The Moral Obligation to Choose the Lesser Evil

[DeistPaladin]

Power = Moral Responsibility 


It's a simple truism. You are not morally responsible for what is outside your control. You are morally responsible for what is under your control. I'm sure we can all agree.

And so we demolish another Purity Brigade lie, "Choosing the lesser evil is still choosing evil."

FALSE!

In fact, the opposite is true. You have a moral obligation to choose the lesser evil if that's your only option.

In the upcoming Presidential Election (as well as the one that happened four years ago), you are (were) given a binary choice. This binary choice was prepared for you, outside your control. Even if you voted for another candidate in the primary, you were overruled by other voters and so the decision was removed from your control. You can't help it (and thus are not morally responsible) if the only alternative to a greater evil was a lesser evil.
The only power you have (or had) was to choose between the two options you were given. You have a moral oblation in that situation to take the better of the two options, however bad it may be.

It's called "playing the hand you're dealt". You don't get to play with the cards you wish for. You only get to choose the options you have.
On the other hand, if you shirk your responsibility and allow the greater evil to prevail, your moral culpability can be measured by the following formula:

Moral Culpability = X - Y

Where X = the greater evil and Y = the lesser evil

So in a situation where you are forced to choose between candidate "X" and "Y", let's say you reasonably expect X to be three times as bad as Y. To express that in numbers for a moment, X is a "9" on the badness scale while Y is a "3".

If you allow X to prevail by your inaction, whether by staying home or throwing away your vote on a nonviable pretend 3rd option, your moral culpability is 6 of the 9 badness that ensues. You couldn't help 3 of it because Y would have done that. You are responsible for the 6 of it that could have been averted.

If you vote for Y and Y wins the election, then your actions by the same formula helped to avert 6 of the 9 badness that candidate X would have wrought. Voting the lesser evil is thus a benefit to society and is thereby the morally correct course of action.

You have a moral obligation to choose the lesser evil if that's your only alternative to a greater evil.

[tackattack]

The flaw in ur logic is that the choice isn’t binary and that voting for the lesser evil doesn’t benefit society more, just that it harms society less or slower

[DeistPaladin]

The flaw in ur logic is that the choice isn’t binary and that voting for the lesser evil doesn’t benefit society more, just that it harms society less or slower

But it IS a binary choice, like it or not.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Suppose I know that a particular person is on the run from the law for the accidental death of a child. I know that if he is caught, he will be horribly and gruesomely tortured and suffer a long, slow, excruciatingly painful death.

Which is the lesser evil - to turn him in to the secret police or to help him escape? If I turn him in, I will be complicit in a state-sanctioned killing.  If I help him escape, I have let the killer of a child go unpunished.

These things aren't always black and white.

Boru

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The flaw in ur logic is that the choice isn’t binary and that voting for the lesser evil doesn’t benefit society more, just that it harms society less or slower

But it IS a binary choice, like it or not.

The binary choice isn't always the logical choice.

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

But it IS a binary choice, like it or not.

The binary choice isn't always the logical choice.

Or the moral one.

Boru

[Rev. Rye]

The flaw in ur logic is that the choice isn’t binary and that voting for the lesser evil doesn’t benefit society more, just that it harms society less or slower

While there are technically third parties in America, in practice, they’re useless at best, and at worst, they might skew votes in a very unfortunate way. So, in essence, it is a binary choice. A third party hasn’t had a chance at winning since 1912, and even then, all it did was split the vote in such a way that Woodrow Wilson won. 

And, frankly, in a binary choice, harming society less or slower is the same as Benefiting society more. It may still be a net negative, but sometimes, that’s the only option available. To deny this Fact is Nothing short of folly.

[Belacqua]

You have a moral obligation to choose the lesser evil if that's your only alternative to a greater evil.

If this election were happening in isolation from other trends, it would be simple. 

The trouble is that in each election for a long time we have been asked to hold our noses and vote for the lesser evil. This means in practice that as Republican candidates get worse and worse, the lesser evil Democrat gets worse too. 

By always giving us a candidate that's 1% less evil than the Republicans, the window moves further right, and we end up with two terrible candidates. 

I think it's a trick, to keep us on board without giving us anything we really want or need.

[Sal]

I agree with the premise. But moral "math"? That seems like a stretch.

[Peebothuhlu]

At work.

This is why I always vote for Cthulhu.

With such a cosmic horror one does not have to suffer the lesser of two evils.