The jury isn’t arguing with him.
The people here on this forum aren’t a jury, we’re the other layers. No lawyer has ever had to convince the opposing counsel that they’re wrong; in fact, lawyers aren’t allowed, ethically, to be convinced by the other side. That’s why they never try.
He doesn’t seek the truth - he argues that his position is correct. Over time, without the uncomfortable adjustments of keeping a principled worldview, that’ll just collapse you into your basest thoughts. So, onwards and downwards.
Drawing comparisons despite differences in scope and context doesn’t invalidate those comparisons, particularly when those precise differences are acknowledged.
Comparing civil disobedience with terrorism in ways that fail to acknowledge the differences is just one example of a fucking silly comparison he’s made recently.
Closing in on twenty years here, and still making erroneous assumptions about his audience? The boy is a mite thick, then?
He noted that they were both destruction of public property, which they were. For fuck’s sake, calling tearing down a statue “civil disobedience” instead of petty vandalism is pretty disingenuous in and of itself.
Protesters tearing down a statue dedicated to their oppression which the community would have removed if state law allowed is “petty vandalism”? Speaking of missing the context…
Yes. They were both destruction of public property. And shivving someone and open heart surgery both involve cutting someone’s skin open. Before you send the surgeon to prison, perhaps you should look for the context.
Did you feel this way when they started tearing down communist era statues in Eastern Europe?
Sigh.
Comparing petty vandalism with terrorism in ways that fail to acknowledge the differences is just one example of a fucking silly comparison he’s made recently.
Yeah, this is totally nonsensical now :rolleyes:
I do look for the context. I live where these statues are being taken down, and although I despise the ideals for which they stand, I abhor a lawless society where any group who decides they’ve become offended may break any laws they choose in order to right those perceived offenses.
Plus, this particular statues was dedicated by the Daughters of the Confederacy in memory of the students and faculty who died in the Civil War. It’s several large steps from honoring war dead to being a monument dedicated to oppression.
Probably not, I was ten when that was happening. I’m now of the opinion that if the local government of East Whateverslav wants to keep up their statue of Stalin, it shouldn’t be torn down by some pissy college kids with their dander up, who might use it as an excuse to start throwing rocks through the windows of legislators they don’t like the next night because they got away with it the first time.
I was a bit older than ten then, and as far as I know there wasn’t real opposition in this country concerning history or property rights in this country when they came down. Everybody cheered when they came down.
That makes sense. We were onlookers and not obliged to live in those societies. It’s really easy to decide to ignore the negative future repercussions of actions in exchange for the feel-goods of cathartic destruction of a symbol of oppression. It’s a lot dicier when it’s in your neighborhood and you’re not sure what is going to be the next symbol of oppression.
Whereas I see it as hypocritical to support such efforts to fight oppression in other countries, while frowning upon using such methods to fight oppression here.
in memory of the students and faculty who died in the effort to keep your ancestors enslaved. Dedicated during a time when your nearer ancestors were being legally oppressed and denied basic rights by the racist white majority.
But, it’s not a monument to oppression.
First they came for the racist statues, amirite? :rolleyes: This is an absurd slippery slope. Some protesters took down a statue because it was a symbol of white supremacy and are getting punished for it. Basic civil disobedience. What, exactly, do you think they’ll go after next? I’ll give you a hint - if it’s anything other than “a monument to white supremacy”, you’re fantasizing.
And sometimes, people choose to break the law in ways that harm no-one because the law is unjust. It’s not all that hard for a rational, thinking human being to tell the difference between knocking down a statue and murdering 169 people in that regards. What Ghandi did was illegal. What Rosa Parks did was illegal. This does not somehow make them in any way related to Timothy McVeigh, and it’s insane to imply that. We differentiate, historically, between those who stood up to unjust laws in ways that harmed no-one and suffered for it, and people who bomb federal buildings. At best, your comparison is misleading, simply because of the connotations - or would you not object to “if you’re a vegetarian, you’re just like Hitler!”?
Please learn what you’re talking about before entering the thread.
During the 1913 dedication, Confederate veteran and Ku Klux Klan supporter Julian Carr, made it clear the memorial was less about honoring those who fought in the Civil War than re-establishing white rule in the present day.
“The present generation, I am persuaded, scarcely takes note of what the Confederate soldier meant to the welfare of the Anglo-Saxon race during the four years immediately succeeding the war, when the facts are that their courage and steadfastness saved the very life of the Anglo-Saxon race in the South,” Carr said.
“When ‘the bottom rail was on top’ all over the Southern states, and today, as a consequence, the purest strain of the Anglo-Saxon is to be found in the 13 Southern States — Praise God. I trust I may be pardoned for one allusion, howbeit it is rather personal. One hundred yards from where we stand [on Franklin Street], less than ninety days perhaps after my return from Appomattox, I horse-whipped a negro wench until her skirts hung in shreds, because upon the streets of this quiet village she had publicly insulted and maligned a Southern lady, and then rushed for protection to these University buildings where was stationed a garrison of 100 Federal soldiers. I performed the pleasing duty in the immediate presence of the entire garrison.”
You should read that whole article, by the by. Every single word. Because clearly, you’re missing something here. Or, more precisely, fucking everything. You’re missing that the community the statue is in wanted it torn down ages ago. You’re missing that the statue is obviously and blatantly a monument to white supremacy. You’re missing a goddamn brain if you’re still defending Bricker’s bullshit analogy.
No, it’s fucking well not. Civil disobedience has an incredibly long tradition of causing economic hardship to oppressors, of deliberately violating laws that protect injustice. “Petty vandalism” is a description of an act undertaken for shits and giggles, or for boasting; it’s not the description of an act undertaken after half a century of fighting an injustice and being stymied at every turn by people comfortable with a monument to injustice, an act undertaken deliberately and in full view of the police in order to right the wrong.
Petty vandalism my ass.
Crimes have a judicial and moral/ethical component.
Some lack one or the other. Protesting against the government is illegal in most dictatorships but it is neither unethical nor immoral. It’s a strictly judicial crime. Torturing alleged terrorists in black sites abroad is not illegal, but it is as widely recognized as immoral/unethical as these vague things can be, so it qualifies as a moral/ethical crime. But not a judicial one. Most crimes fall between these two extremes.
To virtually all people this is completely inately understood subtext in any discussion about crime.
Bricker occasionally - well, frequently - elects to ignore or conflate this readily apparent subtext to the great annoyance of the other participants.
Hopefully I have now rendered every future Bricker pitting redundant.
I wouldn’t even go that far: I think he addresses it by prioritizing, to what I find an extreme degree, the innate morality of following the law.
About a week ago I refused to discuss this issue with him, figuring it constituted an irreconcilable difference between our positions. But then I came back with some questions for him, when he posted some strange shit about being okay with revolutions, or with MLK’s lawlessness. So far, he’s responded obliquely at best.
My hope is that he’s reconsidering the position.
Dude!
You lopped off the weener!
Not cool.
Let’s just stick that back on there.