“You are dodging. I asked what laws you are allowed to break, not if you break them.”
– Allowed by whom?
“If you speed 10 mph over the limit and don’t get caught, does that make it right?”
– Right in what sense, and according to whom?
_“And when you finally get a ticket, do you believe the cop and the courts are wrong and that those laws don’t apply to you?
– Speeding is a good example for me. I think a lot of speed limits are bullshit and should be much higher, especially for me, because I’m a damned good (and actually quite safety-conscious) driver and I’ll take responsibility if I do do any actual damage. I think that a 20 Mph speed limit default in all of Seattle is absolute bullshit, and I think it should not be the law.
And, that’s a completely different thing from the law not applying to me. The law is what it is, and applies to everyone though it does include exceptions, such as for police and people with C.D. plates (i.e. for when people are considered responsible competent adults whose business is considered important, instead of being treated like children and/or untrusted subjects to be controlled).
Clearly, the speed limit applies to almost everyone including me. But when I think a law is inappropriate, I don’t consider it morally wrong to break it (legally wrong, yes).
And there’s also the practical level, which includes the overwhelming majority of all cases of speeding, where what usually happens all day long is people mostly don’t notice the speed limit and drive according to their sense of what the right speed is. And, where mostly there is no one there to enforce the law. And, where even when there is an officer present, and even when they notice someone exceeding the legal limit, they can choose whether to enforce it or not, and more often than not, they choose not to, because in the overwhelming majority of all cases where the speed limit is exceeded, it has no negative impact on anyone, hardly anyone even notices, and almost no one thinks it’s a problem.
Morally, I think many or even most speed limits are too low, and I think enforcing those is mostly unethical.
“You can apply that to any law in the country.”
– You’re right, I can. And so does practically everyone else. Including conservatives who pretend to be righteous. For example, according to Ronald Reagan, it was a great idea to have Oliver North pull the Iran-Contra deal (in which he ended up convicted of 16 felonies), and currently the NRA is appointing him their president.
“Take theft. Let’s say you steal some jewelry from your neighbor, but he doesn’t catch you at it. Do you get to keep the jewelry?”
– Do you mean to write as if there were only one absolute morality? Clearly, if a thief robs someone and gets away with it, they do get to keep what they stole, and for some thieves’ moral codes, they consider that morally correct. They may even have the law on their side, such as when the government of Seattle sets up computer speed cameras on arterials near schools and rakes in embarassing piles of money even when most of the tickets could/should be tossed out for a variety or reasons (and are, when/if anyone realizes that and objects).
“What about when the cops figure out you broke the law…should you get to keep it just because you got away with it initially?”
– Again “should” according to what? Practically, the thief might have ways to abscond even if the police know, and he might feel justified. Legally, it depends on the specifics of the law, what’s happened to the jewels, and the statute of limitations. Morally, that’s up to each moral code. The thief might or might not feel entitled. The victim and most people probably thought all along that of course the thief never had a right to the jewels and never will. Some people would amputate the thief’s hand as well, or see castle law as a reason to justify blowing away any suspected thieves with a shotgun.
“If new laws are made, they do need to be obeyed. But until they are, all those breaking them are still criminals.”
– Technically, I’d say a criminal is someone who’s been convicted of a crime.
“And don’t try the old rhetoric about conservatives allowing banks or polluters to break the law. It doesn’t fly and is a very weak strawman argument.”
– From where I’m standing, it’s a very apt argument and only “weak” for people whose “conservative” values don’t give much of a flip about the environment or non-rich people, and who value rich people and banks and large corporations, and/or who are opposed to laws that try to rein in or punish certain behavior such as pollution or taking advantage of customers.
“As for Pruitt and the EPA, the part you fail to admit is that many of the rules implemented under Obama’s EPA had no basis in fact at all. They were bogus rules that weren’t based on anything other than whim. And yes, those do hurt American business and jobs for no reason other than they play well in a sound bite.”
– “Fail to admit”? No, I’m sure there were unnecessary elements to some of the rules. It seems to me though that once again the difference in perspective comes down to what we think is important or not. You and Trump seem to think that American businesses and jobs being impacted means we should appoint an ex-corporate sleazebag to “head” the EPA and have it do as little as they can get away with, or even abolish it – clearly the agenda (whether it’s the one you mention about the bad reasoning impacting businesses and jobs, or has more to do with the massive profiteering that can be done by allowing all sorts of pollution and environmental destruction) is about money and possibly “fairness” and gives almost no weight to actually protecting the environment. Meanwhile my position would be that we need to protect our environment strongly against destructive exploitation, and if there are unfair rules, how about we make them fair instead of abolishing the EPA and legalizing toxic dumping in rivers and so on?
“You are dodging again about my comments concerning the number of immigrants soaking up public funds. You make comments about how good DACA immigrants are for the economy. When I post the facts, you suddenly start with the strawman attacks on Republicans and conservatives. Grow up. You were wrong because you’ve got nothing except liberal rhetoric.”
– If I’m “dodging,” what are you doing?
– I’ve consistently supported the theme that different people give different values to different issues.
– Those aren’t “strawman attacks”. I was pointing out that, as you keep demonstrating, you think “the facts” consist of statistics about how many immigrants take advantage of social programs or not. Those “facts” (which don’t particularly interest me, not enough to check) are only or particular importance to the “conservative” (some might call “small-minded and selfish and miserly and/or heartless and money-oriented”) obsession that social programs are akin to theft.
“And you are dodging that DACA isn’t a law.”
– I wasn’t trying to “dodge”. I responded to that, finding what you were interesting but not really following it, and tried to ask you if it’s the case that Rump can rescind it, why don’t his advisers have him do that instead of issuing incompetent EC’s of his own?
“If you listened honestly to what Trump was saying and doing, he made it very clear…”
– (The way Rump usually communicates has me ignoring as much of what he says as I can get away with.)
”... that DACA needed to end and he was giving Congress the chance to work out immigration reform…as it should have in the first place. The POTUS doesn’t get to make the laws. But he can undo this one. And there have been a number of legal challenges and Obama appointees that have tried blocking him. But they aren’t ruling on law. There is no law, so the courts have no jurisdiction.”
– Oh, interesting, thanks.
