Then why do you think it’s morally wrong to kill a human being when he or she is both:
A. Doomed to die in short order
B. Going to lead to the death of another human being in even shorter order if not killed beforehand?
Killing one person in order to save the life of another, especially to save one’s own life–when is this wrong, and why does the ectopic pregnancy scenario come out on the “wrong” side of self defense?
Don’t fight the hypothetical. The hypothetical states that he presents convincing evidence that, if he could have gotten the money without killing his mother, he would have happily done so.
Assuming all that to be true, doesn’t your reasoning lead to the conclusion that this person should not be convicted?
Because of his church’s ingrained attitudes toward women, which he embraces as part of the package. It isn’t about logic or morality at all.
I may be mistaken here, but my understanding is that the difference between manslaughter and murder, or maybe between different degrees of murder, is one of intent. That is, if you point your gun at someone and pull the trigger and kill them because you intend to kill them, that’s one crime. If you pointed your gun at someone and pull the trigger because you really thought the gun was loaded with blanks and you wanted to give them a scare, and it kills them, that’s a different crime. What I’ve never heard of is the idea that it makes a difference whether you were killing them in pursuit of a larger goal or not… (I mean, there’s the question of premeditation… but I’ve never heard of a difference between “I spent three weeks planning how to kill him, because I wanted him dead” and “I spent three weeks planning how to kill him, because I wanted him dead so that I could get his parking space at work”.)
But you seem to be saying that if I engage in bureaucratic chicanery in an effort to prevent my subordinates from being investigated and convicted for crimes they committed, and that’s my sole end goal, that’s a crime; but if I engage in bureaucratic chicanery in an effort to prevent my subordinates from being investigated from crimes they committed, but my larger interest is in making corporation look good, then there’s no crime.
In other words:
(1) Fill out form A to transfer guy B to location C
so that
(2) He will avoid prosecution
Is a crime, but
(1) Fill out form A to transfer guy B to location C
so that
(2) He will avoid prosecution
so that
(3) My organization will have a better public image
Is not a crime?
Thanks MaxTheVool.
This seems to be an accurate representation of why most of us (all of us?) are so confused about Bricker’s reasoning.
I thought a bit about the hypothetical. Here is the story of Alex.
Alex is in trouble financially. In fact, he is teetering on the brink of foreclosure and having his shiny new car repossessed. He is in a career where the loss of all that stuff could crush him. He works in finance, and if it became public that he lost all his money, no one would ever trust him with their money. His mother has a pile of money, but she isn’t sharing. So Alex kills her to get his inheritance, thus saving his reputation, career and status symbols. As the murder is being investigated, the police uncover some evidence that yes, Alex really really needed the money, but maybe he didn’t really want to kill his mother. The evidence shows that he tried to get that money in other ways and failed. He went to his mother and flat out asked her to give him his inheritance, and she laughed and threw him out. When he emailed her to ask again, she told him she needed that money herself to survive on. Then he tried defrauding her out of it, but she had a hard time believing he was a Nigerian prince, so that didn’t work either. The police find his emails to her. They also find that after all the attempts to get the money in non-lethal ways, he emailed a friend of his, lamenting that the only way he could save his reputation and his stuff would be offing his mom. He didn’t want to not have a mother anymore, but it was the only way. The police find this email as well. Now, the evidence shows that if Alex could have gotten the money without killing his mom, he clearly would have. He tried to do just that. He couldn’t, so he took his mother’s life, securing the inheritance (which was all he really wanted, anyway). He really doesn’t see it as a crime, because she needed the money to live on, so he removed that obstacle (to his getting the money) by slipping arsenic in her tea.
Does he get charged/indicted/convicted? Is he a “criminal”?
P.S.
I was not the one who originally proposed the hypothetical, I just thought up a back story for it.
Noted. I noticed it at the time, in fact, even to the point of editing it out of the quote I posted.
My point is that the part I DID quote was unnecessarily provocative. And kind of assholish.
Not buying it.
There are extremely well-established legal instruments in place in many and perhaps all 50 United States that allow an adult to make informed decisions regarding their end of life situations.
Bricker cannot argue that this is the same as his assertion that he knows what is murder and what is not murder. He wants to decide, and control the choices and decisions of others. A woman would die from an ectopic pregnancy? Her life is saved as the pregnancy is terminated? Bricker labels her a murderess.
I’m talking about self-determination. He’s talking about playing God.
Big difference.
For some reason that seemed *honest *to you, of course. :rolleyes:
Cut the crap. The point you’re not getting is that Bricker’s statement either is obfuscatory or even more extreme than the assholish ones he’s offered to us, but in no case is acceptable in a civilized society, and he needs to be made to understand just what it is he’s defending, and why, and how, and that it isn’t working.
That’s what he’s talking about, but only superficially. The subtext is that the situation offers those as devoutly smug as he a way to shame the woman, all full of original sin and subservience and all that, as both a murderess AND befouled by sex. Win-win.
And lest the lunatic natterings of our resident shark completely derail the thesis of this thread, The Church Is men like Bernard Cardinal Law, who 11 years ago prompted me to write a flame in The Pit that earned me the flaming of my life here. Tough shit- as it turns out, I was 100% right. Like so many of these priests, he’s a world-class protector of child rapists and was in turn protected by The Vatican.
The entire situation stinks like yesterday’s diapers.
Please do explain, someone, how the entire architecture of protecting child rapists is what Jesus wanted. Please, please, tell me that these men are doing God’s work.
Go ahead. Make your best argument. They’re all in the right? Then inform the rest of us how they’re just doing the work of Jesus.
Because I’ll tell ya, the Jesus I understand would have had nothing to do with this.
Nothing.
Honest enough, on the grounds that it wasn’t germane to the point I wished to put across.
I recognize Bricker’s assholishness for what it is, have no interest in defending it, and see that it’s being quite thoroughly addressed by his many other interlocutors in this thread.
Doesn’t mean I can’t call one of those interlocutors out for a particularly egregious bit of assholishness within the context of the thread.
Well, the problem is that the jury has to buy his excuse.
If I shoot my neighbor, and I explain to the jury that I had no intention of shooting or killing my neighbor and they believe me, I cannot be convicted of murder. There’s no automatic excuse.
If I say, “Yes, I loaded the gun, stood six inches away from his head as he was sleeping his his hammock, pointed the gun at his head, and pulled the trigger, but I never intended to shoot or kill him,” then it’s unlikely the jury will believe my denial of intent, because they can see that my actions belie my claim about intent.
BUT THEY DON’T HAVE TO DISBELIEVE ME.
Would you, as a lawyer, argue that defense and expect it to convince the jury? Would it even convince YOU?
There is nothing confusing about Bricker’s reasoning as it is not reasoning. You know he’s talking self-evidently absurd nonsense, I know he’s talking self-evidently absurd nonsense and Bricker knows he’s talking self-evidently absurd nonsense.
It’s just hand-waving for a specific purpose. The more we try to clean the shit he’s flinging off the walls the less we concern ourselves with dragging the undeserved good name of the organised gang of paedophiles, rapists, money-launderering, murdering bigots known as the RCC through the mud.
That was an extreme example.
But to answer your question – sure, i can think of reasons to argue that defense. It wouldn’t convince me, and not the jury, but if the jury wanted to acquit, that would give them something to hang their hat on in deliberations… basically, a jury nullification situation.
If you shoot your neighbor and you explain to the jury that you had no intention of shooting or killing your neighbor, sure, they might believe you; but if that neighbor was due to testify against you in your child rape trial, I don’t think you’ll get the benefit of that doubt.
But as a member of the Jury in the case I outlined , I am perfectly willing to believe that the person did try to cover it up because he didn’t want deal with the hassle. So I don’t disagree that his motives had nothing to do with preventing the child molester from going to prison but was all because of the defendant’s laziness. I just don’t believe that it is a good enough excuse to . As a juror am I allowed to make that judgement?
If so then it seems I could also make the judgement that protecting the Catholic church wasn’t a good enough excuse for protecting the molester.
If not, then the blanket excuse of “I didn’t follow the law because I didn’t feel like it that day” is a valid defense, making the law entirely toothless.
Bump… Bricker?