It’s true that an action that is not illegal is legal. That’s because the criminal law requires us to define those acts which are criminally prohibited, and every act not prohibited is legal. In other words, there is no third option: an act is either criminal or it is not. So when speaking of the criminal law, it is correct to conclude that a judgement that an act is not illegal is identical to saying that it is legal. The are only two options.
But when you say, “In exactly the same motherfucking way, if you accept an action as not immoral, you are endorsing its morality,” you reveal the problem. This is not true. An act may be immoral, or bereft of any moral quality, or moral. There are NOT only two options; it’s perfectly possible to declare something is not immoral without simultaneously declaring it moral. That state of affairs was what my “bananas on cereal” example was intended to address.
Thank you for recognizing that the fight here is not about word usage.
If you say “this act is not immoral” you are deeming it permissible. To say some action is “bereft” of moral quality, that it is unremarkable in your moral schema, is to say that there is nothing associated with the decision to take such an action which would factor into a moral equation.
There are two things wrong here, sir. First, it is a bizarre moral calculus which assigns no moral significance to the act of arming oneself and seeking a confrontation with others.
Second, and pertinent to the “endorsement” discussion, *we are a society *of humans. That is to say, Zimmerman’s actions nor mine nor yours are taken in isolation. What we each do affects all of us, and we all take our cues from each other. If your message to me is “carrying a loaded and concealed weapon as you seek evildoers is quite legal and morally equal to putting bananas on cereal” shall I not see you as a supporter? Even if I hate bananas?
Shall others see you as a critic of my actions, or as a defender of them? The very thing that you say ticked you off about the OP in your first reponse to that other thread was the “vague insinuation of wrongdoing.” You wanted it noted in no uncertain terms that the actions under discussion were legal and carried no moral freight, that George was being pilloried for doing things he had every right to do. There is but one message carried in that sort of defense of an action.
You can stamp your feet and shout “He wasn’t wrong, he wasn’t wrong! Wasn’t, wasn’t, wasn’t!” And when looked at sternly place your hands behind your back, look up to heaven and sweetly declare “But I ain’t sayin’ he was riiight.” But you are saying that.
No, you should see me as someone who has correctly observed that the act is not prohibited by law. I am perfectly capable of saying what I mean, and you have no right to sketch into my words meanings I have not stated.
Nope. And you can phrase your narrative however colloquially you like – it does not permit the inference you seek. Words have meanings. The best you can say here is that your reading of my words created an impression in you that turned out, upon further inquiry, to be wrong. You cannot claim that I unambiguously said what I plainly and clearly did not say.
As this thread has partly turned into a general discussion of Bricker and his posting style, I think it’s worth pointing out that in the “Ferguson, MO” thread, Bricker had a long back-and-forth about technicalities of the legality of a particular situation there… and the entire conversation went fine without anyone insulting Bricker or misinterpreting everything, because it was clear to everyone involved that legality (as opposed to morality) WAS in fact what they were discussing. So there is clearly a place for that kind of debate, and it can happen on the SDMB without exploding into personal insults etc.
Or because there was already a conservative whipping target in place to be the target of insults. I am sorry, Max, but I firmly believe that if my entry into that thread had happened in the exact same way, with the exact same words I used, but without the presence of anyone else offering up anything that could be construed as support for the police, there would have been the usual onslaught.
In the Ferguson thread, your posts have addressed, in a specific and helpful way, with very pertinent questions from you to others as well, the specific legalities involved in lawful orders to disperse, and subject compliance with those orders. At no time during your involvement, have I seen you insult another poster or directly address in any way, much less in a condemning or condescending way, the opinions offered by various posters regarding their perceptions that the police tactics employed by the city and by St. Louis County police were heavy-handed, counterproductive or Immoral. Nor have you made any comments regarding liberal hypocrisy.
These facts may have more to do with the mild reception of your posts than the presence of Terr and others in that thread. I’ll remind you that there have been plenty of quite outspoken rightwingers in this thread and in the Zimmerman thread who failed to act as lightning rods or whipping boys to distract the rabid liberals from savaging your otherwise tempting person.
It’s possible that that’s a factor, although as xenephon points out, there were certainly Zimmerman threads in which you became the target of hostility when there were plenty of other people also becoming the target of hostility.
To me the big difference is that you at no point, intentionally or not, conflated moral/ethical statements about the situation with legalistic statements about the situation.
They only have to delay, drag their feet in response, file all the paper they can find. If they can hold it off until after the next election, they win. Then they will have the breathing room and the legislative power intact to come up with some other scheme.
They are fighting a defensive rearguard action, one that is almost certainly, eventually, doomed to fail. And then brothers and sisters, pals and gals, the trajectory of the shit will intersect the locus of the fan.
So, a technical legal question, maybe for Bricker: Suppose the Texas voter-ID law is found to be unconstitutional, but not until after the election. Suppose further that it can be established that the unconstitutional law had an impact on the outcome of the election. Does the outcome of the election still stand?
The solution to all this is quite simple, quite available and quite easy to implement.
When you sign in to vote, you not only sign in, you leave a fingerprint. If there is a question about irregularities, you compare the fingerprints. Duplicate votes get tossed out and the voter goes to jail.
The trouble is, the guys who institute these laws don’t want to solve the problem of voter fraud. They want to make it slightly harder for a given demographic to vote.
Now, if we could only get to agreement about global warming.
Either a fingerprint or have your picture taken. Few cheaters would be willing to subject themselves to either of these. Of course, as Lobohan points out, neither of these solves the real problem that they’re trying to solve: too many of the wrong type of people voting.
When you’re right, you’re right. I agree 100% here as well, and I’ll go further and say I think this could be a [relatively minor, but still] spur to voting in some areas.
You’re right. The sole remedy would be criminal charges against the cheating voter. You couldn’t find the right vote to toss. But it’s still a huge deterrent to cheating. Very few people would risk this.
Of course the real fun would come from watching Republicans trying to manufacture a reason that this plan is vastly inferior to voter ID.
