In comments to "Eye In The Sky," an anonymous (oh, really?) individual wrote:
Snore.If he's serious -- and I think he is -- then that nifty little Thoreau quote over there on the right is more true than ever, except he's no friend of mine.
Oh cripes, here we go. The usual libertarian crap of making life as tough as possible on law enforcement and then whining when the guys can't do their jobs cos the crooks have every benefit of the doubt and the cops have to fight crime with both arms tied behind them.
Grow up chickie. [...]
Ya know what the awful truth is? Most human beings are uneducable cretins that need a big brother watching over them to keep them honest.
Civilizing the uncivilizable is our job -- yours and mine -- not that of the police or Teh Gummint. Nor is there any handy one-to-one correspondence between those who initiate force and fraud and "cretins," educable or otherwise.
The awful truth is, you'd way rather live in a nice, neat North Korea or East Germany, regimented, patrolled, watched, civilized-from-above to an extreme degree, than any place where decent men and women are free.
Who was the dirty, empty-headed, commie, libertarian radical who said, "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"? Oh, I remember, it was that bomb-throwing William Blackstone, hippie-freak underminer of Decency and Order.
It matter how you play the game -- especially when "you" is the full force and weight of Government, a Leviathan that can oppress the innocent and not even notice. Hell if I'll give it any more leeway to roll me flat, even by innocent, dewey-eyed mistake.
Liberty: to some people, "I really don't see what everyone is getting so excited about -- it's just a cat." Maybe so; but it's not your cat, so hands off!
Update: Remember, we're not talking about if Enforcers Of The Law can put a tracking device on your car, only if they maybe hadn't otta be required to convince a judge to issue a warrant first.
The 'cat' link gives a 404, but the title looks interesting.
ReplyDeleteLink fixed!
ReplyDeleteWell, if that's not the cats meow, I don't know what is....
ReplyDeleteThe idiot with the cat ought to be trebucheted into next week.
ReplyDeleteThe blackstone quote always troubled me, and still does. If ten guilty escape, the liklihood of ten or a hundred or a thousand innocent suffering (their victims) is much improved. Seems badly circular. The tenet on which it is based, coming from Rambam, is all about burden of proof, and not about letting the guilty go free on technicalities. At least that's the way it read when I was in the seminary two thousand years ago, I dont know if they've changed the ruling on Maimonides recently.
If you notice, the people who make comments like that never include themselves as one of the people who need to be watched. They are smarter than everyone else, you see.
ReplyDeleteStupidity is incurable, as are sudden and irresistible impulses. But judges who have no regard for the Bill of Rights are. No matter how far you are from the Ninth Circuit, vote for Civil Masters who do respect the Constitution.
ReplyDeleteThere's always some brain dead incumbent to vote out - and someone out of office whose brain is still in working order to vote in.
Stranger
"Dewey-eyed". Heh. I see what you did there.
ReplyDeleteCat woman should be killed nine times.
ReplyDeleteAnonymouse should be given to the cat to play with. But then, he'll probably be one of the first thrown into the concentration camps while the rest of us are still mounting successful defenses of our homes and neighborhoods.
The less respect police get, the more they need fear to operate. The more they operate based on fear, the less respect they deserve.
ReplyDeleteThe more they have powers that let them operate without respect, the more they attract petty wannabe tyrants.
Sir Robert Peel explained how to handle this when he created the first metropolitan police force.
Also, Mary Bale should be locked in a garbage bin for 15 hours or until someone finds her, whichever is longer.
There ought to be a law.. usually there is but!
ReplyDeleteThe requirement to engage the brain prior to doing a grand demonstration
of stupid has been long belabored as pointless. Yet still we endeavor to
educate the the uneducatible with the hope it may have a positive result. Alas there will be failures, any like the bright meteor their momentary flash will be less than illuminating.
Be kind to our foolish friend for his ability to understand complex things is weak. We being a good neighbors are mandated to assist the weak and addled for they are needful of help.
That and.. Fools are always the most notable by their noise.
Pay attention to the noises, they are the indicators of danger.
Eck!
A few years ago, during a PoliSci lecture, the Professor told us that between Local, State, Regional, Federal and International Law, Rules, Regs and Decrees that the average U.S. Citizen is subject to about 4 Million of them. Then he Snarked, " Of, course, that means by justing sitting in your chair, you are all probably breaking about 20 of them". Funny at the time, scary today.
ReplyDeleteAs for Anon. going to the Concentration Camp, that bum would probably be one of the First to Volunteer for a KAPO job.
If that English Bitch did that to MY cat, I don't know how much of her would be left to put into the Garbage Bin. I'd just probably hose what's left of her down the Storm Drain (and probably Violate some EPA Regs in the Process).
Og: A) Blackstone is trying to say Be Careful, not that he wants the guilty to go free. B) Criminals repeat; they get caught. C) How many innocent men are you okay with punishing for nothing, just so you can be sure you got all the guilty ones? D) Are you willing to do your five years of oops-felony time for the Greater Good?
ReplyDeleteI kinda like Og, but he is a Roman. My ancestors fought horrible bloody wars so as not to be subjected to the ideas of his ilk.
ReplyDeleteC) How many innocent men are you okay with punishing for nothing, just so you can be sure you got all the guilty ones?
ReplyDeleteAs many as it takes. the issue is not to just jail everyone, but decrease the errors in the system- which is rambams original point, which has been taken out of context for ever.
D) Are you willing to do your five years of oops-felony time for the Greater Good?
Too late. Been pronounced guilty of things I didn't do, suffered for them, and moved on. It didn't kill me. I survived. Not felony, but bad enough, trust me.
Little Richard rapes a girl, or at least tries, but there isn't enough evidence to convict. Well, actually, there is, but the convoluted mess of evidence laws and blundering on the part of the po-po, he ends up back on the street. Then, a year later, in Chicago, he savagely tortures, rapes and murders eight nurses. he re-offended, and they got him. Sure, eight innocent women died in fear and pain and degredation, but at least we didn't potentially jail an innocent man.
The answer to "the system is fucked up, too many innocents get jailed" is not "let more guilty go", it's "fix"
Civilizing the uncivilizable is our job -- yours and mine
ReplyDeleteNo. Civilizing the uncivilized (meaning "those who are not yet civilized") is our job. Though it's a dirty, thankless job that comes with no pay and no benefits, so I often wonder why I should bother.
Trying to civilize the uncivilizable (which, if constructed in the normal way for such words, means "those who can't be civilized") is a waste of time and effort. Such individuals should be eliminated, quickly, cleanly, economically, and permanently.
One of the many problems with our criminal justice system is that it has lost the distinction between the two concepts. It thinks all criminals are merely uncivilized. It has forgotten that some criminals are uncivilizable, immune to all attempts at rehabilitation.
"letting the guilty go free on technicalities"
ReplyDeleteThose "technicalities" are the law.
A society in which the authorities feel free to violate the rules in pursuit of some perceived "greater good" is more of a threat, and a threat to more people, than some criminal who got off the hook once because the police or DA neglected to follow the rules carefully. Those "technicalities" are what protect us from the arbitrary exercise of raw power.
What benEzra said.
ReplyDeleteAnd, Wolfwalker? As corpses, the uncivilizable are as civilized as I need them to be.
Careful Dear, I feel another marriage proposal coming on!
ReplyDeleteIt's just you're so wonderful and wise.
Or is it that we agree on most things?
I can't tell.
Og, if you don't mind jailing the innocent so as not to let the guilty go free, it's damn certain that everyone is going into maximum CYA mode when you come around looking for information; and more guilty people will go free, not less.
ReplyDeleteFurther, it's morally reprehensible. For the innocent, it is simply an unwarranted and unjustifiable attack, no better than what the criminal did in the first place, and morally deserving of the same self-defense resistance by lethal means if necessary. Nothing calls for violent revolution more than that, and you are on the wrong side.
Again, for a real option, check Bob Peel's solutions; London used to be amazingly free of crime, despite the fact that it had a drastic imbalance between rich and poor and vertical mobility restricted by social class.
wolfwalker,
ReplyDelete"Trying to civilize the uncivilizable (which, if constructed in the normal way for such words, means "those who can't be civilized") is a waste of time and effort."
Underneath the starry flag
We'll civilize 'em with a Krag... :D
To paraphrase P.J. O'Rourke, advancing the boundaries of civilization, even at spearpoint, is not the worst sin that can be committed.
(WV: "harcu". A harcu is a funny short poem of three lines, with five, seven, and five syllables.)
I don't know about uneducable, but I was a Cretan for a day--my ship put into Souda Bay in '91.
ReplyDeleteOoohh, cretin with an "i". I'll go away now.