Another Live One!
First, if you haven't been here in a while, there have been five posts in the last six days; make sure you treat yourself to all of it; there's stuff on kooky Hollywood, politically tone-deaf Hillary Clinton, and much on abortion, racism and freedom of thought.
Second, please read the comments by "Conscience" at March 3 and March 6.
Conscience has offered up the following challenge to my freedom of thought post from March 3: "Should there not be a distinction between murder and manslaughter? The principal difference is intent. So, the behavior may be the same, but the thought behind is different, thereby justifying different punishment."
Yeah, I guess that would be a good question, if that was what I was talking about; I mean, if we were comparing apples to tomatoes, I guess that would be a good question. What I'm saying is that if a husband shoots his wife to death, he doesn't get extra punishment for saying, "die, witch (or similar)" when he pulls the trigger instead of just keeping his mouth shut. I think murder is murder; is not the hate implied? I'd love to hear from Conscience or anyone else that thinks the husband gets more punishment for adding the comment. Or, does anyone seriously think the husband should get extra punishment if he admits in court, "And, by the way, I hated her"? (Bailiff #1 to Bailiff #2, both standing in the back of the courtroom, "Uh, dude, we kinda figured that when you pumped 17 rounds from a Glock 9mm into her torso and head.")
I, of course, think exceptional penalties could exist for how a murder is committed. If a wife puts her very-much-alive husband into the woodchipper, feet first, instead of poisoning him to death first, then I'm OK if the State has a punishment clause for the behavior. A "heinous crimes clause" if you will. I need to add this clarification lest a commenter challenge my "murder is murder" phrase from above.
Reducing my comments from March 3, to a comparison between just the precise moment the dying event takes place in a murder and a manslaughter is ridiculous. It sounds like Conscience is prepared to conceptually argue rape and consensual sexual intercourse are the same thing except for the thoughts of the participants.
As anyone that has read my December 14, 2005 post knows, I think all racism is vile. All racism should be reduced . . . just not by passing laws criminalizing racist thoughts. I'm simply not prepared to "punish" a female Native American that thinks she's going to win a math contest just because her opponent is a Caucasian. As disgusting as the female's thought is, how can a society possibly legislate and police such a vile thought? It can't. Are we all to wear thought monitors plugged into a National Thought Monitoring Agency? Will the NTMA be staffed by ACLU-types? Cato Institute-types? Are they political appointees? Maybe ex-Klansman, Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV) has some suggestions on who should work at the NTMA, my goodness, does an appointer owe the Senator any political favors? I think Society has to do the best it can to reduce (I'm not optimistic enough to think it can be eliminated) racism through education. Education starts with identifying real racism and calling-out the race-baiters when they race-bait; education starts with people that honestly want to reduce racism having honest conversations about racism. The agenda-pushers should check their agenda at the door.
Conscience did make some excellent points in a comment to my March 6 post on abortion. Though, I think she thought I was primarily arguing for the abolishment of abortion when, in fact and word (about 96% of the words I wrote), I was primarily arguing against what will surely be the pro-abortion argument against any abortion restrictions -- that the right to abortion is absolute. If Conscience wants to comment on the absolute right to abortion, I welcome the comments. If Conscience wants to introduce any one of a trillion topics that I didn't primarily address in my March 6 post, I guess she could, but I think it would be more relevant to comment on what I actually addressed.
I do, of course, agree with all of Conscience's arguments against abortion, however clumsily introduced they were. I incorporate her three arguments, in toto, into my March 6 post; I substitute them for my phrase "make an argument" found in the last paragraph. The brilliantly and succinctly worded arguments are certainly enough to convince a State Legislature and a Governor.
First, if you haven't been here in a while, there have been five posts in the last six days; make sure you treat yourself to all of it; there's stuff on kooky Hollywood, politically tone-deaf Hillary Clinton, and much on abortion, racism and freedom of thought.
Second, please read the comments by "Conscience" at March 3 and March 6.
Conscience has offered up the following challenge to my freedom of thought post from March 3: "Should there not be a distinction between murder and manslaughter? The principal difference is intent. So, the behavior may be the same, but the thought behind is different, thereby justifying different punishment."
Yeah, I guess that would be a good question, if that was what I was talking about; I mean, if we were comparing apples to tomatoes, I guess that would be a good question. What I'm saying is that if a husband shoots his wife to death, he doesn't get extra punishment for saying, "die, witch (or similar)" when he pulls the trigger instead of just keeping his mouth shut. I think murder is murder; is not the hate implied? I'd love to hear from Conscience or anyone else that thinks the husband gets more punishment for adding the comment. Or, does anyone seriously think the husband should get extra punishment if he admits in court, "And, by the way, I hated her"? (Bailiff #1 to Bailiff #2, both standing in the back of the courtroom, "Uh, dude, we kinda figured that when you pumped 17 rounds from a Glock 9mm into her torso and head.")
I, of course, think exceptional penalties could exist for how a murder is committed. If a wife puts her very-much-alive husband into the woodchipper, feet first, instead of poisoning him to death first, then I'm OK if the State has a punishment clause for the behavior. A "heinous crimes clause" if you will. I need to add this clarification lest a commenter challenge my "murder is murder" phrase from above.
Reducing my comments from March 3, to a comparison between just the precise moment the dying event takes place in a murder and a manslaughter is ridiculous. It sounds like Conscience is prepared to conceptually argue rape and consensual sexual intercourse are the same thing except for the thoughts of the participants.
As anyone that has read my December 14, 2005 post knows, I think all racism is vile. All racism should be reduced . . . just not by passing laws criminalizing racist thoughts. I'm simply not prepared to "punish" a female Native American that thinks she's going to win a math contest just because her opponent is a Caucasian. As disgusting as the female's thought is, how can a society possibly legislate and police such a vile thought? It can't. Are we all to wear thought monitors plugged into a National Thought Monitoring Agency? Will the NTMA be staffed by ACLU-types? Cato Institute-types? Are they political appointees? Maybe ex-Klansman, Sen. Robert Byrd (D, WV) has some suggestions on who should work at the NTMA, my goodness, does an appointer owe the Senator any political favors? I think Society has to do the best it can to reduce (I'm not optimistic enough to think it can be eliminated) racism through education. Education starts with identifying real racism and calling-out the race-baiters when they race-bait; education starts with people that honestly want to reduce racism having honest conversations about racism. The agenda-pushers should check their agenda at the door.
Conscience did make some excellent points in a comment to my March 6 post on abortion. Though, I think she thought I was primarily arguing for the abolishment of abortion when, in fact and word (about 96% of the words I wrote), I was primarily arguing against what will surely be the pro-abortion argument against any abortion restrictions -- that the right to abortion is absolute. If Conscience wants to comment on the absolute right to abortion, I welcome the comments. If Conscience wants to introduce any one of a trillion topics that I didn't primarily address in my March 6 post, I guess she could, but I think it would be more relevant to comment on what I actually addressed.
I do, of course, agree with all of Conscience's arguments against abortion, however clumsily introduced they were. I incorporate her three arguments, in toto, into my March 6 post; I substitute them for my phrase "make an argument" found in the last paragraph. The brilliantly and succinctly worded arguments are certainly enough to convince a State Legislature and a Governor.
posted by Zack at 7:33 AM
9 Comments:
Conscience should go back and see how you handled Catalyst before she gets in over her head.
Don't diss Conscience. Someone needs to balance out "not-so-zacklyright-all-the time"
Not that this really matters, but how do you know for sure that Conscience is female?
Let me start by saying that I'm not concerned about being in over my head, ZacklyRight's passion gets the better of him and clouds his reason, so I have little doubt that I'll be able to hold my own. Indeed, that is the point of my comments -- I generally agree with him, but think he takes the arguments to the extreme, and thereby needlessly exposes his conclusions (and by extension mine) to justified attacks. So, by acting as his Conscience, I hope to bring focus to his ferver.
So, with that in mind, turning first to the hate crime issue, ZacklyRight misses the point. I never said or suggested in any way that mere thought could or should constitute a crime, and mischaracterizing the argument and creating a straw man for the purpose of knocking it down belittles the writer of it. To use an example to further illustrate mu point: if you run over a person with your car because you were listing to music and getting down to P. Diddy, and not paying enough attention to the road, that might be manslaughter; if you do the exact same thing, but do so out of rage because your spouse just told you that he/she had just slept with the victim, that might be second degree murder; and if you do the exact same thing, but do so because you had decided to run over the next person you saw wearing a Yankee hat, that might be first degree murder. The behavior in each case would be exactly the same, yet the law would treat them each differently because of the thoughts which underlied the behavior. The thoughts were not the crime -- it is not a crime to like to listen to P. Diddy (although some might think it should be), it is not criminal to hate the slimeball adulterer, and it is not a crime to want to rid the world of Yankee fans (although I for one think such behavior ought to be applauded). The point is that the thought is not criminal, but the thought that underlies criminal behavior may impact the way the law treats that behavior.
That is exactly what we have with hate crime laws. It is not a crime to have racist thoughts, but it is a crime to act on those thoughts in criminal ways. Assault is a crime, whether or not it is done with racist motives; hate laws simply make the punishment of certain assaults more severe than others. I, too, have qualms about hate crime laws, but those qualms are principally based on my concern about de-valuing the victims of the crimes deemed not to be hate crimes, rather than the notion that the thought underlying the crime cannot impact the punishment, or the completely irrelevant point you proffer that "Behavior is criminal, thought is not."
As for the abortion issue, I thank you for acknowledging my "excellent points" (see, I told you we generally agree), albeit "clumsily introduced (okay, so maybe we don't agree on everything). I did not misinterpret what you were "primarily" arguing for. My point was simply that you can't base your argument sustaining abortion restrictions (whether the restrictions are very broad or are more limited) on the oversimplistic point that doing so is overturning the will of the PEOPLE. As I read it, you made two basic points: (1) even if there is a putative right to abortion, that doesn't mean there's an absolute prohibition against any restrictions on the exercise of that putative right, and (2) limited restrictions should be upheld because to reject them is to overturn the will of the PEOPLE. I agree with the first point, but the second point is just too simplistic and opens you up to valid critique.
For now the third time, from my February 16 post, " . . . substitute any two victims you like, one is not less than the other . . . . " Conscience sure spends alot of words conveying the exact same thing I'm saying and yet trying to make it look like I said something else. Hmmmm . . . mischaracterizing an argument anyone? Who does this belittle? Ah, yes, the writer.
I grew a little today; I had to look up "putative". It means "reputed, supposed" according to my dictionary (which is not Black's Law Dictionary, which could be a problem here).
zacklyright 1 - conscience 0
wow! i step away for a few days and look at all i missed. give him hell conscience (nice full name!)
ZacklyRight said:
"For now the third time, from my February 16 post, " . . . substitute any two victims you like, one is not less than the other . . . . " Conscience sure spends alot of words conveying the exact same thing I'm saying and yet trying to make it look like I said something else. Hmmmm . . . mischaracterizing an argument anyone?"
Are you now abandoning your "Behavior is criminal; thought is not" point? Now for the third time, I agree with much of your points but want to clear out the clutter that weakens the strong points you do make. My comment was limited to your assertion that hate crimes are wrong because you can't criminalize thoughts. I think that doesn't work. I obviously agree with your point about de-valuing the victims, since I expressly said that is why I have qualms about hate crime laws. Apparently, you concur with my analysis because you raise again the point I agree with (de-valuing victims), and ignore the point where your argument misses the mark, which is the only point I raised.
ZacklyRight: 1/2 Conscience: 2
To follow-up, here's a quote from my earlier comment:
"I, too, have qualms about hate crime laws, but those qualms are principally based on my concern about de-valuing the victims of the crimes deemed not to be hate crimes, rather than the notion that the thought underlying the crime cannot impact the punishment, or the completely irrelevant point you proffer that 'Behavior is criminal, thought is not.'"
Apparently you missed that ZacklyRight, so I thought I'd repeat it.
I'm new to the site today; this is great!
Post a Comment
<< Home