One of these things is not like the other one

Michael Bailey michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com
Fri Nov 12 09:32:38 CST 2010


David Morris wrote:

> The problem here is that Rich is talking about a specific, real,
> horrific, brutal and cold-blooded crime.  Everyone else is talking
> about abstractions and ideals.

that's true

> Is there any question that Hayes is
> guilty?  So, if there was anyone who deserved the death penalty,
> wouldn't it be Hayes?
>

that's true.


In general, however, I would want our "nation of laws, not men" to
have as an abstract principle that the message we are trying to send
is "we don't do that to people, 'round here"

you could draw a distinction between killing and murder, and a lot of
that thinking is reasonably popular and certainly better than having
murder as a simple corporate tool like drug cartels have opted to do -
at least when the State kills, it's girt about with solemnity and
subject to some control...

I'm not satisfied with that, it doesn't line up in a row of cherries
like another bunch of thoughts I've read, or had, or heard:
a) not stooping to somebody's level: there's a Better Way, and the two
paths are diverging in a snowy wood and so forth
b) Golden Rule
c) two wrongs don't make a right
 d) then there's the Benny Profane idea - putting forth effort to get
inanimate things is simply crazy
 -- somebody does a crime!  Let's get [usually] him [or sometimes her]!
then once you've got them, hey, let's make them inanimate?  NO!
Putting forth all that effort for Location, Surveillance, Detection -
there's got to be something niftier to do than making that warm body a
cold stiff one...pushing that eyeball across the threshold between
receiving light to reflecting it...


(to completely veer off-topic: this is just a specific case of the
general principle of ahimsa, which is only one of the eightfold
virtues, and although ahimsa is the one that I'm often moved to
soapbox about (possibly because I'm overcorrecting for a violent and
vengeful nature...) there are others:
non-stealing
non-hoarding
zeal
and some others...as well as the ten commandments, though some of
those are kind of time-place specific and hence not quite as inspiring
here-now...I was never IN Egypt, eg, (afair) nor do I possess an ox,
although I have been known to covet my neighbor's ass at times...)




-- 
"Such regulations may, no doubt, be considered as in some respects a
violation of natural liberty. But those exertions of the natural
liberty of a few individuals, which might endanger the security of the
whole society, are, and ought to be, restrained by the laws of all
governments, of the most free as well as of the most despotical." -
Adam Smith



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