Topic of the week – Taking liberties with the law

Your editorial (“Can the end ever justify the means?”, 10 January) is both thought provoking and disturbing, given the current geopolitical situation. It is an excellent rendering of the dialogue between Thomas More and Roper on the primacy of the rule of law, as found in A Man for All Seasons.

However, with reference to the UK government’s failure to object to Trump’s disregard for international law over Venezuela, the editorial concludes that this could be the [exceptional] moment “to concede that, sadly, sometimes the end justifies the means”.

That is unprincipled, as Dr Edward Reynolds points out (Letters, 24 January). It is at one with the justification the Americans gave to drop the atom bomb.

It is also the basic principle of much contemporary moral philosophy and theology, such as consequentialism and proportionalism, which reject moral absolutes and so can even justify abortion “in exceptional circumstances”. Though usually presented as an act of compassion, it is, in the final analysis, utilitarian.

Given today’s precarious situation, which has seen the effective abolition of international law by two superpowers, this is surely the time to be principled, cost what it may. To quote Juvenal: “Consider it the greatest of crimes to prefer survival to honour and, out of love of physical life, to lose the very reason for living.”

Since virtue-signalling has replaced moral integrity, modern politics appears to be based on expediency, so that the end is taken to justify the means. The result is what Anthony Seldon wrote (The Times, 6 February) about Peter Mandelson: for him “truth was not an absolute but a commodity that could be bent” to achieve his end.

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