Reply #32: You're welcome. And valuing anything, by definition, is subjective.

[tubbacheez]

If you'll pardon a brief tangent into economics, the whole reason any kind of trade happens at all is because everyone values things a little differently from each other.


When it comes to valuing another person's death, of course everybody can come up with an opinion of some kind. How good are those opinions? I think we cannot possibly know.




I think it's objective to say Bush ordered our troops into harms way under false pretenses. We have proof of that's what occurred.

I'm ok saying Bush is responsible for all those unnecessary deaths, military and civilian alike, because he set up the dangerous situation that killed them. And the reasons he gave for doing so have been proven false.

That's fine. It's just a statement of objectively measurable facts.

We move into subjective territory when we put a value judgement on these facts.





The line I cannot bring myself to cross is telling someone "your son died for nothing". that's a value judgement. How do I know this guy actually died for nothing? Maybe he died for something and I'm simply unaware of what that something is.

Maybe he believed Bush and died trying to prove Bush was right. Now that Bush has been proven wrong, that would indeed be a fruitless death. But that's just one possibility.

Maybe he risked his life to protect his friends. If he did attempting to do that, then the value of his death is harder to say. He himself (supposing his spirit or soul were available for comment afterwards) might consider his death well-justified, though the rest of us grieve his loss.