Do the ends justify the means?

Can you use slightly evil ways to justify getting something you want to achieve that is good? For example, getting a country’s loyalty using propaganda. On a more personal level, giving a neighbor girl a pretty sundress to get her to go to church.

Depends on a lot of things. Misuse of power is rampant and people just rationalize it away.

Giving that girl a sundress seems OK. You had good intentions, I don’t see how that could harm her.

The sundress was given to me by my neighbor. I often wondered if I would have gotten religion if it weren’t for that.

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God loves you, don’t worry about it.

I’m just surprised at the lengths people will go to, I’m just reading “The Ugly American” which has a lot of that in it.

The end justifying the means is a form of conditional ethics that erode your morality away. It’s Machiavellian and one of the cornerstones of a tyranny.

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