Hey, kids! Adults are too busy to take care of you, so you need to take care of yourself.
We won’t call the cops when a Jerry Sandusky molests you. You’re on your own!
We won’t do anything about guns, so if a shooter starts shooting, take 'em down! It will take lots of you because you’re small, but get at 'em!
Our biggest problem in life is that there’s a black man in office and our taxes may go up, so you’re in charge of the rest, little buckaroos.
I advocate the bumrush technique, and I support Megan McArdle going first.
There should be a McArdle Importation Plan in which she is parachuted into any ongoing hostilities so she can show how it’s done.
What gutless, unAmerican tripe. Clearly the solution is to arm the children. Wish I was kidding.
As a moral philosopher, I have to say that this thoroughly confuses me. “We give up our right to legally murder a person in return for assurance we can not be murdered legally by someone else” is a moral argument, in the style of the consequentialists (in that it is the effects of an action that determine its moral worth or lack thereof). So, I understand you you have some other meaning of moral, but I can’t tell what it is from this.
Morality is the only possible justification of laws that aren’t arbitrary (such as the shape of stop signs or whether you need to file IRS form 1040 or if 1040-A will do). You are, of course, free to reject the moral foundation of laws you don’t like. For an example, some people support banning same-sex marriage because they find it immoral, and others support legalizing same-sex marriage because they find banning it immoral. The whys and wherefores are complex, to be sure, but at the root, the law is a fundamentally moral issue.
Again, I’m confused. You reject this as a moral basis, but it’s just the moral idea of consequentialism.
This is a common characteristic of consequentialist moral philosophy. And while it’s one that many moral philosophers take issue with, it is nonetheless not universally held that morality justifies feelings of guilt or shame.
Now I’m confused again, usually justice and morality go fairly close together. Usually, one of them is the foundation of the other, but which is which varies from philosopher to philosopher. How are you defining these terms? As a guess, are you thinking of morality in terms of what are called mœurs in French?
On a side note, I think that this is quite well thought and stated. I wish I had written it.
Yes. It’s true that the French meaning of “la morale”/“les moeurs” colours my use of the English word “moral”, even though the two concepts are not 1:1 equivalent. Apologies for any resulting confusion.
“La morale” concerns itself with simplistic notions of good/evil, propriety, sinfulness… usually in absolute, arbitrary and often religiously- or traditionally-inspired terms I.e.: don’t do this because it is Not Done. In turn, “immoral” is more often than not synonymous with “stuff I don’t like, because fuck you that’s why”
Ethics OTOH I would define as the impartial behavioural codes, rules and philosophies reached through careful, reasoned examination of the self and of societies, inferences drawn from said examinations, remaining mindful of their consequences and interplay, all in order to reach the most happiness for the most people.
Or perhaps my distinction could be that “moral” is based mostly on the emotional, while “ethical” involves sets of behavioural rules reached by reason alone ? Not entirely sure myself. Moving on.
So, to me at least, moral would represent stuff like objecting to sexual promiscuity, even though there isn’t really anything inherently unethical about it. I suppose a consequentialist argument could be made from a public health/hygiene standpoint, and from a population control one but that’s about it, and neither are really worth much. From where I stand, there isn’t anything inherently “evil” or “bad” about enjoying sex for itself and having lots and lots of safe it. Stealing is unethical because it coercively inflicts economical hardship upon a fellow man and I strictly wouldn’t want it to happen to me, and as such shouldn’t make it happen to someone else either. “Immoral”'s got nothing to do with it, see ?
Justice on the other hand would be the way society decides it should act upon the perpetrators of immoral and/or unethical acts, determining how much negative reinforcement (if any) they’re “worth” if you will ; and how the wronged should be compensated (if at all). To hopefully clarify my meaning, here’s an example: “an eye for an eye” is considered just deserves and morally justified in some parts of the world. But I personally wouldn’t deem lex talionis ethical, for a number of reasons the first of which being that it makes everybody miserable in the end.
Ideally, laws should be strictly ethical, as just as ethically feasible, and moral comes a very distant third. A ban on gay marriage might be extremely moral on account of EWWWW, but it’s not *ethical *in the least and the only just thing to do would be to repeal it, possibly with the help of a flamethrower.
Well, that was longer than I expected. Hope you don’t mind barely coherent ramblings 
Well, her logic is sound.
Well, not their own children. But I don’t think there’s a more Republican principle than a willingness to send other (poorer) people’s kids to be slaughtered. This is the party of Dick Cheney we’re talking about here.
Mass school shootings, we learn in another SDMB thread, is far too minor a problem to consider gun restrictions, … yet is major enough to train Kindergarteners to play “Charge the Gunman” ?
Please tell me that this is some sort of joke, or that thedailybeast.com is a spinoff from theonion.com.
I have two words for you. Tina. Brown.
Oh, she’s been shot? Well, sure I’m outraged. Sorta.
AAAAND the Arizona electors get into the birther biz. Seriously, how do these people even keep managing to breath?
Pretty sure that kid was slinging some bullshit.
If that is the same Megan McArdle I went to school with, then she is a major idiot indeed.
Were your parents rich enough to send you to Riverdale Country School (current tuition over $40,000 per year)?
I’m kind of amused by the idea of child body-wave training, because small children are prone to impulsive acts and don’t always have the best judgement, so any attempt to encourage mass bum-rushing is bound to result in many misguided efforts. There I am, walking down the street minding my own business, when suddenly I’m taken down by the full force of 10 panicked six-years-olds…
Wasn’t that an Internet meme a few years back? How many 5-years old could you take in a fight?
Well, who are you going to believe, a private media outlet like Newsweek, or the government thugs at an alphabet-soup department like DHS?
Of course the Department of Homeland Security wants you to cower and wait to die. They’re trying to cultivate learned helplessness! Don’t listen to those jackbooted thugs!
Facing a maniac armed with semi-automatic weapons, abundant ammo and lacking any compunctions, one learns helplessness in a direct and immediate manner.
Anyone consulted culrcoat?
Well, there is a slight issue with it, in that some believe in “natural law”: that all sex should be open to generation. Well, hardly anyone actually believes, they just pay it lip service. If one accepts the premise that all sex should be generative, then it is logically consistent to ban sex that isn’t generative - even if doing so is a million miles off consequentialist principles.
The terminology is intriguing too: it’s the pile of bodies that’re slowing down the gunman. Funny how the Republicans are interested in averting “the tragedy of the commons” when doing so only requires a human cost, rather than damaging business interests.