" It was a cold-war mentality and any means was justified in beating us.
Those who defend the lawsuits say the means are justified to bring more businesses into compliance.
It is unlikely that Goldwater would go around the South agitating the most brazen of its racists if he did not think that this means was justified by some noble end.
Once the Bush team got into the habit of breaking the law, it became their operating procedure that any means are justified: ordering the nation's intelligence agents to torture prisoners; sending innocents to be tortured in foreign countries; creating secret prisons where detainees were held illegally without charge.
But to read "A Christian Manifesto" as only a call for non-violent civil disobedience is to willfully ignore a central argument of the book: that at a certain point — the "bottom line" — the government loses its moral authority, and its overthrow by any means is justified.
I think of them as BAITERs (for people who are "Backstabbers/Abusers/Imposters/Takers/Exploiters/Reckless)." We are talking about people who believe the "means are justified by the end".
When Christians decide lies are the best way to inspire the "faithful" to fight for justice, and when Christians demonstrate through our actions that we believe that any means are justified as long as the end is just, we are lost.
Regardless of the motivation, this is not justifiable to the point of leaving ethical principles aside and adopting purely utilitarian stances where "the means are justified by the end," without regard to beneficence, justice and autonomy of the subjects.
Elijah insists the deaths were justified as a means to find David.
Can a by-any-means strategy be justified when it could cause a by-all-measures disaster?
