Hi, everybody. This is Gadsad. One of the many benefits of art in general and films in particular is that they sometimes share with us really important issues that are, in many cases, universal issues that speak to our shared common human nature, that speak to ethical

principles that humankind has been debating and discussing and grappling with since time

and memorial.

And so what I'd like to do today is talk about very briefly, I mean, something that I've talked about on many previous occasions, including in the parasitic mind, this tension between deontological versus consequentialist ethics, right?

Do you always adhere to some absolute moral standard or legal edict?

Or should it always be looked whatever action you

engage in through the calculus of consequentialism so it is never okay to lie would be a

deontological statement it is okay to lie to spare someone's feelings would be a consequentialist

statement and so so when Trump went

ahead and extracted Maduro from Venezuela, many people were arguing that, no, there are, I mean,

they didn't use the term deontological, but there are deontological principles that don't allow you to go into another country and take out a guy no matter how execrable he might be, whereas others say, no, no, this is a case where, you know, there is a mechanism by which Trump is allowed to do this, and he's doing doing it and the world will be better for it.

And of course, there are valuable insights to be gleaned from either positions.

But what I'd like to do today, and I want to give a hat tip to my very good friend Michael

Shermer, I saw him posting the transcript to truly one of the

most brilliant dialogue exchanges in a film, A Few Good Men, with Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise.

So I'm going to play it here, and I trust that this is under under the fair use clause and that it doesn't affect the commercial viability of the film.

I'm taking a small snippet for educational and academic reasons.

First, watch it and tell me how astoundingly relevant it is to the current realities that we're facing.

Back at you in a second.

Did you order the Code Ray?

You don't have to answer that question.

I'll answer the question.

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