Well, the statue and the building are intended as a form of admonition to government, if that’s the right way to express it, and the cell phone and the speeding are not, although they may lead to harm as well.
I think Bricker is saying (and I realize I’m walking a dangerous path) that while we (as a collective) might look at the two events and easily say that pulling the statue down was the more acceptable of the two, is either one really acceptable? If so, why is it acceptable? How do we (again, the collective) decide that it is, and does that decision for the small act of civil disobedience and destruction open the door for justifying the larger one?
I would argue that neither one is acceptable, but that the action that resulted in 168 deaths, and 680 injuries is absolutely worse. Human loss of life, particularly large scale loss of life, gives it that status.
Do you want to try to make some sense out of the hash of half-formed thoughts you dumped here concerning McVeigh, civilized nations, Canada, etc.? If not, go ahead with another bon mot like the one I just quoted, consider yourself to have the last word, and we can be done.
It it wasn’t for some folks throwing tea in Boston Harbor, Bricker would be wearing a powdered wig.
[ul]
[li]Rosa Parks not moving seats[/li][li]Greensboro Four sitting at the lunch counter[/li][li]Susan B. Anthony voting[/li][li]Throwing tea in Boston Harbor.[/li][li]Pulling down a racist statue on public property.[/li][/ul]
None of those are done out of “revenge” except for the tea party.
McVeigh said that the bombing was revenge against the government and often quoted white supremacist books that looked to overthrow the government, start a race war and result in the establishment of a white ethnostate.
One set of groups is committing acts in an attempt to better implement a fair system, the other is looking to actually destroy our country to protect their racial purity.
Bricker has provided no evidence to the equivalence of those actions at all. He is making a flawed argument equating the struggle for a more perfect implementation of our social contract with a murderous actions that actually seek to destroy it.
Or maybe just wasting time, because the trivial observation that the two acts are analogous because they’re both illegal is not productive. Of course they’re analogous in that way. The debate begins beyond that obvious point.
And you can tell the difference between people like you, who can respond to that argument, and people whose only rejoinder is, “But they’re not the same!”
No it isn’t, any more than the rule you’ve advanced is “if something is legal, it’s okay, and if something is illegal, it is exactly as wrong as every other illegal thing.” This is a blatant strawman that is not worth engaging with.
You can be dismissive, and maybe you favor order over moral values but you are missing the point.
This is purely reductio ad absurdum
Are you saying that the same reasoning behind flushing the bag of pot you find in your kids room (which is a felony) is the same reasoning to commit mass murder?
Lets look again at what was said at the dedication of the statue that lead to the OP
Can you see how this statue on public property conveyed a white nationalist pro slavery message to the public? While you may be arguing that one should value order over morals or fundamental precepts of the constitution etc…
But outside of the absurd part of “you chose to break the law” you haven’t provided any argument that shows that this is equivalent to the same self justification one would have to have in order to resort to committing mass murder.
They are not the same, despite hand waving away the claims. This is especially true in the case of McVeigh who was really attempting a seditious act. Can you provide any cite to support your position?
Statute or not, we have no choice: we constantly have to make that judgment in every instant of our waking lives, what’s fair and what’s not. Statutes don’t remove that responsibility from us.
And you don’t think they do, either, as far as I can tell, since you advocate lawbreaking under certain conditions yourself.
It kinda reminds me of Ray Comfort’s “Ten Commandments” spiel, i.e. if you’ve ever told a lie, you’ve broken the ninth; if you were ever angry at someone it means you’ve committed murder in your heart and broken the sixth; if you’ve ever looked lustfully at someone, you’ve committed adultery in your heart and broken the seventh, etc. The point being that everyone is guilty and no distinction is made between the level of one person’s guilt and another’s. Comfort, I gather, wants to have power and moral high ground over “sinners” as he defines it, which means everybody.
In that vein, I also gather, someone who says all laws must be obeyed and respected equally because individual opinions are irrelevant, wants to have power and moral high ground over “criminals”, as he defines it. Since there are always gong to be crimes one simply views as not worth caring about, either to prevent or punish, someone who shrugs off going 5 mph over the limit becomes just as bad as someone who abets treason and murder, because law-breaking is law-breaking and, again, individual opinion is irrelevant.
I don’t have to, It is unlawful to harass a person because of that person’s race or color.
What I can do is not support a desire to display of racially-offensive symbols on public property that are intended to intimidate fellow Americans based on their skin color.
This isn’t some statue that was placed there for historical reasons, it was there to intimidate black citizens into compliance.
My quote above from the dedication shows exactly why it was place there, and this story was part of that speech.
Lots of these Jim Crow era statues were meant to intimidate blacks and show that they were unequal under the law. All that I need to do on my part is agree that government sponsored reminders of unequal treatment for any Citizen under the law is incorrect.
I can provide several quotes form the founding fathers, who may have been imperfect in this case but still support the idea. Can you make an argument for government sponsored harassment and intimidation based on race?
I think Bricker is arguing that we shouldn’t replace society’s rules about what’s unacceptable with our own.
The problem is that he doesn’t hold to that. He admits (elsewhere, and I wish he’d respond in the other thread) that he supports certain illegal acts, such as toppling statues of Saddam and Stalin. He suggests there, although he never confirmed, that he only supports such illegal acts in the context of a revolution.
I don’t know where he stands on other issues. Was MLK wrong to engage in civil disobedience, even when it caused economic hardship for others? Were the folks who sat at lunch counters in Greensboro, despite Jim Crow laws, wrong?
If he were consistent–if he condemned toppling statues of Hussein and Stalin, condemned taking sledgehammers to the Berlin wall, condemned the American Revolution and the Boston Tea Party, condemned folks who worked the Underground Railroad–at least I’d understand where he’s coming from.
But he doesn’t. He supports certain illegal actions and condemns others, but then suggests that when I do exactly that, I’m being wildly arbitrary and opening the doors to anarchy.
Since it appears that my attempt to clarify to Bricker the argument made in the other thread fell upon deaf ears, I will instead respond to someone summarizing his argument.
The problem is that he’s representing this as the argument that was being made in the other thread. But it is not. As such, he is misrepresenting the argument. He is engaging in what is known as as strawman.
In order to make it as clear as possible, I will simplify the argument made in the other thread to a list.
A statue was erected to celebrate a government coup and massacre.
The people were finally ready to debate removing said statue.
The state government, in an action contrary to the will of the people, chose to pass a law forbidding such debate.
4a. Because the statue was erected by extra legal means
4b… And removing the statue does not effect any irreparable harm to anyone. No one was physically hurt.
It was a just act to remove the statue by extralegal means.
The McVeigh situation is not analogous at all.
No government was taken over and no people were harmed in anything McVeigh gave.
McVey alone thought there was a problem, not “the people.”
The state government did not enact any additional laws to make it where he couldn’t deal with his grievance legally.
4a. Because there was no law broken
4b. And MvVey’s actions did in fact cause irreparable harm of the highest degree
It was not a just act for him to extralegally kill people.
The very same logic used in the other thread leads to the conclusion that McVeigh’s actions were not justified.
As such, Bricker’s claim that started this whole mess is false. He is creating criteria that is not being used to justify the other action. Hence the question you claim he is asking has already been answered. The criteria have already been stated.
Bricker’s attempt to argue with a strawman can thus be ignored. Nothing he said reflects on the topic of this thread or the other thread.
Huh? It was totally erected by perfectly legal means, unless you’re considering the post-Wilmington-massacre government in North Carolina extralegal. Is that what you mean?
