In such a case there is agreement about what is relevant, and how it is relevant, but disagreement about the weight of the competing moral considerations one person regards the evil of killing one person as weightier than the good of saving five, while the other regards the evil of killing one as outweighed by the good of saving the five.
If justice is understood in universal, rather than parochial terms, if common human solidarity counts as a weighty moral consideration, and if peace is of paramount importance and war is morally permissible only when it is just, then this kind of patriotism must be rejected.
However, in exceptional circumstances considerations concerning consequences the price of not resorting to terrorism may be so extremely weighty as to override those of justice and rights.
The second question asks us to justify a distinction between matters of whim, such as the choosing of chocolates, and matters of weighty reasons, such as those involved in moral choice.
This may be because they regard procreative autonomy as a merely prima facie right, less weighty than other rights, such as the right to a minimally decent quality of life (Bayles 1979).
Nor does this difficulty only affect the rights of office-holders like journalists; Raz admits that weighty rights such as the rights of free expression and freedom of contract are not justified solely by the interests of the individual citizens who hold them (Raz 1996a, 30 43, 131).
Of these the responsibility of the priests is more weighty, in so far as they will answer for the kings of men themselves at the divine judgment... [I]n the order of religion... you ought to submit yourselves [to priests] rather than rule... [T]he bishops themselves... obey your law so far as the sphere of public order is concerned".
In such an emergency a case of the "dirty hands" predicament that so often plagues political action (see Walzer 1973)—one may breach a basic and weighty moral principle such as civilian immunity, if that is the only hope of fending off the threat.
Others believe the possession of rights to be a weighty consideration but not so weighty as to outbalance every other moral claim.
For example, since symmetries (such as the gauge symmetries associated with the constraints) come with quite a lot of metaphysical baggage attached (as philosophers of physics know from the hole argument), such a move involves philosophically weighty assumptions.
