dave@hplsla.UUCP (Dave Dow) (04/16/85)
> back to my point - make it legal to bomb abortion clinics!!!!!!! > > Regards indeed, > > Ken Arndt A most interesting proposal indeed. And one I most heartily agree with. Of course at the same time we must make it legal for me to spike trees, nay, better yet, just blow away lumber mills for murdering trees. Being a vegetarian, it's equally against my moral standing to see millions of cattle thoughtlessly slaughtered (for profit I might add!) merely to quench the blood thirst of amoral carnivores. Shall we make the destruction of slaughter houses by zealous vegetarians such as myself legal as well? -Dave Dow u{ihnp4!}uw-beaver!tikal\ hplabs!hp-pcd !hplsla!dave
hua@cmu-cs-edu1.ARPA (Ernest Hua) (04/18/85)
___________________________________________________________________________ > > quotes showing discussion of possible inconsistencies of anti- > > abortionists who bomb abortion clinics. > > { From: arndt@lymph.DEC } > > The above dialog is VERY interesting. The reposter directly above believes > we must all obey the LAW even if we hold to other moral views. The LAW is > the final court of appeal - not conscience!! Preliminary question: Whose conscience should we base the "final court of appeal" on? > Never mind that this kind of thinking stands against yonks of moral > philosophy throughout the history of mankind, or that it displays a child- > like 'faith' in the rightness of the LAW and complete ignorance of how it > is formulated or what it is based on. Ken, please tell us what "yonks of moral philosophy throughout the history of mankind" are violated when The Law is the basis for the "final appeal". (Of course, do give us more than just one-sided moral philosophies. In other words, do not confine your examples to just Christian philosophies or European philosophies or whatever.) Please also specify how this "displays a child-like faith in the righteous- ness of The Law and complete ignorance of how it is formulated or what it is based on." (ie. What exactly do you think the law is based on? How does the acceptance of The Law as the final authority show a child-like faith, based upon your previous answer? ...) > HE APPEARS NEVER TO HAVE HEARD OF 'UNJUST' LAWS, EITHER TODAY OR IN THE PAST > (SUCH AS THE AMERICAN DEC. OF INDP.) Of course there are unjust laws. I am against a lot of laws. I think the abortion law is unjust; women should be able to have abortions up until the moment of birth. (This is my opinion, of course. If laws of your liking gets passed, and I think they are unjust, based upon what you have said thus far, I am perfectly justified in bombing the legislature because they have passed an unjust law ... IN MY OPINION. I do not see how my opinion is any more righteous than yours, or the mad bombers.) > According to him, all a dictator has to do is pass a LAW that the LAW can > no longer be changed or resisted and hey presto! Captive nation. That is why the US government is not a dictatorship. It has a special attribute called balance of powers (many other technical phrases possible, any political scientists know of the correct term/usage?). In short, this is for protecting the nation from your suggestion. > WHAT THE HECK WERE WWII AND THE WAR CRIMES TRIALS ALL ABOUT???? They were tried according to OUR laws. If they won the war, they would not have been tried because they did not commit any crimes, according to THEIR laws. > Remember, "I was just following orders.", is not a defense!!!!! Depends upon the frame of reference and situation. If the person has no other alternatives (e.g. wife held hostage, etc...), I do not think he will be canned. On the other hand, if he DID have a reasonable choice in the matter, he probably would pay for it. Of course, this also depends upon the extent of the damage that he could have suffered compared to the extent of the damage he caused. > Back to my point - make it legal to bomb abortion clinics!!!!!!! > The poster above should have no trouble with that once it is LAW. > He even, if he were a member of the police, protect those who do the > bombing, eh? I prefer to make it legal to mutilate ... ugh! did I say that nasty word again?! ... I mean "bomb" ... your house. :-) I should have no trouble with that; or anything else which hinders people like you who have no respect for the opinions of anyone but yourselves. YOU are the one that display great signs of child- like faith. One of the things that one learns when one grows up is the lack of absolutes in a pluralistic society. You haven't the foggiest idea what that means ... yet. Of course, if you are joking about making it legal to bomb abortion clinics, please ignore this post; I really cannot tell whether you are serious or not, given the situation & context. ___________________________________________________________________________ Live long and prosper. Keebler { hua@cmu-cs-gandalf.arpa }
tdn@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA (Thomas Newton) (04/19/85)
> Please also specify how this "displays a child-like faith in the righteous- > ness of The Law and complete ignorance of how it is formulated or what it > is based on." (ie. What exactly do you think the law is based on? How > does the acceptance of The Law as the final authority show a child-like > faith, based upon your previous answer? ...) Are you really this completely ignorant? Do you think that slavery was right as long as it was The Law? Do you think that the people in the "underground railroad" who helped slaves to escape to freedom were doing the wrong thing? How about the people in German-occupied countries who risked their lives during World War II to save a few of the Jews from Hitler's slaughter? Should they have refused to aid the Jews because it was "The Law"? The whole point of the Declaration of Independence is that sometimes "The Law" and "The Government" are WRONG to such a degree that it is the people's right to sweep them away and to set up a better government with better laws in their place. This hasn't stopped our government from passing some bad laws, etc. of its own over the years (including the decision that allowed abortion). The good thing about our system is that it can accept a certain amount of change from within; if the laws don't agree with 'higher authority' and we get enough people interested in changing them, we can change them. If we accepted 'The Law' as final authority, we'd never change it. . . But if you accept the laws that were passed by the plantation owners and by Hitler's bunch, I would say that you have a "child-like" faith in the law. Unless you think that it is OK to slaughter and enslave innocent people, in which case I would say that you are completely morally bankrupt. >> According to him, all a dictator has to do is pass a LAW that the LAW can >> no longer be changed or resisted and hey presto! Captive nation. > That is why the US government is not a dictatorship. It has a special > attribute called balance of powers (many other technical phrases > possible, any political scientists know of the correct term/usage?). > In short, this is for protecting the nation from your suggestion. But if we had all worshipped the LAW, as you suggest, there wouldn't be a United States. There would be fifty colonies of Great Britain. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, and all the rest disobeyed THE LAW to found this country. Under your standards, they had absolutely no right to do so. >> WHAT THE HECK WERE WWII AND THE WAR CRIMES TRIALS ALL ABOUT???? > They were tried according to OUR laws. If they won the war, they > would not have been tried because they did not commit any crimes, > according to THEIR laws. Are you seriously implying that it would have been "OK" for the Nazis to have killed six million Jews, if only they had won the war? Certainly they wouldn't have been punished for it, but this wouldn't have made the slaughter any more justifiable. And I suppose you would have turned in all of the "criminals" who were helping the Jews to escape the death camps, if you had been in Germany at the time. After all, you couldn't possibly violate THE LAW. > One of the things that one learns when one grows up is the lack of > absolutes in a pluralistic society. You haven't the foggiest idea > what that means ... yet. So all we need to do is to make life as cheap here as it is in Lebanon, and we're all set. The lives of unborn babies and (to an ever-increasing extent) handicapped babies are already rather cheap in this country. But the lives of older children and adults still are protected in an ABSOLUTE fashion. If you had your way, they wouldn't be. I can hardly wait [heavy sarcasm]. It's probably pointless to flame at someone who doesn't see what is wrong with the Holocaust, other than the fact that "we won and it was against our laws". As I (and others) have mentioned before, once you place no value on human life, it doesn't matter which way the abortion issue is resolved . . . since neither the mother or the baby count anymore. -- Thomas Newton Thomas.Newton@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA