Excessive virtue
Name(s):
Self-deluding virtue
Claim
1. Like most wars, the war in what was once Yugoslavia does not permit a clear distinction between good and evil, but it does allow us to distinguish between criminal aggressors and victims who also commit crimes. The last surviving commander of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising noted that in Bosnia we are witnessing mass slaughter, and Europe is behaving the way it did toward the resistance in the Ghetto. When a survivor of Nazi mayhem can say that, then cautionary statements on the morality of intervention by guilt-ridden Germans, and nervous Europeans generally, sound very odd.
2. Virtue is its own punishment.
Type
(F) Fuzzy exceptional problems