Moral equivalence
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Moral equivalence is a term used in political debate, usually to deny that a moral comparison can be made of two sides in a conflict, or in the actions or tactics of two sides.
The term had some currency in polemic debates about the Cold War. "Moral equivalence" began to be used as a polemic term-of-retort to "moral relativism", which had been gaining use as an indictment against political foreign policy that appeared to use only a situation-based application of widely held ethical standards.
International conflicts are sometimes viewed similarly, and interested parties periodically urge both sides to conduct a ceasefire and negotiate their differences. However these negotiations may prove difficult in that both parties in a conflict believe that they are morally superior to the other, and are unwilling to negotiate on basis of moral equivalence.
Cold War
In the Cold War context, the term was and is most commonly used by anticommunists as an accusation of formal fallacy for leftist criticisms of United States foreign policy and military conduct.[citation needed]
Many such people believed in the idea that the
Some of those who criticized US foreign policy at the time contended that US power in the
) to stand on their own. In contrast, those who justified US interventions in the Cold War period always cast these as being motivated by the need to contain totalitarianism and thus fulfilled a higher moral imperative.An early popularizer of the expression was
Leftist critics usually argued that the United States itself created a "moral equivalence" when some of its actions, such as President
Moral equivalence has featured in debates over
See also
- False equivalence
- Moral Equivalent of War speech
- Moral responsibility
- Morality
- Whataboutism
- And you are lynching Negroes
References
- ^ Jeane Kirkpatrick. The Myth of Moral Equivalence, January 1986, Vol. 15, No. 1, Imprimis
- ^ Bonner, Raymond (10 November 2014). "Bringing el Salvador Nun Killers to Justice". The Daily Beast.
- ^ Krauss, Clifford (21 March 1993). "How U.S. Actions Helped Hide Salvador Human Rights Abuses". The New York Times.