Overkill

Today I heard something quite strange on the news. President Obama and Premier Putin are discussing a new START (STrategic Arms Reduction Treaty) in order to improve the general safety of the world. I've been glancing over the treaty, and it really doesn't look all that drastic. It allows both the United States 1550 total nuclear warheads (a piece), 800 ICBM and SLBM launchers, and 700 deployed ICBM and SLBM launchers and bombers. The treaty is also supposed to require both countries to disclose the locations of their nuclear weapons.
This, in and of itself, would not be too noteworthy. Granted, one might comment that the fact that nuclear weapons are still around is scary, but because of the history of the world, I think it is not that interesting.
However, what I do find a bit intimidating is that this is a REDUCTION. Current estimates show that the US has over 10,000 nuclear weapons, and Russia has over 15,000. We may be planning on dropping down to a few thousand, but are we really fixing things?
Consider the following: when the first atom bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, it killed about 350,000 people. Bombs today are usually about twenty times as powerful. A bomb dropped on New York City would most likely kill the majority of the 9 million people there, and would cause long term effects (radiation poisoning and cancer) for the rest. Bombs sent to just New York, LA, Chicago, Boston and Washington would kill off about a tenth of the nation (five bombs). Think what 1550 could do.
We've tried to distance ourselves from the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine of the 50s and 60s, but we still cling to it. There is no possibly beneficial reason for having such great stockpiles of such malicious weapons. 1550 nuclear warheads would do just as much damage as 15000 (or, in the 70s, as many as 25000). It seems to me that even possession of nuclear stockpiles is a bad idea. As many satires and social commentaries of the Cold War taught us, the idea of MAD falls apart once situations get heated. Rather than turning to negotiation tactics, the fear is that hot heads and short tempers in moments of crisis would lead to the (rather easy) result of launching a few hundred or thousand nuclear weapons.
Generals and war tacticians told us that the threat of mutual destruction was the deterrent. Of course, this idea of "deterrence" is similar to the half-baked idea that executing criminals deters people from committing heinous crimes. Of course, crime rates have not really dropped since the death penalty was reinstated in 1985, and executions have actually risen. The main point is that the threat of violence does not really deter violence.
Terry Eagleton, a renowned literature critic and defender of theism, said once that if one nation launches weapons against the other, the other one has no duty to launch back, but in fact has an ethical duty to not retaliate. Destruction of all mankind is a dire price to pay in order to "get back." Simply because one country is obliterated, this does not mean that the ethical thing to do is to erradicate the second. Genocide is not an ethically viable option. So the threat of mutual destruction even proves to be a grossly unethical proposition.
But the truly, absolutely scariest thing is that this treaty is facing some controversy in congress. Republicans are loath to ratify the bill because, many of them argue, it will reduce our nuclear capability. It baffles me that we would elect men and women who would take such a position. I find it disconcerting and utterly nauseating that our fears would not be that we have too many nuclear weapons.
And then, many of these representatives have the nerve to call themselves Christians. Jesus, the man who said, "I a man strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the left also," and "Love your enemy. Do good to those who despitefully use you." How can someone claim to follow this teaching but still hold on to the idea of Mutual Assured Destruction? How can we, as American people, settle for such a slap in the face of decency?

Iures mores non est

I've been thinking a lot lately about ethics (no surprise, especially because in a month I'll be in classes for my MTS in Christian Ethics (Not counting down or anything).
What has struck me as fascinating is A) the prevalence of Emotivism expressed by even a lot of people I know, and B) the all-to frequent confusion between jurisprudence and ethics.
To let me clear up, first of all, something being legal does not make it ethical, conversely, even if something is ethical, it is not always legal.
To be sure, laws are supposed to be based on ethics. It matters little what sort of ethics (Buddhist, Christian, Judaic, Islamic, Judaeo-Islamic-Christian ethics or what-have-you). All that is clear is that laws are based on ethics (hence, why certain countries have laws that parallel predominant religions' guidelines as well as differences in these countries correlating to this). Thus, we see laws related strongly to religious faith and ethical theories.
However, often times laws stray away from their ethical origins. Such situations include traffic laws, which, though they have life-protecting influences, are not based off of any acknowledge ethical code (some, such as yielding and stopping laws may, but speed limits are often arbitrary).
On a similar note, what is ethical is often illegal. For example, in the nineteenth century in the United States, slavery was legal, and rescuing people from slavery was illegal.
So the fact remains that there are many laws which don't reflect any ethical principle, as there are many ethical principles which don't factor into the law-making process. So, even though the legal system is predominantly based on ethics, it does not submit completely to ethical scrutiny. Similarly, ethical principles often escape or are ignored utterly in the legal process.
St Augustine taught that any law which does not follow truth and ethics is no true law. Thus, a so-called law, whether civil or religious, if it does not stand up to ethical criticism, is not a law that can be enforced, in good conscience.
Nietzsche, as well, in "Genealogy of Morals" (though, admittedly a controversial work) pointed out that what he saw as bad ethics, had affected the development of laws and were thus, (in his view of ethics) a result of bad ethical practices and ignored true ethics.
One might wonder how something like this comes about. The most obvious answer is that people who function as law-makers are motivated by the same things as regular people: money, power, love, salvation, etc. However, the ability to gain more power is easier in a ruling position, and, as the saying goes, "power corrupts." Thus, oftener than not, rulers and law-makers often cater to interests specific to themselves, which go against common ethical sense.
Because of this fact, Thomas Hobbes wrote that in situations in which the people's best interests are not being served, the people are obligated to remove the government. While I am not advocating any drastic measures, what I do mean is that one must not confuse ethics with laws. Often times what's ethical may not be legal, or vice versa. However, you have an ethical duty to follow the ethical over the legal, every time.