The result was the total destruction of two great societies and irreversible damage to the rest of us. Why suppose that we, applying our minds to the question of what might be best in the long run, would make a better job of it? Moreover, is not this possibility—indeed probability—of error at the root of what is so objectionable in consequentialism, which turns wrongdoing into an intellectual mistake, thereby excusing it? When the Kaiser, looking back on the calamity of World War I, said, “Ich hab’ es nicht gewollt,” he spoke as a consequentialist, as did all those apologists who regretted the
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