That’s very true. I am against abortion, and I believe it to be morally wrong, but I recognize that others on the opposite side of the issue are fair-minded and decent – they have simply reached a different conclusion. I am against the death penalty, and I believe it to be morally wrong, but I recognize that others on the opposite side of the issue are fair-minded and decent – they have simply reached a different conclusion.
What I see from Evil Captor is none of that willingness to accept that his political opponents may be people of good faith. No, no – Alito is an asshole, Scalia is evil, Bush is… and the list goes on.
I heard someone say once that people on the Right think that those on the Left are wrong, but people on the Left think that those on the Right are evil. After spending some time on this board, I am starting to see his point.
Fortunately we have many clear-thinking folks on the left who participate on this board in honest debates-- there are only a handful who fit the description in your post. While I’m not sure we have any posters on the right who consider lefties to be “evil”, we do have a few who consider them “dangerous” (ie, not working in the best interests of the country). That’s not too different.
It does, in fact, work both ways- plenty of people on the right consider people on the left anti-American, outright traitors, etc. Anne Coulter capitalizes on that idea.
Unfortunately, between the protest activism on the left in the '60’s, and the rise of the Moral Majority on the right in the '80’s, we’ve reached a point in modern political discourse where we seem to have decided that politics is equivalent to morality. While some issues are dealing with morality and ethics, there are also a great many that don’t, but that we’ve tied into morality. And not just a normal morality, but a hideous caricature of morality where our opponents are vile fiends. Fighting over whether a nationalized health care service falls away from “what mixture of free market and government-run health care is the most effective and efficient in providing health care?” and into “Are you in favor of massive taxes that steals bread from hard-working families, or do you prefer to cackle maniacally while the old and poor die in the street?”
And it’s endemic. We can’t talk about whether limiting freedom in order to provide security is effective or worthwhile without falling into “you’d love to see America destroyed” vs. “you’re all just fascists, waiting to round up the Arabs into camps!” We can’t talk about what would be a worthwhile reform of Social Security without falling into “you want to sell our children into slavery through taxation” vs. “you want the elderly to just starve in the street!”
I think this comes from two main sources. The first is that selling an idea via morality is a lot easier to do in a five-second sound bite than selling an idea via logical argument. So with the rise of television and the advent of people getting their information via five-second soundbite, the quick morality of “My opponent is evil!” sells much better.
The second, and the reason that at heart I feel pity for people like Evil Captor, Hentor the Barbarian, Brain Glutton, and Der Trihs, is that people want to feel like they are good people. And an easy, if fallacious, way to do it is to prove morality by opposition - if the people you disagree with are evil, you must, by contrast, be good. And the more evil your opponent, the more moral you yourself must be. So people paint their enemies as horrible, evil, nasty people - fascists and rapists and the like - because they are trying to prove to themselves that they’re good and moral.
John Corrado, I agree with you for the most part. But don’t you think that typically when certain individuals on this board who are on the Right fling a little vitrol, it does tend to be of the “you are so stupid, you just don’t get it” variety, whereas when those on the Left do, it tends to be of the “you are an evil murderer” variety?
For example, in your health insurance example, I think Righties would be more likely to believe that those on the left do not understand the economics at work, but the Lefties would be more likely to believe that those on the Right are perfectly happy if the poor have no access to health care at all.
I am not trying to defend this POV of the Right, exactly, but I personally would rather be thought of as wrong than evil.
I maintain that the justices, for the most part, adopt judicial views that are congruent with their personal ones (and sometimes, vice versa). I really don’t think that anyone could work as a judge if they spent all their time holding their noses and making decisions they found morally repugnant. I mean, I don’t see how any morally responsible person could go aruond making decisions that pretty much make them part of the pointy spear end of the system – deciding who lives, who dies, who spends decades in jail, that sort of thing – if they didn’t buy into the system to some extent, you know? So I think at some level they believe in capital punishment.
In any case Alito’s belief in capital punishment is just part of what makes him an asshole. He’s also a big opponent of affirmative action and women and minorities generally. He tends to support cops’ ability to prosecute over citizens’ rights. And I bet he doesn’t care for abortion rights at all. He stinks on so many levels. I got no problem with calling him what I called him.
Oh, I’ll definitely agree with that. However, I believe I’m on record in at least two threads as stating that there is no corelation between what happens on this board and what most Americans think.
Also, since this board skews way-the-hell left, I don’t think it’s noteworthy that the frothing-at-the-mouth liberals we get are more frothy than the frothing-at-the-mouth conservatives. Even Der Trihs has his supporters and apologists, while not-quite-frothing conservatives like Shodan, december, and Scylla get pile-driven. Th
Agreed again. However, there would also be some on the Right who believe that the Left wants government subsidized health insurance so that Leftists in the government have more power and control over everyday life. (Though I expect that there would be less people arguing that now when Democrats control nothing in the government than there were back in '94 when Democrats controlled all of it.)
As a public defender, I defended plenty of people I found morally repugnant. I used my skills, knowledge, and persuasive ability every day to help morally repugnant people escape or minimize the consequences of their crimes.
How does that truth square with your view of judges? Why could I do that as a defense lawyer, but not do it as a judge?
OK, nice to see you make a reasonable argument, but I still think you’re wrong. While I agree that a judge should resign if he finds himself having to make what he considers morally reprehensible judgments in a large number of cases. However, you need to demostrate that someone like Alito or Scalia actually do that. You are focusing on a very few high profile cases and extrapolating from that. Even this particular case doesn’t square with your thesis. I’m anti-death penalty, but I don’t find it morally reprehensible-- I just that that it’s unnecessary in a society such as ours.
Most Americans, includiing me, oppose Affirmative Action, and Altio has upheld it in those cases where he thinks it is constitutional. Saying someone is an “opponent” of “women and minorities” makes no sense in the context of this discussion unless you see someone advocating for laws that actively discrimate against them. Yes, he sometimes sides with the cops, but he also sides with citizens-- he just has a different set of scales than you do. Frankly, you’ve done nothing to convince us that your set of scales is even remotely grounded in the actual constitution, which is the way one judges a judge.
Again, you are simply identifying political opinions that reasonable people can disagree about, and calling people ass-holes because they happen to disagree with you. I’m not buying it, and it doesn’t appear that anyone else in this thread is either.
Because as a lawyer, you’re just part of the process. You just do your best, as the copes and the prosecutors do, and leave responsibility for judgement up to the juries and the judges. The ultimate moral responsibility isn’t yours, is it? Judges don’t have that out.
Sometimes opinions are quite simply noxious enough to qualify their holders as a-word type people, John. I’m sure you would consider anyone who believed chattel slavery as practiced in the American South was a GOOD thing a very likely candidate for asshole-dom. The practice itself is evil. People who went around burning women to death for witchcraft in the Middle Ages – ignorant, bigoted and, almost certainly, assholes.
The particular bitches’ brew of opinions Alito holds makes me confident that they guy is as described. See next post.
In a 5-3 decision, the Supreme Court decided that the system of “trials” established for inhabitants of Guntanamo Bay by Resident Bush’s evil Dept. of Justice minions was wrong, illegal, immoral and against every law, treaty and ideal ever participated in by the United States. Linkety-link-link.
Dissenting from the decision were the Evil Trio of Scalia, Thomas and yes, Alito. In an orgy of jackboot-licking, they confirmed their willingness to justify Presidential conduct of any kind, at any time, so long as it was a conservative President doing the wrongs.
“We’re just a bunch of assholes who’ve gotten named to the Supreme Court,” Alito explained. “We don’t care what you think, or what’s right. Whenever we see a decision that will further the cause of human suffering, we will make it. And whenever we see a decision that will advance human dignity and freedom, we will oppose it.”
Well, perhaps I phrased that badly. The thing is, YOUR role in the process doesn’t involved deciding who lives and who dies, who goes to jail and who doesn’t. You don’t make those decisions, judges and juries do, and they have a much higher burden of moral responsibility than you do.
A principle only works if it holds when you construct a parallel and it still makes sense. So it would be your contention that the moderators here ought to delete any post that they themselves disagree with? Rather than merely those which go beyond what is acceptable under the rather loose rules of the board?
The cases are, in my mind, directly on point. Granted that our little message board does not have any major influence on people’s lives or the world at large (except for a few very special circumstances). But in both cases, the person charged with an adjudicatorial task is expected to apply rules dispassionately.
There are some truly repugnant laws out there. But a judge may not manufacture reasons to ignore them. (This may be a key point in an ongoing debate: Holders of the “living Constitution” concept generally believe that the generalized principles in the Constitution may be read to protect citizens from incursions on their freedom which are not explicit but which are contained within the broad language. Bricker and I, if we were judges, could not in good conscience throw out a death penalty law because we are personally opposed to the death penalty. That would be substituting our own personal opinion for the will of the majority as expressed through their legislature. We could, however, do so if we felt it violated a constitutional principle. And, as described above, I could see it being “cruel and unusual punishment” in nearly every circumstance, while (after internal debate) Bricker would not.
As self-appointed pundits here on SDMB, you and I are able to voice our opinions on whatever issues motivate us to do so. But we do not have anyone’s authority to insist our opinions be accepted as law. When you sit on the bench as judge, your job is not to promulgate your own opinions. It is to rule in accordance with law (not with statute, but with the body of law, Constitution trumping statute law and both trumping executive orders and bureaucratic regulations).
In short, he’s an asshole because he disagrees with you. I agree with you on many issues, but disagree with you on some. Does that make me an asshole? If not, what’s the cutoff point? What percentage of the time must one agree with Evil Captor to not be awarded assholedom?
Rather, can we suggest that someone may take principled stands based on motives that do not correspond with one’s own and not be an asshole, while being a jerk or troll or arguing from tu quoques and other such offensive methods might make someone an asshole even if they agree with you.
I’m a fairly strong liberal. But I have no problem identifying a couple of liberal assholes on this board, and some moderate and conservative non-assholes who happen to be working from a different sense of what is important.
I just noticed this, and I wanted to say fuck you very much. I love how in the middle of making an argument about how pitiful it is that others demonize their opposition to make themselves feel better, you suggest that I call others fascists and rapists. Are you blind to this flaw in your logic, are you stupid, or was this some intended effort at being clever in some obscure way?
I think you’ll find that the number of times I’ve called someone a rapist or even a fascist is approximately equal to zero. I’m pretty consistent in my belief that people on the right do what they do because they are self-serving and greedy or hypocritically moralistic, and the Republican party at present has done nothing at all to contradict that opinion. I maintain that most of the political activity of the right has served to diminish the political or economic freedom of many to serve the interests of a few, and, more recently, to take our country into depths of the violations of ethical principles that sicken me.
If pretending that I call others rapists and fascists, and that I do so, helps you to feel better, I probably won’t be able to do anything about it. Nevertheless, I will point out that you think at the level of a 12 year old boy, give or take a few developmental years. Perhaps you may yet mature. Who knows?
By the way, if I were to think like you suggest, I wonder how I would resolve those beliefs with my love for my brothers, both Republican. On the other hand, not being an imbecile, I don’t think like you do. One is very self-serving, yet is a good person, the other is concerned about others in general, but harbors a very black and white, and very moralistic view of the world. Neither is a fascist or rapist.
However, if they represented the bulk of the Right, our country would be a much better place, and we could go back to a time when the Republicans were a party with whom one might expect cooperation, and of whom you could feel comfortable entrusting the government for a term or two.
No, what I’m suggesting is that IF the moderators of this or any board found the principles by which this board is run deeply objectionable, they most likely would not be moderators. Thus, it’s unlikely, I think, to find our current batch of moderators happily moderatng another board whose chief aim is the advancement of man-boy love, or the proposition that rape is good because, you know, the woman wanted it anyway. I should think that on such a board, our current moderators would repeatedly be making decisions they would find objectionable. Their participation in this board means that, on the whole, they find the policies & aims of this board acceptable, and the decisions they have to make, reasonable. If any moderator has to repeatedly make decisions that he finds disagreeable, I expect he or she would quit.
Well, suppose board rules here required female or non-white participants to obtain the permission of a white male before they could post. Some of our mods might be bothered by the implicit racism and sexism there, doncha think, no matter how carefully it was handwaved into being a legal and procedural thing. And some might not. I don’t know what you’d think about the mods who went along with it, but I know what I’D think of them, not to mention the board, for having such rules. You gettin’ the drift, Poly?
Sorry, doesn’t matter how you handwave it, Poly, I’m going to hold you and Poly and any US judge as morally responsible for your decisions and actions. “We is chust following principles” doesn’t cut it by me. I’m surprised to see you take such a morally weak stand.
Morality still trumps here, Poly. No one, not even a Supreme Court judge, can evade moral responsibility for their decisions and actions. I take it you’re not a fan of Nuremberg, Poly?
In short, he’s an asshole because he disagrees with you. I agree with you on many issues, but disagree with you on some. Does that make me an asshole? If not, what’s the cutoff point? What percentage of the time must one agree with Evil Captor to not be awarded assholedom?
Rather, can we suggest that someone may take principled stands based on motives that do not correspond with one’s own and not be an asshole, while being a jerk or troll or arguing from tu quoques and other such offensive methods might make someone an asshole even if they agree with you.
I’m a fairly strong liberal. But I have no problem identifying a couple of liberal assholes on this board, and some moderate and conservative non-assholes who happen to be working from a different sense of what is important.
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