Great. Stick to your principles. Keep sticking to them as you file unemployment (Yeah, I know, this guy retired. I was speaking more to myself!) and get turned down for benefits because you got fired for being an ass. Those principles sure are filling and tasty! Hope your wife and kid like them.
Flag got lowered anyway. :rolleyes:
I wonder what would have happened if this dude only had, say, 15 years on the job, and couldn’t swing retirement yet?
No, the equivalence is already there, though you do not care to admit it. To call a man an evil sack of shit for his thoughts, and a homosexual evil because of his behavior…where is the difference?
You do not like the man because his thoughts are different than yours, and you are frightened, because you want things to be different, and you don’t have the power to change it, so you attack the man.
Are you serious? Let me explain:
You may disagree that that’s anyone’s call to make. If you’re that sort of moral relativist, you’ve got no grounds on which to criticize Eason’s behavior–because why would that be your call to make?
There’s no moral equivalence between a behavior that harms other people and a behavior that doesn’t harm other people. It’s absurd to suggest there is; it’s sloppy thinking and facile arguing, the kind of thing for which the term “sophistry” was invented.
Daniel
I wonder what his new employer would think if he pulls a similar move with them, and if the employer doesn’t like it, what you would think of him and his employer.
For those of you who admire this guy’s actions: what do you think of Sen. Joe Lieberman?
That’s having principles. I can only respect someone making such a decision.
Aren’t there any situation where you would resign (and end up behind the employment line) rather than obey an order?
I think it is a stupid reason and a dangerous thing to begin. What happens when Robert C. Byrd of West Virginia dies? Is it okay for a postmaster in some town to decide not to lower the flag because he was in the KKK 60 years ago? Then when a GOP Congressman dies a DEM postmaster responds in the same way?
This isn’t honoring “Jesse Helms”. This is honoring a “Former U.S. Senator from North Carolina”. Tradition and civility calls for you to put your personal feelings about the man aside, and honor the office.
This guy didn’t do that and lost his job. I’ll bet his replacement put the flag at half-mast. So, there he is without a job and the flag still at half mast. What did he gain?
How is it dangerous? What awful consequences would result from the postmaster’s decision?
That’s BS. You can’t ignore the man. Tradition is a very distant second (third? forty-second?) to moral principles.
Self-respect.
And by the way, it’s precisely the fact that he personally had nothing to gain and everything to lose that makes his stance highly respectable.
I also wanted to add : I doesn’t buy into the concept : “If you don’t do it, someone else will, so why bother?” . It’s a way too convenient excuse.
I’ve once refused to comply to an order I legally should have complied too. The risk was minimal though, since I had every reason to believe that they wouldn’t want to attract attention to the fact that such an order had been issued. Someone else did what I had refused to do, as I expected. Did I think my decision had been pointless as the result? Absolutely not. I had done what I felt I had to. That was my responsibility. Someone else made a different choice. That was her responsibility.
Personally I felt (and feel) better for not having complied.
when did danger become the criteria?
And you should know the answer to your question about employees ingoring their assignments. Eason would fire his own subordinates if they ignored his instructions.
I think Lieberman has wrong policies, and his actions to promote them are dangerous.
Thoughts matter. Politics isn’t just a game, where neither side has any sort of long-lasting impact: what you do in politics matters, has repercussions. Helms got a lot of folks killed. That matters.
What this guy did? Doesn’t matter so much except symbolically: he was using a symbol to repudiate evil.
That’s a good thing to do.
Daniel
I’m not planning on attending any parades for Helms but you’re going to have to justy the statement that he got people killed.
There’s already been plenty in this thread.
He led the charge to delay federal funding for AIDS research. Consider whether that delay in federal funding delayed a cure by one hour. COnsider how many people die of AIDS in an hour. Consider how many of them might have taken the treatment instead.
He supported Augusto Pinochet. He supported the Contras. He supported the Salvadoran government with its death squads. He was an enemy to Communism and socialism, sure, but that also made him an enemy to peasants and a friend to mass killers. His support made their crimes possible.
You may debate that these don’t count. According to my thinking, they do. His actions mattered, and they mattered in a way that got people killed. Refusing to honor him is itself an honorable act, even when an imperfect democracy leads to the masses telling you to honor him through their appointed governor.
Daniel