I get that they aren’t held in high esteem. But John Gotti was held in high esteem by some people while Sammy the Bull wasn’t, by anyone. By any measure I can think of, Gotti was the worse criminal. But because Gotti remained true to his omerta, I guess, and only lied to other criminals and such, he’s perceived as a more honorable man than Gravano, who admitted to police he’d done the same. My contention is that the perception that one is more honorable than the other is ridiculous. If anything, Gravano did eventually do the right thing and blow the whistle on a fellow criminal, while Gotti allowed others to keep doing what they do.
Gravano remained a sleaze, as his later drug dealing arrests proved, so I’m not arguing that he is a standup guy or deserves any awards.
But Gravano didn’t do the right thing. He betrayed his confederates to benefit himself. Selling them out to the feds was no different from him selling them out to another family when you examine his motives. Although the US government benefitted in their efforts to prosecute Gotti, Gravano didn’t act out of the tiniest particle of altruism or from pangs of conscience.
Is there some reason I should hold a traitorous, murdering sleaze in higher esteem than a murdering sleaze who, at least, honors his oaths to his confederates?
Fulfilling an oath to commit crimes isn’t honorable, so the guy who upholds that oath is not more honorable than the guy who breaks it. Both are acting out of self-interest.
I don’t know; your Founding Fathers appear to have something of a following.
As to your general point; you seem more to be talking about how things are than possibilities, though that’s certainly a valid argument. Would you concede that a person ratting out who does so out of conscience is doing right by ratting, even if it doesn’t happen often?
You’re correct in that I forgot to include revolutionaries when I considered the issue of traitors. Successful revolutionaries are a class of traitor that quite often is held in high esteem.
Ratting out of conscience depends on when the ratting is done and what is or isn’t gained by the ratting. If we murder someone, and you get to feeling guilty enought to rat us both out, I’d be more likely to believe you acted purely out of conscience if you don’t end up with a reduced sentence or immunity in exchange for providing evidence against me. If you are really motivated by your conscience, I’d expect you to want to take your just punishment.
It’s slightly off topic, of course, but part of the reason our Founders are held in high esteem is the way they comitted their treason: i.e., there was a minimum of sneaking around. The thought the British sucked, publicly announced that they planned on kicking them out, and then said “Bring it–we are perfectly prepared to hang separately.”
Just to clarify a terminology point, I only use ‘rat out’ for co-conspirators *; I still use ‘dime’ (I’m very old-fashioned) for those situations where one was only a witness, or, at worst, participated to a lesser degree, with no … ‘malice aforethought’ (I can not think of the word I need here).
I also use ‘rat out’ for telling The Boss how a co-worker is screwing up.
Still, I disagree with you, Skald, and most everyone else here, apparently.
I used to hold rats in contempt. However, a quick review of the more important scandals that occurred in my life time indicates that some one ratting everyone else out would have saved lots of people lots of time, money, and heart-ache. Probably lives. (Definitely lives in the event referred to in my earlier post.)
So, you have engaged in criminal activity with others. You have been caught, are about to tried, and will probably be convicted. You can:
keep your mouth shut, watch your life outside crumble from a distance while you do significant time (and if it’s Federal, and you do not roll, it will be significant) **, and allow the criminal activity to continue, crushing the lives and families and neighborhoods of innocent people, many of whom you are related to and/or have know since first grade.
** unless it’s just some pesky little white collar crime that has only destroyed the savings and dream of thousands of people …
OR
tell the court what you know, spin it so you survive prison, and put the bastard who destroyed many of your friends, and most of their kids, in prison (Federal prison, please), where he can play some kind of Goodfella until some crazier sociopath finally kills him, too.
Frankly, (2) sounds like a win-win to me.
I suspect I have a different level of crime in mind that the rest of you.
I’d say this is somewhat morally akin to entrapment. It’s not actually entrapment because you’re not the one who came up with the idea, but if you just refused then that might be enough to put the kibosh on the whole scheme. If the goal is to have the student NOT make a good grade for a paper he hadn’t written, that could be accomplished without cheating or lying yourself. If you were concerned about the student finding someone else to write his paper then you could report the solicitation attempt and let the school handle things.
If we imagine a similar situation involving a real crime rather than an academic offense, I think the moral problem becomes even more clear. If your boss had asked you to kill one of his son’s enemies, I doubt anyone would have said “Do the hit, then turn him into the police!” or “Do the hit, but do a sloppy job of it!”
Of course, in a situation involving a real crime, you’d have been facing real punishment if caught. The actual situation was more imbalanced since you aren’t another student at the same college. If you’d accepted the offer then both you and the student would have been acting immorally, but the student would have been the only one risking any official consequences. Setting aside the possibility of retaliation from the boss, you could have accepted or refused without fear of punishment either way. This made the situation about as close to a purely ethical decision as you’re likely to find in real life.
Apparently some people think it’s okay to lie and cheat for money as long as you’re unlikely to face any serious consequences. This isn’t exactly surprising, but there’s not much ethical basis for it unless you subscribe to the “every man for himself” school of thought.
I’d make an exception here for someone involved in a sting operation, who had to accept the money so there’d be evidence that the person paying was serious about the illicit job.
That exception aside, while I think the correct ethical move is clearly to refuse the job, I’d have more sympathy for an “accomplice” who took the money and did nothing than one who took the money and did the job badly or did the job and ratted out the instigator. If the job in question is so offensive or harmful then it shouldn’t be done, whether or not money was exchanged. In the hitman scenario, any choice which doesn’t result in anyone being murdered is more moral than one which does.
