Clouds over Cuba Documentary
(For those who are too young to remember)
The response time to a nuclear attack is less than 10 minutes; it thus depends to a large extent on computerized information; and multiple warheads make any defense problematical. A nuclear conflagration has the capacity to not only destroy most of life on earth, but also the foundations for most of life on earth. Power politics reaches the absurdity of a foreign policy of mutual assured destruction in which nuclear power cannot be used without threatening one’s own existence and the existence of life as we know it on earth.
Why now?
(From the Introduction of Moral and Political Philosophy)
“It is difficult to imagine an adequate resolution of the global problems which have resulted from technology without a concept of universal equality and a respect for human life and our common humanity.”
“This is important, for survival, well-being, the enjoyment of individual freedom and the progress of human liberty are not inevitable. They are contingent to a large degree, on our willingness and ability as moral agents to place our free will within ethical constraints. It is indeed the self-imposed ethical or moral foundations of government that change mere obedience to the coercive powers of government into a sense of consensual responsibility for a moral duty, a just order, the common good and human rights. The coercive powers of government are also needed less when those moral values and ethical constraints are incorporated into the culture and our intermediary social institutions, such as voluntary associations, education, law, medicine, economics, science, religion, and philosophy.”
