chapotraphouse

I'll spare a longer post, but it's all analytical and under determined, and any criticism of a leftist project can and is attacked under other various ethical theories as well (what'shisname's (good faith) post questioned if it was morally defensible to off the Romanov kids; he didn't do this from a utilitarian perspective).

A more common experience imo is running into accusations that leftist policies fail because they wrongly let the ends justify the means, not that they are too unconcerned w aggregate happiness (see aforementioned post/argument (from a_blanqui_slate?)). This is because leftist policies are seen as departing from a baseline of the distributive status quo, such that these departures, because they are almost necessarily not-pareto superior (ie, require a redistribution where someone must be made worse off), can always be argued to infringe on some ex ante Right, and are thus unacceptable on some deontological theory; of course, one could rhetorically change the analytic baseline, and argue that the status quo of distribution already departs and infringes on a prior Right, and argue for amelioration from a Rights based perspective; and which is again to say, it's all analytical and immaterial.