Thursday, April 10, 2014

An interesting philosophical question

In a conversation with a friend I mentioned in passing the result of the duel between Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr; specifically how despite having been vice president, Burr fell into obscurity nearly overnight.  Contrast to Hamilton, who's name will be instantly recognizable to anyone with a shred of competency today.

This, in turn brought up the assassination of Lincoln and how terrible that was.  I was pretty eager to debate the fact that Lincoln was a pretty terrible person and was eager to provoke what was coming to him, but then someone stated the following, "Nobody should be famous for shooting another person."

This posed an interesting question considering that there are many people who can be thanked for doing just that.  Granted, most people might not want to be famous for shooting someone, but if the person they shot was undeniably consumed with evil, I think it can go without saying that they deserve a hearty thanks and a pat on the back at least.  There are many people who are on some level famous for doing nothing but shooting another person, and arguably doing the right thing, the following is a small list of examples:

Timothy Murphy is an American legend that likely got free beers for the rest of his life for his shot.

Simo Hayha  a.k.a. The White Death  also likely to have been called 'The Norse God of Thunder'

Soghomon Tehlirian totally a hero and the shooting is his only claim to fame.

Jozef Gabcik - killing Nazis is a pretty good case for being not all bad, but this guy = total hero.

and if there wasn't a security concern for his identity, I'd personally buy a drink for the guy that first shot Bin Laden.
I mean, what sensible person wouldn't fire shots in this guy's direction?

Point being, is that despite plenty of horrible people being famous for shooting other people, there are also plenty of good people who are famous for killing another person because they knew it was the right thing to do.

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