Many higher-up people in the evangelical/pentecostal/megachurch industry don’t believe the supernatural or moral part of what they are saying and are doing it cynically, only for the money and power.
Many higher-up people in the old, ‘establishment’ type churches (Church of England, Catholic church, etc.) Ddon’t believe the supernatural part of what they are saying, but believe that their organization’s philosophy is overall a force for good in the world and that the hocus-pocus God talk is a necessary evil. Plus it has agood retirement package.
A lot of anti-globalization protestors, anarchists, and others who riot at big meetings don’t believe in the principles they are ostensibly getting out in the street to support. It’s primarily a chance to impress the opposite sex with one’s daring exploits in defiance of The Man and to have some jolly good fun engaging in the time-honored recreational activities of smashing things, burning things, and fighting with authority figures; while in the company of friends and protected by a high-minded rationalization.
Legalizing drugs would not reduce violence or incarceration by much, as the drug war’s focus would shift from interdiction to tax collection.
Many of the people who protest most strenuously against gay marriage are closeted homosexuals who are driven by self-loathing because they cannot resolve the internal conflict between their upbringing and their naturally-occurring psychology.
HR departments put fake, post-dated negative items in employees files a few days before firings, in order to justify them and fend off potential wromgful termination lawsuits.
It’s noteworthy that TVs, electronics, cigarettes, alcohol, and guns are all legal in this country and yet organized crime runs networks distributing all these things through the underground economy, making profits like…well, like gangbusters. Legalized drugs would be distributed by organized crime for the same reason cigarettes now are – they are addictive, so people have to have them, and because organized criminals do not pay taxes on their sales, they will always undersell legal sales outlets, especially on “sin-taxed” items.
I suspect that a fairly large proportion of accidental shootings are not accidental. I don’t think there’s a conspiracy involved; I just think that in many cases, sympathetic cops and prosecutors give the benefit of the doubt in murky situations, or are deceived outright by “normal” seeming shooters who feign remorse…not to mention the suicides that are papered over for insurance purposes or to help everyone feel better.
The Amy Bishop case is merely the latest one to bring this possibility to mind. If I understand the pretty substandard reporting I see here and (especially confusingly) here, what they are saying is this:
While we’ve been told that she shot her brother and it was ruled an accident, we now find that (apparently) she shot the shotgun into the wall, shot her brother, shot a third time into the ceiling, then ran outside and (for unclear reasons) wound up in an armed standoff with police at a local business in Braintree. She pointed her shotgun at a bystander, was ordered to drop the gun, did not do so, and was physically disarmed by a heroic police officer from behind. AFTER killing her brother in an incident involving three shots.
And yet this was written up as an accidental shooting, allegedly while her mother was showing her how to load the gun.
If that can get written up as an accidental discharge, I think there are a lot more “accidental discharges” that must have been deliberate murders or suicides.