I’d also like to pooh-pooh Bone’s apparent pooh-poohing of folks who get very angry about small-scale instances of government action (or inaction) that results in suffering. Without such anger, there’d be almost no chance of ever fixing these sorts of small-scale atrocities. By our history, it’s usually through this kind of anger and activism that such things change.
It’s been there all along. Examples: posts #27, 36, 39, 46. You can argue whether it’s been the dominant theme in the discussion (not sure what you mean by ‘in earnest’ if those posts don’t qualify), but morality has at the very least been a major subtheme of this thread.
To follow up on this thought, Bone, do you think it was wrong, or ineffective, or tiresome, or some other negative descriptor, for Civil Rights activists to use the murder of Medger Evers to try and emotionally appeal to parents across the country? It seems incredibly obvious to me that this was very effective, and (of course) by my moral system, the right thing to do. What about you?
If you know of a man who has stolen some bread to feed his starving child, you must turn him in because IT IS THE LAW.
It does not matter if the end result is that he will be tossed in a dank cell, and his child will die. IT IS THE LAW.
Stop with your mushy appeal to emotions. We must all FOLLOW THE LAW, otherwise we are no more than animals.
If a law is passed that says left-handed people are an abomination, then we must not question THE LAW. We must do as THE LAW tells us. There is no morality, no human emotion allowed in this equation. There is only THE LAW.
au·thor·i·tar·i·an·ism
/ôˌTHäriˈterēənizəm/
noun
the enforcement or advocacy of strict obedience to authority at the expense of personal freedom.
lack of concern for the wishes or opinions of others.
I’m sure all avenues were taken, and different people are persuaded by different things. The outcomes have been positive so far, and hopefully continue that way.
If your post was a joke, my apologies.
“We must all FOLLOW THE LAW, otherwise we are no more than animals.”
If we follow the law under the circumstances you describe, we ARE animals.
And yet, that’s not the law. Good job with the false hyperbole though, really nailed it! You mention authoritarianism, yet I’m a libertarian. The mind boggles.
This sounds good to me, but different than my understanding of what you were saying previously. If “appeals to emotion” result in policies that no longer send mentally ill homeless people to their deaths in countries they have no connection to, wouldn’t that be a good thing?
Actually no. To my knowledge the law itself makes no mention one way or the other about mental illness. To use that as a mitigating factor is the definition of discretion. So discretion would be deciding that mentally ill petty criminals should not be sent to a troubled country where they don’t know the language, but a person who entered the country illegally as an adult to sell Meth should be sent back.
Rosa Parks should have stayed at the back of the bus. It was THE LAW. She should not have let her emotions get the better of her, and just waited patiently for the day when she might have been allowed at the front of the bus. Really, she should have just been grateful she was allowed on the bus in the first place.
I don’t care if you classify yourself as libertarian, conservative, left, right whatever. This is not, I believe, a forum for comments about others of a personal nature.
Following THE LAW with no moral foundation will, in my opinion, frequently put you on the wrong side of history.
This is (again, in my opinion) the case with Trump’s concentration camps, and also the case with deporting a mentally ill homeless person to a country he has never lived in, with an expected outcome that he will die.
Well, we’ll just have to remind ourselves the primal importance of following the letter of the law without question or thought the next time the subject arises of what to do if government becomes tyrannical.
Good to know that when the second amendment is repealed and guns are banned that there will be no objecting to following the letter of the law and all the weapons will be turned in peacefully.
I think that it is not the discussion of morality that is upsetting to some, but the inevitable discussion of immorality that follows.
It’s a direct implication of Bone’s argument here concerning morality that that’s what should happen.
If invoking morality shouldn’t be done because it can be used as a (strictly metaphorical) cudgel against anything, then it goes without saying that owning guns shouldn’t be done because their capacity to be used against people > capacity of literal cudgels to be used against people > capacity of metaphorical cudgels to be used against ideas.
“when” seems more than a tad presumptuous.
It might be worth noting that a tyrannical government *depends *on its people unquestioningly following whatever the law is. If that position becomes generally accepted, then the takeover is already complete.
Historical parallels, anyone? Current ones, maybe?
You and others are misconstruing my statement. Here is what I wrote, and you previously quoted:
No where did I say that invoking morality shouldn’t be done. Do it to your heart’s content. I personally don’t find those types of arguments persuasive. They are essentially,‘won’t someone think of the children’ arguments.
See what I said about hyperbolic escalation - that’s pretty much what happened. You have me saying deporting this person was a bad outcome, and the next step is genocide!
What convinced you to support gay rights, if not morality?
Wanting the government out of the lives of individuals to the maximum extent possible, the 14th amendment, Loving v. Virginia, nearly a decade of reading Andrew Sullivan, and not being a fucking asshole.
So, morality, then. 