Always Flight 93, Never Flight 93 (III)

I do not think this example of study is merely about semantics.  I think, rather, it illustrates the importance of intentions--of having one's heart in the right place, as it were.  There is a world of difference between the attitude that says, "Health is not important" and the attitude that says "Study is important enough that other things, even things like health, must temporarily give way to it."  The first is simply wrong, both factually and morally; the latter is a judgment call, a weighing of priorities prudentially, which may or may not be factually right, but is hard to morally impeach.  And hence the problem with the Machiavellian formulation, that anyone directly wills the bad means: it is too simplistic.

So likewise in the case of politics, it seems too simplistic to me to say that someone who votes for a politician who is a bad man is choosing to vote for a bad man in order to further the common good (or, more likely these days, stave off common evils).  That may sometimes be the case: some people may say, simply, "I choose this evil because it is lesser."  But I think most people would say, rather, that they are not choosing an evil but choosing a good, however limited and constrained.  You vote for a man or woman in spite of their flaws, not to flaunt them or to speak as if they did not matter or are trivial in the grand scheme of things.