Dave “Time’s Shadow” Rogers has scolded me on a number of counts, among which are my fundamental misunderstanding of a soldier’s commitment, my shirking my responsiblity to support the army regardless of the circumstances, of speaking glibly about community, of letting down soldiers, and of covertly passing judgment on them. Jonathon has now seconded Dave, and I suppose I should respond — although any rejoinder I make already stands under Dave’s characterization of me as “unfit” to speak to this subject.
I don’t want to be in a shouting match with Dave or Jonathon. I don’t feel as though I have to convince them that I’m right and they’re wrong; if each of us respectfully speaks his piece (not only in words but in deeds) and we finally disagree, we don’t have to fight to the rhetorical death. I don’t feel morally superior to Dave and Jonathon. I respect them. They have strong and articulate consciences, and that’s pivotally important. They have one way of looking at this invasion; I adhere to a different way of thinking about violence, conflict, duty, and honor.
If I understand Dave correctly, he argues that I am morally bound to support the soldiers invading Iraq, because “one has to keep faith with those who have sworn an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, to bear true faith and allegiance to the same, against all enemies foreign and domestic, and to obey the lawful orders of the officers appointed over them.” I must support without questioning the work of those soldiers because “because we placed them in those circumstances, through our own inaction and indifference.” (“We” placed them there, although a couple of sentences later Dave points out that the “we” is illusory, that one speaker’s “we” can’t bind the “you” whom the speaker addresses.)
I haven’t said more about Dave’s imputations and his ethical reasoning because I don’t know how. How does a soldier’s voluntary oath to defend the Constitution bind me to hold my tongue? How did I let the soldier down by inaction and indifference? What does Dave think I should have done? On what basis does Dave reserve for himself the prerogative to call me unfit, while insisting that I keep silent on matters concerning the soul, concerning wrong and right, life and death?
Speaking out — preaching — is part of my job description. I have taken an oath, too — an oath to stand for the truth, to speak up for life and peace rather than coercion and bloodshed, to talk candidly about what’s right or wrong as I have been given to understand them by the saints of the tradition that commissions me. In talking through the problems relative to the moral justification for this war and the burdens that soldiers bear, I’ve been fulfilling my oath. Who decides that the soldier’s oath prevails over my oath, and who appointed that person my judge?
While in fulfilling that oath, I’ve explicitly prescinded from using language of judgment. I have not at any point suggested that I knew Dave or any soldier to stand morally condemned — for which Dave criticizes me, on the basis that he suspects that my sorrow disguises a covert judgment. Since anything I say can thus be accounted a concealed judgment, I’ll hold my tongue — honoring Dave’s stature and wisdom and experience and military oath.
Posted by AKMA at March 20, 2003 10:34 AM | TrackBackAKMA,
Here's a token of appreciation and support from the "other" Dave Rogers.
Great post; well expressed; patient and humble.
Thanks, brother!
Posted by: Dave Rogers (C&E) at March 20, 2003 08:35 PMPresumably, we honor the soldiers on both sides of the battle lines, giving unstintingly what they should never have been asked to give. The rhetoric will escalate. But, hey, AKMA, you have every advantage -- brains, courage, and training. You preach the cautionary sermon, Rev Dr Swift, and I will praise the dunces all day long.
Posted by: The Happy Tutor at March 20, 2003 11:08 PMNote first that favoriteNumbers type changed. Instead of our familiar int, we're now using int*. The asterisk here is an operator, which is often called the "star operator". You will remember that we also use an asterisk as a sign for multiplication. The positioning of the asterisk changes its meaning. This operator effectively means "this is a pointer". Here it says that favoriteNumber will be not an int but a pointer to an int. And instead of simply going on to say what we're putting in that int, we have to take an extra step and create the space, which is what does. This function takes an argument that specifies how much space you need and then returns a pointer to that space. We've passed it the result of another function, , which we pass int, a type. In reality, is a macro, but for now we don't have to care: all we need to know is that it tells us the size of whatever we gave it, in this case an int. So when is done, it gives us an address in the heap where we can put an integer. It is important to remember that the data is stored in the heap, while the address of that data is stored in a pointer on the stack.
Posted by: Matilda at January 12, 2004 09:25 PMThis will allow us to use a few functions we didn't have access to before. These lines are still a mystery for now, but we'll explain them soon. Now we'll start working within the main function, where favoriteNumber is declared and used. The first thing we need to do is change how we declare the variable. Instead of
Posted by: Abacuck at January 12, 2004 09:25 PMA variable leads a simple life, full of activity but quite short (measured in nanoseconds, usually). It all begins when the program finds a variable declaration, and a variable is born into the world of the executing program. There are two possible places where the variable might live, but we will venture into that a little later.
Posted by: Dolora at January 12, 2004 09:25 PMLet's see an example by converting our favoriteNumber variable from a stack variable to a heap variable. The first thing we'll do is find the project we've been working on and open it up in Project Builder. In the file, we'll start right at the top and work our way down. Under the line:
Posted by: Joshua at January 13, 2004 10:13 AMTo address this issue, we turn to the second place to put variables, which is called the Heap. If you think of the Stack as a high-rise apartment building somewhere, variables as tenets and each level building atop the one before it, then the Heap is the suburban sprawl, every citizen finding a space for herself, each lot a different size and locations that can't be readily predictable. For all the simplicity offered by the Stack, the Heap seems positively chaotic, but the reality is that each just obeys its own rules.
Posted by: Holland at January 13, 2004 10:14 AMThis code should compile and run just fine, and you should see no changes in how the program works. So why did we do all of that?
Posted by: Francis at January 13, 2004 10:14 AM