On October 2, British aristocrat and conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg appeared on Tucker Carlson’s eponymous program where, among other overtures to the post-war consensus, he attempted to justify the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on moral grounds. Adopting the standard pop culture view of those events — which seeks to legitimize the use of atomic weapons against Japanese civilian noncombatants by the United States ¹ — Rees-Mogg went so far as to invoke the Angelic Doctor in his wanting, consequentialist argumentation. “I think it meets Aquinas’s conditions of just war,” he said. The exchange on atomic weapons began after a lengthy back-and-forth over Rees-Moggs’s saber-rattling towards Russia. Around the twenty-seven minute mark, Carlson asked him directly, “Is the actual use of nuclear weapons ever justified?” to which Rees-Mogg replied, “I think it is justified in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yes. I think it was justified in bringing the Second World War to an end. Yes. Unquestionably.” Incredulous, Carlson asked for clarification, “Unquestionably?” “Unquestionably, yes,” Rees-Mogg insisted.

Originally published in Integrity Magazine. Read original article

Original Tags: Catholic Social Teaching, News, Atomic Weapons, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Just War Theory, Tucker Carlson, World War II