More on "The end justifies the means."

If a means (that is, any means, any action) is ever to be justified (or found not to be justified) it will be by the end it produces.

I need to make that clear: It's the real world end that results, not the intended end, that does or does not justify. And that's a problem, because it's often difficult to see down the road to what the real end is going to be. Among other things to be said, the "real end" is going to be much broader than the nominal or intended end, because it's virtually impossible to do one isolated thing.

Therefore, in contemplating an action, the end to be served must be looked at very carefully, and in depth through several branchings of causation.

Dave Oesterreich