 But Russell did not reject Moore’s brand of consequentialism because it was inconsistent with his moral conservatism, since he also rejected Moore’s moral conservatism. As he informed Moore by letter, he regarded his views on Practical Ethics as “unduly Conservative and anti-reforming”. However, anybody who thinks that there are some actions which we ought to do even though, as a matter of fact they won’t have the best consequences must, reject Moore’s view. And it is precisely because he believes this that Russell rejects Moore’s brand of consequentialism. “Some people”, says Russell, “whom I refrain from naming, might with advantage to the world have been strangled in infancy; but we cannot blame the good women who brought them up for having omitted this precaution.” So if Stalin’s mother (say) did the right thing in not strangling him at birth, then it follows that the right thing to do is not always the act with the best actual consequences. Russell admits that his view is not without paradox, since if it sometimes right to do what is actually disastrous, it follows that it can sometimes be “a pity [that] a man did his duty”, a thesis which Moore regards as “a contradiction in terms”. But paradoxical as this may seem, it is only a contradiction on the assumption that “the right action” simply means “the action with the best actual consequences”, an assumption which Moore’s own Open Question Argument proves to be false. Moore’s view, by contrast, is contradictory however “right” and “ought” are to be defined, since it implies that we sometimes ought to perform acts which (since they are not optimific) it is not the case that we ought to perform.