next year to where I’m going no matter who takes the oath in January, and still follow the legal orders of the President and officers appointed over me.

–My take is that creatives tend to have one opinion of the world, with rare exceptions. (Any righties in the punk scene besides Joey Ramone? You see that many righties in *creative field* these days?) That creates an echo chamber effect. Argument, as in intending to change someone’s mind, is a lot harder than expressing viewpoint; if you look at the political book maps (Amazon and Milan Vego’s maps of who buys what book on left or right), you see some isolation and hardening of more extreme positions as groups talk to each other less.

–Some guys think that their ability in one field means that they are then obligated to be good in another field. We’ve got a lot of loud voices out there with political opinions; not all of them are exactly thoughtful and well-informed. They forget that they’re just some guy yammering with a really big audience who would have to build a rep from a level lower than Being The Famous Guy. (Ed Begley Jr. comes to mind; he walks his talk, and gains respect politically for doing so despite being an actor dude, even from people who disagree with him.)

–Thanks, John, for being as polite and well-thought-out as you can when you argue things. I may or may not agree at times, but it’s nice to not have to cringe alla time.

Thank you for putting this so much better than I ever could. In fact, I’m going to post a link on my blog later today. And I’m going to become a regular reader of this blog.

Best,
Sue Ann

Do they have an Original Thought?

If they don’t, then at the end of the day, I really don’t give a flip what they think. Especially if it is just a regurge talking point or a very badly rehashed editorial they read somewhere.

In the last twenty years, I’ve heard just about every strain of political doctrine out there from anarchism to marxism, fascism to republicanism, ecotopias (tis to laugh, as if you can create such a thing without punitive measures) to dystopias.

Want to know what I’ve noticed?

They repeat and recycle themselves.

In other words, as I’ve said on my own blog, “same shit, different day.”

Now, someone wants to articulate an original political thought (and I think the likelihood of that happening in a literary field dominated by the American Left is nil at best) I’ll come along just to see if it is worth the price of admission.

But chances are, it isn’t and I’ve probably been bored to death with it a thousand times already.

S. F. Murphy

However, even though I acknowledge the fact that it might be “safer” for an author to keep their political views to themselves, I don’t think that kind of thinking is helpful in a democracy.

I have listened to different people in the world of literature and entertainment that have made an impact on me; added an idea or a perspective that has enriched my education.

And even though it’s true that it takes a lot of people and a lot of time to make changes for the better, how do these movements start? Usually with a few small groups of people who believe in something: civil rights, women’s rights, etc.

Orson Scott Card and Terry Goodkind are the two authors that popped into my mind as soon as I read this article. I find their personal politics has made me reluctant to buy their work. However, the quality of Goodkind’s work started to decline after his third book and I stopped buying his books long before I found out about his personal beliefs.

I don’t know about Card. Sometimes I wonder if I stopped enjoying his work because the writing isn’t as good or because of his views on religion and politics. He just came out with a collection of his short fiction and even though I read and loved the first collection—I really don’t think I’ll be buying the second. I find that it really is hard for me to separate how I feel about who the author is and how I judge his work.

I can get a better political lecture from someone with a PhD in the given topic than someone who merely has, at best, a BA in English.
There are plenty of people who never went to college, even people who have never finished high school, who have valuable insights. I don’t think having or not having a PhD automatically makes someone’s opinion more valuable. Is it interesting to speak to someone who has had an extensive education in that area? Of course. But I don’t think that the views of the people who haven’t should be dismissed.