Gregory's ServerThis is drastically oversimplified, but one thing that really helped me understand international law, and why it's worth defending, is if you stop thinking of it as trying to fix any particular current situation and focus on the goal of preventing a nuclear Great Power war.
|
8 comments
Experience tells me "international law" is a complete farce. Whoever has enough might to enforce it can use it to crush their enemies. Whoever has enough might to avoid it is never bothered by it. You might as well call it the "international charging of Africans court" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_indicted_in_the_International_Criminal_Court @dlakelan @ZachWeinersmith International law is a lot more than the international criminal court, but if that's the only metric you're using to judge it, yeah it's basically a failure. Almost all law is failure (or, if you're a powerful and rich person, it's a success). To the extent that the law benefits most people, Anarchists would do it anyway. to the extent that the police are needed to come in and smash skulls and shoot people it's because the law is oppression. I used to think law was a great thing, and "government of laws not of men" was a real ideal. Reading James Scott, and David Graeber and such changed that view entirely. @gutsquasher  Why would you want to prevent something that has "great" right there in the name? Please think before you toot, Zach.  @ZachWeinersmith There is someone in YouTube who calls international diplomacy 'great big poker game where everybody's cheating', and I like that metaphor as well ( not that your point is wrong) I think of it as being closer to a system of formal politeness than anything otherwise described as a legal system. |
@ZachWeinersmith
Or, as we're finding might be more relevant than we'd like, a nuclear Climate and Resource War.