1. Analogies are not literal. The Salem Witches are an appropriate comparison, because violence was used in the persecution of others. The poster was not suggesting that opening a truck door and burning someone at the stake are equivalent, but they are based on the same principle - that the ends justify the means - if someone is "immoral" per your stance, you have the okay to violently persecute them. Failing to realize this is failing to understand the concept of analogy.

2. Prostitution is a victimless crime. For a crime to have a victim, you must be able to identify a victim in all possible manifestations of that crime. If there is even one counter example, it is a victimless crime. Think to yourself for a moment, can you dream up any possible circumstance wherein one person could pay another for sex, and neither would feel victimized? To help, flip it around - put yourself in the potential-victims shoes - are there any instances in which you would have sex with someone for money, and not feel like a victim? How about $1 trillion to have sex with that one girl at your work, you know who I'm talking about. Would you feel victimized? This is as solid as 2 + 2 = 4, you cannot argue it. If there is a victim in only certain circumstances, it is another, different crime that was committed. Human trafficking is one example used here - another example would be patting someone on the back - legal after a football game, illegal if you are standing on the edge of a cliff. Prostitution is a victimless crime, end of story.

3. Videotaping in a public place is not a crime. The (legal) line was crossed when the "do-gooder" opened the truck without permission of the owner. The fact that he was videotaping them naked, having sex, makes it a sex crime. Voyeurism, peeping-tom-ism, is a sex crime in America - and rightfully so. What he did was equivalent (in principle) to kicking open a bathroom stall and videotaping someone on the toilet. The do-gooder here should justly be charged, and registered as a sex offender.

4. Intolerance is not bad, in fact its very good, its the process by which we define our entire culture. Examples of things we are rightly intolerant of in increasing order of severity: not washing your hands after the bathroom, not covering your mouth when you cough, interrupting others while they are speaking, infidelity, racism, holocaust-denial. Do you go out and burn an racist at the stake? Do you slap people when they don't wash their hands? Do you throw people out windows when they interrupt you? Do you kick open a door and videotape them? Do you beat them with a stick? No...you choose not to be their friend, or associate with them, or ignore their views - just like any other jackass on the street. That is how society and culture are defined. Imagine life without intolerance - where all societal action was open-game and nothing was (nonviolently) condemned. Life would be an unending episode of Jerry Springer.

5. Intolerance as expressed through violence, however, is not okay for the very simple reason that violence is not okay. It has nothing to do with the intolerance motivating it, because as we just realized, intolerance is a good thing. An act of violence always has a victim. Opening a truck door that is not yours is an act of violence, as much as kicking in someones front door. They are different in degree, not kind. Denying the holocaust is not kosher, and you should be very intolerant of such a person, much more so that someone who doesn't wash their hands after going to the bathroom for that matter. But what they are doing is different in degree, not kind. You have every right to nonviolently protest - to videotape them publicly denying the holocaust and put it on youtube, and forward it to their boss. However, you don't have any more right to burn a holocaust denier at the stake than you do to burn someone who doesn't wash their hands. A failure to understand this is a failure to differentiate between concepts of varying degree, and concepts of varying kind.

this is interesting and has me thinking about this: same sex rape is a side effect of captivity. it wasnt designed this way by the power structure. its happened through out time, it happens in nature. it just is.

but, have we designed our prison system (intentionally or unintentionally) to promote and perpetuate this? are they doing anything to curb it? (i honestly have no idea)

personally i think the prison system needs to be completely revamp or abolished. but im a complacent anarchist and realize noone agrees with me.

is fear of punishment really a deterent to crime for real criminals?
(id say a nonviolent drug offense is not a crime. but since it apparently is, i certainly think being locked up and made someones bitch for a few years is NOT an appropriate punishment, this needs to change. immediately)
im trying think if fear of the law has ever stopped me from doing something? i dont think so. my own sense of morality has. and fear of how the people who matter in my life will feel has. but not the law. (and i have done some horrible horrible things)
"oh judge, your damn laws, the good people dont need em and the bad people dont follow em" - ammon hennacy
thats a pretty good summation.

so, have we designed our prison system to promote and perpetuate rape? or are we just not creative enough to think of ways to prevent this? i definently get the feeling that society feels its an appropriate punishment for criminals, its even a huge joke.

as far as threats of buttrape being used to intimidate suspects by the legal system. i can answer this with a yes. absolutely it is. my exhusband was "threatened" with this, old "associates" have been threatened with this during interrogations. in different counties, districts, states.

and it happens in lady prison as well. i know girls who went to prison for drug offenses and had been raped with broomsticks, tampons, plungers, hair brushes, fists .. you name it.. by fellow inmates.

i feel like male on male rape is more disturbing to people than its female equivolent.

so... hmm.. yes i feel institutionalized rape is being used as a silent, omnious threat to criminals and society as a whole by the institution by the media and by the public itself and deter criminal activity.
this may not seem so terrible but think of non violent relatively benign things you can be imprisoned for. yep. its a problem.


as far as the situation of your intervention perhaps the threats from DA were inappropriate, but your mommy im sure was just trying to save your life and the DA was just trying to help his friend. hyperbolic, inappropriate.. it doesnt really matter when a moms trying to save her son.
In reply to this comment by Diogenes:
im not trying to condone the subject of this video at all...

but as an aside, do you think that male-on-male rape in our own western prisons is a form of 'corrective' punishment, or at least a very real threat in imposing proper comportment and coercing us to bide by current legislation?

as an example... in my college days i got in a bit of trouble with cocaine - not in the buying/selling/etc part, but in simply becoming addicted to it and having my family find out...

my mom was a well-known lawyer in a long-time relationship with a powerful district judge, and the district attorney was my grandfather's former law partner -- so together they held a drug intervention for me...

aside from the shame i felt, nothing made as strong an impression on me at that meeting as having all three: mom, judge and da... tell me how if i didn't quit and enter rehab, that they would catch me, throw the book at me, and have me locked up in the local prison - they went on to detail how a cute, slim white boy like myself would be anally and orally sodomized while being a ward of the state's penal system

now, i realize that my circumstance was rather unique... but do you think that the same sort of threats, even tauntings, are being used casually by our own police forces, states' attorneys, judges, and correctional officers with the 'strangers' they deal with in the course of their work?

if you can imagine that the above is possible and even probable, then haven't 'we' consentually institutionalized such barbarity as a likely punishment for those who may have fallen afoul of some state or federal statute?

i dunno... maybe im off-base -- but as ive grown older, and not gotten in any other trouble, i still look back on that situation and wonder if such threats were: A. hyperbolic or fallacious (i neither consort with law enforcement nor frequent criminal court cases, but i have seen/heard these sorts of threats made in the media), B. worthy of the trust i had in those individuals (and that we all should have in our government), and C. inappropriate in that applying illegal punishment for illegal behavior doesn't exactly send the right message

thoughts?

>> ^Psychologic:
I'm really curious what is going on here. It looks like the guys up front are setting fire to stuff, and I saw at least one person throwing rocks. I really wish the video showed what was happening right as they opened fire.
This doesn't look like the police attacking "nonviolent demonstrators". There was definitely some destruction going on before the shooting (though I'm not sure what they were destroying).
Firing on those people definitely seems like excessive force, but it doesn't look totally unprovoked. There will always be people who use such general disorder as an opportunity to take their frustration and anger out on their choice of targets. Unfortunately that also gives the government a visible excuse to respond aggressively, even if disproportionately so.


From what I understand, the protests started out with nonviolence; however, the pro-government militia, the Basij, started beating people for protesting. If I heard correctly, the police were actually protecting the protesters from the Basij during the first couple of protests.

But with every protest, you can almost guarantee that some protesters are using violence and destruction.

I'm really curious what is going on here. It looks like the guys up front are setting fire to stuff, and I saw at least one person throwing rocks. I really wish the video showed what was happening right as they opened fire.

This doesn't look like the police attacking "nonviolent demonstrators". There was definitely some destruction going on before the shooting (though I'm not sure what they were destroying).

Firing on those people definitely seems like excessive force, but it doesn't look totally unprovoked. There will always be people who use such general disorder as an opportunity to take their frustration and anger out on their choice of targets. Unfortunately that also gives the government a visible excuse to respond aggressively, even if disproportionately so.

^Why must you lower the level of discourse, rougy? Name calling and labeling are a bit childish, don't you think.

You're being outclassed and out-debated by a university student in her early 20's (and everyone else involved in this thread) while you, a self proclaimed "smart person," lament the fact that you haven't yet left the most wonderful country in world. As far as I can tell, the reason you feel you should leave is because people exist in America with views that oppose your own. I don't know what to say to that. I'm speechless so, I'll just site MLK on Socrates: "Socrates felt that it is necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half-truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal."

In short, debate is good for you, rougy!


MOVING ON...

To me, one of the most important things to remember in regard to civil disobedience is that authority is given to all to make the world the place that we want it to be. We are "endowed by [our] Creator with certain unalienable Rights." Remember that Socrates, Gandhi, and MLK had no formal authority. They were able to impact the world through MORAL authority.

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote "One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws...

Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man-made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law."

St. Thomas Aquinas said, "An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust." He also said, "An unjust law is no law at all."


While we may have cushy jobs that we don't want to risk losing at the moment, it is OUR responsibility to keep our government in check. When the time for action comes, not a job nor jail time will dissuade me from "nonviolent direct action." Our governments continue to pass legislation that slowly whittles away at our self reliance and personal freedoms, and if we keep on this path we will one day wake up to a nation in shambles.

Two things come to mind when talk of real "change" or discussion of a "revolution" comes up: 1.) There has been a trend away from self-reliance in this country and increasing dependency on social programs. Are the social programs the cure for the dependency or are they the cause? As the citizens become more and more dependent on the government, they become less and less motivated to defend the common good. We are ever more selfish (hence the rise in mental disorders and depression, in my opinion) and 2.) Living in America (or in the affluent nations across the world) is becoming a spectator sport. We feel it is inconvenient to have to: research something for ourselves, become self-reliant, read a book, get out of debt, study history, engage in thoughtful discourse, be a good neighbor, take responsibility for our own actions and situation, etc. We are so "connected" to television, the internet, MP3 players, and mobile phones that we are becoming increasingly disconnected from each other.

What am I getting at?

Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego were willing to give their lives for religious freedom. Socrates gave his life for the law. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. devoted their whole being (and ultimately their lives) for the cause of freedom and equality. Change takes a lot of hard work and dedication. I mean, it takes EVERYTHING from at least one man. If we want policy change, we write letters to the editor, we start a website, we knock on doors, and so on. When it really matters (such as what the world protested against in2003, civil disobedience is in order. Anything worth civil disobedience is absolutely worth our cushy jobs. But, we'll need moral justification and moral leadership. I don't think that we're past that as some have said. I DO, however, think that wading through opposing propaganda would be more difficult today than it has historically been, but I digress.

The question I have is, "Which modern day issues/hypothetical scenarios would require civil disobedience to be solved?"


>> ^rougy:
>> ^thepinky:
As much as I respect your opinion, rougy, I think that your suggestion is utter drivel.
Pinky, this goes without saying, but you are exactly the kind of person that I want to get away from when I sell everything I own and move to Europe. I'm sick of butting heads with people like you, deedub, QM, WP, and all of the other rightwing chickenshits here on the Sift, and in real life.
It's just not worth it any more, to me.
But I did rethink my statement and realized it wasn't really civil disobedience, so here's one for you: blue collar sick-outs.
Every blue collar person in Washington D.C. should call in sick once per month, preferrably during the same week.
Delivery people should stop delivering things to health care insurers as a form of protest. Waitstaff and bartenders should stop serving food and drinks to industry bigwigs.
It won't work unless it's done en masse, so this being America, it probably won't work at all.
Marching in the street doesn't cut it. We have to hit them where it hurts: in their pocketbook.

So they collected a montage of thoughtless, violently aggressive responses from drunk Jewish boys (and one girl). This shows that not every Jewish youth is a wise or caring person. It doesn't say anything of substance about Israeli Jews or American Jews as people, their political views, or what they think of Obama.

I view this video as a lazy attempt to paint Jews as racists and extremists. Why didn't they go out on the street and talk to some adults? Or someone who was actually sober? No one should be shocked that filming groups of drunken boys yields filthy language and posturing.

I'm a 20-something educated Jew, who has been to Israel twice, and I thought Obama's comments on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict were meritorious. The Palestinians get a state, if they give up violence and recognize Israel's right to exist. Israel must allow for a Palestinian economy to function, stop official support of "settling", relocate or arrange exchanges for existing settlements, and prevent the creation of new settlements.

Palestinian violence creates enough support for those on the political right in Israel so that they can continue to dominate the government and maintain the status quo. Until and unless the Palestinians find a leader like MLK or Gandhi, who embraces nonviolence and unites the majority of Palestinians under that banner, I doubt that the status quo will shift in any significant way.

>> ^Yehoshua:
...Then there would be far fewer attacks on Israel; I agree. Still, what does Israel do when one or more of those attacks occurs?

Perhaps we can take note of the civil rights struggle during the 60's in the US by employing civil disobedience in the form of nonviolent opposition, it really removes the ammo (so to speak) from the "other side" of an argument. Opponents to Israel would find it a lot harder to rally support if Israel was not aggressive in it's defense or acquisition of land.

While nonviolence has limitations and may not result in a quick fix, I feel in the long run it is the more admirable, and arguably the more effective tactic overall.

>> ^Winstonfield_Pennypacker:
...But in the end this vid (and others like it) berates people for how they think, talk, believe, and act while at the same time trying to say people should be able to think, talk, believe, and act as they wish...


Correct me if I'm wrong - it seems that your argument in the first statement here is saying that the video is contradictory because it berates the parents / others for their point of view (which is that they want their child to follow what they say without questioning it, and that they are unwilling to consider anything besides what they currently believe until the end of the video). Is that right?

Well, you have an interesting point. The video does, indeed, do what you're claiming.

This leads to an incredibly interesting topic of discussion - what do you do with someone whose moral code differs from your own / society's? In most of society today we tend to put these people in jail or in psych wards. In past societies, people have been excommunicated, killed, berated, dealt with hospitably and have fought against society to try to get it to recognize their views.

I don't know if this is an American video or not, but in America the right to the pursuit of happiness is guaranteed. There's a problem with that, though! The child in this video and the parents have conflicting moral codes which preclude each other from pursuing happiness while they live together. There's a difference between what the child is doing, however, and what the parents are doing. The parents' moral code requires them to attempt to force the child to change which prevents him from being able to pursue happiness. On the other hand, the child's moral code simply doesn't mesh with the parents' - but he's not attempting to force them into anything.

There is a flaw with the parents' moral code which goes against the right to the pursuit of happiness of others. There is no such flaw in the child's moral code.



Human morality and the resulting secular laws based on those moralities are based are deeply rooted in religious belief. You wish to wave a wand and change that, but it is how it is. What people perceive as right and wrong structures how they govern behavior, and how they reward or punish it. Unless your intent is to ban religion entirely, you are just going to have to accept the reality that Theists (the bulk of the planet's population) are going to hold positions of power, authority, and governance. You'll also have to accept that thier concept of what is and isn't 'good' is going to come with them.



Human morality has existed for a long time - longer than religion (depending on your definition of religion), and it has changed a lot over that time. There are still people in the world for whom it is morally OK to kill others, even to rape or eat other humans. There are videos on the sift which prove this (see the "we rape to get good magic" video - too lazy to get a link). Religion has certainly developed moral ideas, but it's not the root of all morality.

Personally, I believe that morality came about the same way most other things came about - out of need. Early humans probably found that they fared better by cooperating with people similar to themselves rather than fighting those people, so that became their moral code. This is why some cultures have moral codes that are questionable to other cultures - they've developed differently and have had different needs resulting in different lifestyles and different moral codes.

Theists are a majority of human population (though I believe that the percentage is declining - I have no proof to back that up, though). I believe (hope?) that most non-theists have no problem with people being theists, and they can accept that theists have their own concept what is good and bad, right and wrong. The problem occurs when one group attempts to impose restrictions on the other's ability to pursue happiness. Both the religious and the non-religious are guilty of this.

This video doesn't explicitly state that the parents / girls at the lake who tend to be the aggressors represent Christianity or any particular religion, but it also doesn't try very hard to avoid that implication (a book as an instruction manual is a very strong symbol easily identified with the bible). It seems to be a critique of violent intolerance, but it could have done a better job of being nonviolent itself by simply saying "It's OK for the parents to be unaccepting of others' beliefs as long as they do so in a way that doesn't prevent the others from pursuing their own happiness".


Man, that was a freaking dissertation.

tl;dr version:

Pennypacker is right that the video is intolerant. It's intolerant of violent intolerance, which leads to confusion over conflicting moral codes.

"It's part of our policy not to be taken seriously because our opposition, whoever they may be - in all their manifest forms, don't know how to handle humour, we're humorists, we're Laurel & Hardy, that's John & Yoko, we're willing to be the worlds clowns... The establishment irritates you - pull your beard, flick your face - to make you fight because once they've got you violent they know how to handle you. The only thing they don't know how to handle is non-violence and humour. " -John Lennon

Bravo to Mr. Krugman for not blowing up like Bill'O the Clown. Nonviolence, calm and collected communication is THE best way to be.

In the Sermon on the Mount in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus says:

You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth.' But I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. If someone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you.
—Matthew 5:38-42, NIV

A parallel version is offered in the Sermon on the Plain in the Gospel of Luke:

But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you. If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. Do to others as you would have them do to you.
—Luke 6:27-31. NIV

This passage is viewed as promoting nonresistance, pacifism or nonviolence.

for those who actually watch this, the consideration about anarchy will invariably change some minds. Most people have a dichotomous belief of what anarchy is in contrast to how it actually functions. The rebellious and radical anarchist gives way to the pacifist, nonviolent notion of the genuine article.

> Guns are not a deterrent to violence, they are a threat and cause of greater violence. Guns were created for one purpose alone - killing. Shotguns weren't invented for skeet shooting, and hand guns weren't invented for target practice. Just because someone uses one for those purposes does not change what it is.


Among countries, there is no strong correlation between gun control and violent crime. There are countries with strict gun control and high violent crime (the UK), and countries with lax gun control and lower violent crime (Canada).

Most handgun wounds are nonlethal. You can aim for the arms or the legs to disable a criminal enough to stop him from doing whatever he was doing. If half the students at Virginia tech were armed, Cho would not have gotten far.

Florida adopted a right-to-carry law in 1987. Between 1987 and 1996, its homicide rate decreased by 36%.

If no civilian is armed, no civilian has a good chance of stopping an armed criminal. If a criminal knows he is surrounded by armed civilians, that is just as good a deterrent as being surrounded by cops.

Although guns may assist outlaws, guns also assist citizens in apprehending those outlaws. Prohibition of ANY kind of small object is extremely difficult to enforce, and determined criminals could obtain them on the black market regardless of their illegality (just as they can obtain crack even though it has been illegal for 80 years with billions of dollars spent on attempted enforcement).

There are costs and benefits of civilian gun ownership, and which outweighs the other is not clear. However prohibition of said guns is as futile as the drug war.

It is odd that fundies like Huckabee support the NRA even though their hero preached absolute nonresistance and nonviolence. (e.g. Matthew 5:33-48)

Protest permit approval requirements violate the first amendment blatantly.

It's just a bunch of people walking down the street nonviolently, holding some signs, and shouting. That's no security threat. The worst the protesters did on this video was jay walk. Yeah there are cuts, but why would the video creator cut out infractions by the protesters? And the club is only for struggles in cases of resisting arrest. I see no evidence of resisting arrest.

Eugenics does not necessarily lead to Nazism. There's nothing inherently wrong with trying to influence human evolution through nonviolent means like genetic engineering and child tax credits for geniuses. The slippery slope argument is a fallacy. It has nothing to do with racism. The nazis took a reasonable idea and perverted it with their racism, went bananas with it using extreme means and pseudoscience, and did a lot of other unrelated bad things. But Eugenics is no more to blame for the holocaust than the invention of gunpowder.

mind blowing, you fail for thinking the news broadcast was 4chan exclusive. 4chan is pretty nonviolent, with invasions and personal info getting deleted by mods. Infact it looks like 7chan removed their invasion board too. So invasion message boards are currently exhisting outside of most popular image boards (can't blame them, bad enough trying to pay the bandwidth bills and deleting CP as fast as you can without the fbi breathing down your neck).