Noam Chomsky on Noble acts. From an online video available at SEED.
In fact, you can see it very clearly by just comparing historical events that are similar They're never identical, but similar.
Take the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait and the US invasion of Iraq—just take those three. From the point of view of the people who perpetrated these acts, they were each a noble effort and done for the benefit of everyone—in fact the self-justifications are kind of similar. It almost translates. But we can't see it in ourselves; we can only see it in them, you know. Nobody doubts that the Russians committed aggression, that Saddam Hussein committed aggression, but with regard to ourselves it's impossible.
I've reviewed a lot of the literature on this, and it's close to universal. We just cannot adopt toward ourselves the same attitudes that we adopt easily and in fact, reflexively, when others commit crimes. No matter how strong the evidence.
See:The Noble Cause
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