Subject:
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Re: socialism etc. (was: Re: Blue Hopper Car Mania...)
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Thu, 18 Nov 1999 18:57:27 GMT
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Viewed:
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1310 times
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Christopher Weeks wrote:
>
> Jasper Janssen wrote:
> >
> > On Wed, 17 Nov 1999 23:23:49 GMT, Christopher Weeks
> > <clweeks@eclipse.net> wrote:
> > > Jasper Janssen wrote:
> >
> > > > Taking this remark out of the post..
> > >
> > > It's much easier for you to do what you want with it that way, right?
> >
> > It's also good netiquette.
>
> Sorry, I meant that as a joke. I should have included emoticons ;-)
>
> > > If I come home and find some guy raping my wife, and I shoot him, I
> > > shouldn't be punished. Not at all. Now, it would be reasonable to
> > > investigate to make sure that a rape was really in progress and not
> > > something else.
> >
> > If you come home, find someone there, and shoot him, you have shot
> > down an innocent man and therefore deserve to be punished. That is
> > what "innocent until proven guilty" means.
>
> Well....I disagree. But he was proven guilty. He proved it to me by
> raping my wife. Under your world view, what would be the appropriate
> response to finding yourself in that situation? Calling the police?
I think I'll drag out an example which by your legal code I suspect I
would not be able to drag out because I would be dead...
Several years ago, I was driving home from Thanksgiving, and had had a
frustrating drive (try losing your alternator belt at 4:00 PM the
Saturday after Thanksgiving, with several hours of driving left, and the
rain pouring down - I was lucky, I found a store which had the belt, and
then talked a mechanic at another garage to "help" me put it on [he
really did all the work, I handed him wrenches]). When I was almost
home, I pulled into a service station to fill up my tank. As I was
pumping gas, I noticed that the hose had a serious leak.
I went into the building and demanded that they do something about it
(perhaps not the brightest, but remember what I'd gone through that
day). The clerk, I suspect in sincere belief that I was trying
something, pulled his gun out, and said he was going to call the cops. I
said, by all means. Under your legal code, he probably would have been
justified in shooting me (after all, he had a sincere belief that I was
trying something funny).
Fortuanately our legal code doesn't allow vigilante justice, and
(usually) punishes it when it gets out of hand, and he was willing to
bring the police in on what was going on. I stayed in the building until
the cop showed up to make it clear I had no intention of running.
Was I being stupid - yes. Was I taking justified action - yes. The
service station had a serious hazard. Unfortuanatley I don't know if
they did anything about it. They sure didn't close the pump, even after
I showed the clerk and the cop the leak.
Frank
> It is my opinion that the courts aren't really in the business of
> _proving_ guilt anyway. Not in any rigorous sense. It's more like
> suggesting guilt and playing probabilities against one another. All you
> have to (usually) do is convince a jury that person x is guilty. When I
> have been on juries I have been impressed by two things: the genuine
> concern that the members gave to the issue, and their simple mindedness.
> I certainly wouldn't want my fate resting in their hands with some
> tricky prosecutor guiding them to whatever conclusion he wanted.
Of course by your legal code you would already be dead. Personally, I'd
prefer to take the courts and all their (perceived) faults over
vigilante justice.
> > > Since a system like the one I advocate hasn't been tried, I'm willing to
> > > entertain that I might be wrong and that it might not work. If it
> > > didn't, I would evaluate what went wrong, and work to correct the deficits.
> > > What's unreasonable about any of this?
> >
> > Because there may not be a way to correct the deficits.
>
> How so? I suppose if the system really FUBARred and destroyed humanity,
> that would be uncorrectable. But short of that, the system could be
> scrapped and the process of governance started over.
I'll reserve judgement on whether systems without a government and rule
of law can be fixed if they break until the problems in Africa, Eastern
Europe, South East Asia, and South America get fixed. Of course most of
those countries do have a government and rule of law, it's just who
controls the government.
I think the strength of the US is that we have a government which is
(for the most part) under the control of the whole population. Sure, it
always seems that some special interest or another had the government in
it's pocket, but the control isn't absolute. If the US government was
under total control by big buisiness, there would be an awful lot of
laws that would not be on the books. If the government was under total
control of "socialists" (who I don't always agree with, but they have
some points worth listening to, even if it is only to see where
percieved problems are, and look for non-socialist ways to fix them),
there would be a lot more mediocrity in the country.
--
Frank Filz
-----------------------------
Work: mailto:ffilz@us.ibm.com (business only please)
Home: mailto:ffilz@mindspring.com
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Message has 2 Replies:
Message is in Reply To:
 | | Re: Blue Hopper Car Mania...
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| (...) It's also good netiquette. (...) If you come home, find someone there, and shoot him, you have shot down an innocent man and therefore deserve to be punished. That is what "innocent until proven guilty" means. (...) The US. Socialist. Please, (...) (25 years ago, 18-Nov-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate)
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