But it’s entirely different if you’re just turning the kittens over to the Department of Dumping Kittens onto Freeways. See, Max really wishes that there weren’t a Department of Dumping Kittens onto Freeways. And sure, maybe he voted for the Dumping Kittens onto Freeways party, but he didn’t really like that aspect of their platform. And, having been legally voted into office and allowed to pass legislation to dump kittens on freeways, he now has no choice but to accept that dumping kittens onto freeways is now just the way things go.
I really thought hundreds of posts calling Max a sociopath was pretty ridiculous, but, christ. If the shoe fits…
That’s also pretty much the same as dumping the kitten myself. Unless someone down the line, other than me, makes a meaningful decision then it is essentially my decision.
But it’s entirely different if you turn the kitten over to your local sheriff, knowing full well that he’s going to turn the kitten over to the Department of Dumping Kittens onto Freeways.
We’re talking about Vermont, the first state in the Union to abolish slavery and apparently lax on enforcing the Fugitive Slave Act, so that isn’t necessarily the case. As What_Exit took pains to let me know, and as I pointed out here
I think there might be something here that was lost along the way. It’s 1858 in Vermont and I hear noises coming from the barn. I grab my gun to find out what’s going on, and after a warning shot the fugitive slave reveals himself. I set down my gun and listen to his story, etc. To my knowledge the law doesn’t require me to turn in the fugitive, and is satisfied with my not sheltering him. So by default I won’t turn him in, but rather just tell him to get off my property.
Under what circumstances would I turn him over to law enforcement? Let’s say the neighbors or even a member of my own household, roused by the gunshot, overheard some chatter and left to inform the sheriff. The fugitive is telling me his story and suddenly a sheriff’s posse is knocking on my door asking me to turn him over or face the consequences. As they have both the law and the threat of force on their side, I have to consider whether I should violate the law and risk self harm or legal peril, or to comply with the law and turn the fugitive over to the authorities. In this situation I could see myself deciding I don’t owe it to this runaway slave to put myself at such a risk, and turn him in.
Now, in post #605 I wrote that my general duty to follow the law ends when the law requires me to violate my conscience to the extreme. But in the moral analysis above, turning him in involved not only violating the law but also risking the significant consequences of doing so. After the sheriff has hold of the runaway it could be a sure thing that he gets remitted to slavery, and although there is supposed to be a hearing I could be compelled to recount the story I’d heard proving his slave status. Still, all that isn’t necessarily more wrong than me getting shot by an angry mob.
And this is really where the kitty analogy fails. Even if there were a Department of Dumping Kittens onto Freeways, if I’m not facing substantial consequences I wouldn’t follow that law. Just like if turning over fugitive slaves was the law, where being put back into slavery was a sure-fire thing, and I wasn’t facing substantial consequences for violating it, I wouldn’t follow that law.
(To my knowledge, I haven’t contradicted myself in this thread.)
Entrusting a slave to the US Justice System in 1850 is the same as entrusting a chicken to a fox. You’re just as personally responsible for the result.
“It’s theoretically possible that the sherrif I turned the slave in to is less shitty of a human being than me, and rather than send the slave back in compliance with the Fugitive Slave Act he’d roll his eyes at me for trying to turn a slave in in VERMONT and just let him go. No matter how small a chance there is of this eventuality, since it is a non-zero possibility, I am still a moral person.”
You didn’t ask me what I would do if I were sheriff. Or really the whole chain of people right up to the slave-owner.
In an ideal world, at some point someone would resign. And their replacement would resign, etc. But it is possible that every person handling the fugitive, from the farmer to the sheriff, to the judge, all the way down to the U.S. Marshall taking him back across the state line and to the plantation, would go along with it.
I feel like there’s a word for this phenomenon - not the bystander effect, but where each individual in an institution absolves him or herself of responsibility. I admit my moral framework is weak in that area. But this seems to reflect reality - I work in healthcare and see it every day.
Is this something reasonable people can disagree about? If everybody had my moral framework the underlying problems - both the law and the institution of slavery - would be properly fixed.