Comment by pydry

The principle we ought to follow is the principle we expected Soviet dissidents to follow.

What principle did we expect Andrei Sakharov [a Soviet scientist punished for his criticism of the U.S.S.R.] to follow? Why did people decide that Sakharov was a moral person?

Sakharov did not treat every atrocity as identical-he had nothing to say about American atrocities. When he was asked about them, he said, "I don't know anything about them, I don't care about them, what I talk about are Soviet atrocities."

And that was right-because those were the ones that he was responsible for, and that he might have been able to in­fluence. Again, it's a very simple ethical point: you are responsible for the predictable consequences of your actions, you're not responsible for the predictable consequences of somebody else's actions.

Conversely, how do we view the protests in the USSR against jim crow laws under stalin? They surely existed, but of what consequence were they? None whatsoever.