Nadir: Please resolve these paradoxes that you have created for yourself.
1. What is worse, a whore or a racist? Is it worse to sell sex to a willing participant who wants to purchase sex from you, or to deny people their human rights due to their "race"? I ask because you have declared that you countanance violent vigilantiasm against a person who calls another person's mom a whore. Thus if you regard racists as worse than whores, then you logically must countanance the beatings of people who call other people's moms racists.
2. Is it worse to falsely accuse somebody of being a whore, or a racist? I believe that the answer to the first question dictates the answer to the second question.
3. Do you condone beatings (without trial, right to appeal, legal council, etc.) only for people who call other people's moms names? What about calling people names directly? For example, instead of calling Tom's mom a whore, what if I just called him a whore, directly? According to your sense of morality, have I earned a private beating?
4. For what other offenses do you condone vigilante beatings?
5. And how badly can a person beat another person for calling his/her mom a whore (or a racist)? With bats? Lead pipes?
6. What about the beatings that the US troops have inflicted on their POWs? Surely some of the victims were captured for such things as firing on US troops, or even for calling their moms whores. Do you approve beatings for those Iraqis?
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2 comments:
I did not condone your ass beating because you called someone's mom a whore or because you say racist things from time to time. However, I did say that I would not interfere in your getting your ass kicked if you provoked someone to anger through insults.
It isn't that I believe the beating is justified. It is because I believe you should have known better than to insult someone like this. It is human kindness 101. If you insult someone, you had better know who you are insulting and understand their limits. If you don't then you open yourself up to their wrath.
This doesn't mean their wrath is justified. It means you were stupid because you pushed those buttons.
I believe prostitution should be legalized, and I believe racism stems from ignorance and fear. I agree with Six that you can't force someone not to be a racist.
I condone vigilante beatings in certain circumstances like someone breaking into my house or attacking my wife or attacking me. That is self-defense. If you insult someone, and that person attacks you physically, you have a right to defend yourself, though you started the fight in the first place.
US troops should kick the asses of people who were shooting at them, but once that person has been captured (i.e. handcuffed and/or imprisoned) such beatings should cease in accordance with the Geneva Convention. If a handcuffed POW calls a soldier's mother a whore, I believe the Geneva Convention still forbids the soldier from kicking the prisoner's ass.
Happy now?
Nadir: I agree with you 100% that US troops should never torture.
But vigilantism and self-defense do not equate. If I attack you physically (say, for calling me -- or, rather, my comments) as racist, you are not practicing vigilantism by beating me until I stop assaulting you; you are practicing self-defense.
I am also misusing vigilantism since my beating of you for calling my comments racist doesn't constitute "taking the law into my own hands", since no law proscribes you from calling my comments racist (or my mom a hussie).
The muslim mauraders are vigilantes in that they are imposing what they consider to be islamic law (as opposed to letting Allah mete out his own retribution). I don't know what to label your beating me for calling your dad a dandy. It's not self-defense since you are using violence to protect yourself from my verbal insult; self-defense here would involve you shutting me up by saying something especially clever and humorous about my dad, for example "my dad's only a dandy when your dad gave slips date-rape drug into his rasperry apple-tini."
Beating me for calling your dad a "confirmed bachelor who runs a Ferndale ascot kiosk" would constitute an illegal assault... and one that you certainly do approve, since you would not help defend your friend from it.
Please explain why you think that the Danes should not have published those cartoons, but you think that they should not conform to the illiberal strictures of other murderers, such as the KKK, who might stage violent responses to the paper featuring an interracial wedding announcement?
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