On Mar 29, 9:16 pm, Angelika Tobisch  wrote:

>[Lochley] expressed her morals as her reason. Morals
>which I have come to despise.

This is the biggest problem that I have with Lochley's position, as
well. It's her way of justifying her actions after the fact.

I can accept that there may have been circumstances that got in the
way of Lochley joining up. Do we know for a fact that she was the
captain of a destroyer during that time? It's likely that she was, but
even then, if the XO and other crew members didn't want to join with
Sheridan, it might have been hard for the captain to arrange that
single-handedly. The Agamemnon managed to join up, but pretty much
*all* their crew had previous experience with Sheridan, as opposed to
just one person.

Also, Lochley may not have had enough information available to her; in
_The Illusion of Truth_ we see how ISN can feed propaganda to its
viewers, and many Earthforce officers may not know whether VOR is in
fact doing the same thing. I have friends, including but not limited
to ex relationship partners, who I put trust in and who I'd lend money
to or do a favour for if they asked me, and some of these people I
haven't seen for many years. However, if I saw on the news that one of
them was leading a military action to overthrow the government, I
wouldn't side with that cause just on behalf of my friend being part
of it; I'd need solid evidence to be convinced.

In ACtA, Capt. Leonard Anderson told Sheridan that he and his crew
were wrong to not support him in the civil war, and that he wanted to
make up for it by doing the right thing currently. Do we know for sure
that Lochley doesn't harbour similar sentiments? She may have
genuinely believed the justification she gave Garibaldi, or it may
have been a rehearsed line that she'd prepared in case any questions
were asked. Her status as not taking Sheridan's side in the civil war
was part of why he selected her for the role of B5's station
commander, so she may have been more sympathetic to his side than
she'd let on. Also, in ACtA, the fact that Lochley wasn't on
Sheridan's side in the Earth civil war gives her some more leverage
when alerting President Luchenko.

In all likelihood, Lochley probably does believe her justification
after the fact, and she probably did do the wrong thing for the wrong
reasons. However, there's enough uncertainty and shades of grey to
these premises to make the plot interesting. There aren't any shades
of grey over whether Sheridan's military action was correct given all
that he knew, though; clearly it was and the folks on his side did the
right thing.

>John has already mentioned this and it's true, there
>weren't all that many Germans who actually killed Jews. Lots
>and lots of Germans came out of the Nazi time without ever
>having been ordered to do something immoral.

A good point, although a number of parties (including the Catholic
church) did actively support the Nazis during WW2.

>According to Lochley that's all the reason they need
>for having done nothing to oppose the regime. It's not.

This is essentially the problem with Kant's Categorical Imperative, as
well. Kant's idea is that, as long as the agent does nothing wrong,
then anyone else who does something wrong is responsible for their own
actions and that isn't the agent's fault. He gives the example that
you are supposedly best to not lie to a murderer, because if you lie
then you've done something wrong, whereas if you tell the truth and
the murderer kills someone, then only the murderer (but not you) has
done something wrong. I take issue with this idea because it separates
ethics/morality from consequences, and in fact doing something just
because you want to be considered a good person is extremely selfish
(this kinda relates to _Comes the Inquisitor_, too).

A more consequentialist view (which I think is best) is that, as a
rule of thumb applying in most situations, lying is wrong, but that's
only because telling the truth has a good outcome in most situations
because most verbal communication is with a person who has no relevant
wrongful intentions. There are exceptions, and an individual needs to
make their choices based on situational factors as well. Pretty much
any predetermined value set, like "lying is wrong", is a
generalisation and it has exceptions. Ditto for predetermined value
sets about following orders and laws when you're in the military or
otherwise a government official. (The standard of proof for a
government official to break the law is higher than for a private
citizen, but there are certainly situations where it does apply, and
the Sheridan/Clark plot is one such example.)

Matthew
--- SBBSecho 2.12-Win32