> “you’ve just overthrown the government in a socialist workers’ uprising. The royal family and all members of the nobility have been executed by firing squad. As the recently elected chairman of the Greater London Soviet, explain why this was both necessary and moral.”
Surely that's equally "acceptable" perspective for a role-playing exercise, yes?
In your edit you commented that it's an exercise for practicing for "some position you aspire to". Doesn't that imply that someone who aspires to be a PM should practice concocting excuses to explain why it was "both necessary and moral" to kill protestors? Wouldn't better practice for a PM in this case to be to express sorrow about the deaths, announce the start of an independent investigation into the issue (and not be people with ties to the government), etc.?
Doesn't this sort of exercise also reduce the number of people who enter political science simply because they don't want to spend time to defend a some positions they believe to be unconscionable?
I took a foreign language class once and we were asked to practice by having a debate on some topic. I don't remember what it was, so let's say "for or against smoking in public restaurants". I was assigned the task of defending the ability to smoke in a restaurant - something I am very much against - and refused to do it.
Just like a social activist teenager with a history of going to demonstrations might be against needing to justify the morality of killing protestors.
Or the teenager from the ranks of nobility might not want to justify killing his or her family for the needs of the Greater London Soviet.
That is, when this came up on August, one commenter at https://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2019/08/29/but-it-is... posed a roughly equivalent problem:
> “you’ve just overthrown the government in a socialist workers’ uprising. The royal family and all members of the nobility have been executed by firing squad. As the recently elected chairman of the Greater London Soviet, explain why this was both necessary and moral.”
Surely that's equally "acceptable" perspective for a role-playing exercise, yes?
In your edit you commented that it's an exercise for practicing for "some position you aspire to". Doesn't that imply that someone who aspires to be a PM should practice concocting excuses to explain why it was "both necessary and moral" to kill protestors? Wouldn't better practice for a PM in this case to be to express sorrow about the deaths, announce the start of an independent investigation into the issue (and not be people with ties to the government), etc.?
Doesn't this sort of exercise also reduce the number of people who enter political science simply because they don't want to spend time to defend a some positions they believe to be unconscionable?
I took a foreign language class once and we were asked to practice by having a debate on some topic. I don't remember what it was, so let's say "for or against smoking in public restaurants". I was assigned the task of defending the ability to smoke in a restaurant - something I am very much against - and refused to do it.
Just like a social activist teenager with a history of going to demonstrations might be against needing to justify the morality of killing protestors.
Or the teenager from the ranks of nobility might not want to justify killing his or her family for the needs of the Greater London Soviet.