Certainly not, but juries are notoriously prone to bias, and in a country with deep seated racial divisions like the United States it is no wonder that the criminal justice system leads to such disparate outcomes.
That really is the root of our problems. You can’t legislate morality.
Did it? For who? Greek city states basically consisted of a small handful of citizens (descended from a few powerful families that founded the community), a large number of non-citizens who were very clearly a subclass (called metics), and an even larger number of slaves. The system “worked well” for the citizens, certainly, and I suppose it could have been worse even for the metics - they could have been slaves, for example.
Oh, and that’s only for the half of the population that could dream about rights to begin with - there were also the women.
All the more reason to Deputize the citizenry and form a Posse to fight crime, subdue riots, and generally keep the peace. That’s how it’s always been done, historically. Police departments are a very new phenomenon as far as that goes.
Most of history sucked for the vast majority of people, as I hope my example of ancient Greek city-states demonstrates.
Posses historically didn’t fight racism, they lynched black people.
Of course we can draft women, we wouldn’t want anyone to feel left out.
This is getting tedious.
You are correct in pointing out bad things have happened in the past. So what? That was then. This is now. You’re making some interesting assumptions.
Can’t black posses fight black crime? Or is that not going to work? Yes, life on planet earth has sucked for millennia. Again, so what?
The “so what” is that we can look back at what we did in the past, recognize the really bad ideas - like posses, or the draft - and not repeat them.
“Black crime”, is that some special, different, kind of crime?
In response to the fact that juries are prone to bias, especially racial bias, you said:
The only way that makes any sense is if you believed that posses would reduce the amount of racism going on; so I corrected your apparent misconception.
Your other justification for using posses is:
Again, this implies that you think that the fact that we’ve done something historically means it is a good idea; the fact that history sucked for the vast majority of people living through it suggests that “we did it this way in the past” is not, in fact, a good argument.
That’s the “so what”; if that wasn’t the point you were trying to make, I have absolutely no idea what was.
These aren’t bad ideas per se, they are apparently bad ideas simply because you don’t like them. This a circular argument. Don’t let perfect get in the way of the good.
Now a military draft today, in 2023? It would be highly entertaining, to say the least.
Entertaining isn’t a word I’d use. But I’m sure there would be resistance. Look at the people who don’t even want to go into the office anymore, for jobs they applied for!
No, I dislike them because they’ve historically led to bad outcomes. Posses are a legitimization of mob violence. The draft is a fundamental violation of the personal liberties this country likes to claim it was founded on. There’s no amount of rehabilitation to either of these ideas that will remove these fundamental flaws. Which makes them bad ideas “per se.”
This.
Resolved: In the United States, national service ought to be compulsory. This was the high school LD debate topic back in 2017. IIRC, the decisions were pretty evenly split. Which means it will never fly these days, because at least half the voters will be against it for myriad reasons that change every minute. That’s just for non-military service. Military? Not even in the face of an existential crisis, I fear.
Plus what Miller said. A society that needs conscription to survive shouldn’t.
A nation that does not defend itself may be destroyed that mobilizes it young people to use force. How that means the should not survive is beyond me.
I’m not sure how much that can be dumbed down but I’ll try.
He is saying that if it’s a just cause, young people will be trying to volunteer in droves like in WWII. If it’s unjust, people aren’t going to want to do it and shouldn’t have to do so.
If the nation no longer has the support of its citizens then it’s time to let it go.
So nations that use sledgehammers to kill people do deserve to survive? You seem to be saying survival is a right only granted to the most brutal.
As for people being willing to volunteer in the event of WWIII, that might be too late. Further a nation with a weak military invites someone else to start a war.
Better to be ready.
Conscription is the opposite of being ready. It actively degrades the effectiveness of our military.