Needs this sound track:

💯0:0:1">https://tubedubber.com/?q=f0SVLr5pxIg:TLEDieVhirQ:0💯0:0:1

I know you jest, but I grew up riding snowmobiles, and jumping roads is great fun. Roads where you can see for miles that absolutely nobody is coming and you are endangering nobody but yourself. As someone that loves that, this video is one the of the stupidest and most selfish stunts I've seen. They're risking the lives of other people for kicks, disgusting.

I know that should all be taken for granted, but just wanted to reassure anybody needing it that even in the crowd of people that like jumping snowmobiles over stuff, this is considered awful.

it behooves us to give a leg up to those trying hard to do it for themselves....no?

I vehemently agree on this. I merely argue that giving the leg up shouldn't be based upon race but upon lack of opportunity. The two fellow black students you mentioned, who were nearly as advantaged as you would have similarly destroyed other black students from crappy inner city schools, but a race based system would give no quarter to the inner city kids in that insistence, still favouring privileged kids over the unprivileged, just so happens these privileged kids would be black.

I agree fully with helping out the disadvantaged. If a race is grossly over represented among the poor, then policies to help the poor will also grossly provide more assistance to that race. I don't consider that discriminatory though, it's just a historical consequence.

In the Canadian model, direct assistance or compensation for past harm is also something I can get behind. Of course, proving and carefully adjudicating what that should mean is a tough nut, but our courts are expressly for that kind of dispute.

I'm less familiar with American demographics, but I agree with the overall principal. Here in Canada we have IMO an even more severe segregation and unequal opportunity for Aboriginal peoples. It's severe enough up here though that not only are communities segregated by living on reserves with their own separate schools, but we have separate school divisions, and even their reporting and funding lines are different from all other schools.

That adds up to an enormous amount of differential treatment. Replacing that with equal opportunity though is much more desirable than 'waiting' till the school system has already failed kids and then 'lowering the bar' in one way or another to help them get into university.

In Canada I think our supreme court has done as at least 1 disservice greater than you guys though in making race a required consideration in sentencing. The appropriate section of sentencing:
"In sentencing an aboriginal offender, the judge must consider: (a) the unique systemic or background factors which may have played a part in bringing the particular aboriginal offender before the courts; and (b) the types of sentencing procedures and sanctions which may be appropriate in the circumstances for the offender because of his or her particular aboriginal heritage or connection."
The goal is to address the over-representation of aboriginal people in prisons. The effect however, is ultimately discriminatory as well. Before you dismiss the discrimination against whites as ok because it balances things out as is the 'goal', that's not the only affect. Another problem in Canada is the over-representation of Aboriginal peoples as the victims of crime, because most violent crime is between parties that are related. So on the whole crimes committed against Aboriginal people will on average be sentenced more leniently...

Failing to address the real underlying unequal opportunity can't corrected by more inequality later to balance the scales. In Canada, our attempt at it are too lesson the sentencing of people with unequal backgrounds, but the expense of victims that also faced those same unequal backgrounds...

And that 'corrective' inequality is also creating similar resentment amongst white people here too. People don't like their kids not getting into a school of choice potentially because of a race based distinction, but they like it even less to see a crime committed against them treated more leniently because of race.

Rally co-pilots have it tough,

https://videosift.com/video/Sorry-explain-again-what-happened-to-your-co-pilot

I don't see how a moral code can be held or followed without the need for justifying it's application, so it doesn't really bother me that is required by my own. Just look at every religion throughout history, even holding approximately the same moral code, the applications span from tyrant to saint depending on how it has been applied.

When it comes to something as severe as the act of ending another human life, I'll readily admit that how you justify it is huge. Is it not, however, equally important to justify the morality of your response to someone killing thousands?

In the extreme is WW2, which my grandfather and his brothers refused to participate on exactly the moral grounds you propose. They had to be willing to at least claim that morally, with a gun in their hand, they would watch their families murdered rather than shoot the killer. My conscience recoils at that.

That morality also insists that the lack of action taken in Rwanda's genocide by the world was the right moral decision. I reject that. I see the refusal to act to stop such a horrific genocide as morally evil and I oppose it. I don't feel that is weakened by the fact it depends upon using some judgment, logic and facts to reach that definition.


In reply to this comment by Kofi:
You seem to have a consequentialist morality. I sympathise with it greatly but find it an incoherent morality due to its double standards and subjectivity.

I guess my greivance is calling something moral that would otherwise not be moral. It seems to dilute the very notion. Call it just or necessary but do not call it moral. Calling it moral leads to all sorts of other "justifications" such as "pre-emptive war" (which I guess this was) and terrorism etc etc. (No I am not calling you a terrorist : I am just mentioning how such claims to morality can be contorted to suit ones needs).



In reply to this comment by bcglorf:
>> ^Kofi:

Political Realism demands sufficient national interest to act. That can come about in material gain such as resources and markets or regional political favour. Even the most liberal of governments does not act outside self-interest.
When questioned about the Libyan conflict and why the West was not pursuing other targets of similar standing, such as those in Sudan, Niger and Cote d'Ivoire Obama stated this same principle. The flip side of the coin is that some is better than none.
However, we have all been indoctrinated into thinking that killing to prevent killing is somehow moral. Morality is not about what is just, it is about what is good. If it is not moral to kill someone out of wartime then it is incoherent to say that it becomes moral in wartime. It may be just but it is not moral. One must recognise the difference between good and bad and right and wrong. Conflating good with right and bad with wrong leads to all sorts of problems.
Lastly, these rebels who executed Gaddafi are assumed to be forming a new government. What does it bode for the Libyan people that the new government values vengeance over law and order. Say what you will about Gadaffi, but if this is anything to go by the new government seems to be replicating the same precedent set 42 years ago.


Only if your morality is absolute, inflexible and immune to logic.

My moral compass declares the killing of another human being one of the worst things that can happen. That is DIFFERENT than someone that believes that killing another human being is the worst thing a person can do.

The difference is vitally important. By one compass, which my pacifist forefathers held to, killing one human to stop him from operating a Nazi gas chamber killing thousands every day is morally wrong and much worse than refusing to kill him and letting the people die. By my moral compass, failing to stop that man is by far the worse crime.

This applies directly to the NATO involvement in Libya, as Gaddafi had publicly declared his intention of waging a genocide against the opposition, and cleansing the nation of these cockroaches house by house. More over, Gaddafi had done it before, and was in the very process of seizing the military positioning required to do it. His own deputy minister to the UN stated on the day that NATO decided to participate in the UN mandated mission that Gaddafi was within hours of instituting a slaughter of innocents.