The utterly fallacious idea at the heart of the pro-war argument is that it is the duty of the anti-war argument to provide an alternative to war. The onus is on them to explain just cause.
Interpretation
The quote challenges the notion that anti-war advocates must propose alternatives to war, asserting that the responsibility lies with pro-war advocates to justify their stance.
Zadie Smith critiques the common expectation that those opposing war must offer solutions or alternatives. Instead, she argues that it is the burden of those who support war to present valid justifications for their stance. This highlights the complexity of moral arguments surrounding war and peace, emphasizing the need for accountability from those who endorse violence.
In practice
During a debate on military intervention, one could reference this quote to emphasize the ethical responsibilities of pro-war advocates.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.
You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.
He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
All true things must change and only that which changes remains true.
People must be free to work, to save, to own their own home, to take risks, to invest in each other and, in essence, to control their own lives.
I don't care about my character here on earth.I don't care about what other people think or say about me, all I care about is my standing before the Lord.
I never had much interest in being a child. As a way of being it seemed flat, failed to engage.
The idea that myth is the opposite of knowledge, or the opposite of truth, is simply to disallow it. It is like saying poetry is the opposite of truth.
The church is not a political power; it's not a party, but it's a moral power.
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