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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 28, 2025

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if I don't believe in germs and I sneeze on my immunocompromised friend, and he dies, that doesn't mean I wanted to kill him, or had any kind of malicious intent towards him

In the Year of Our Lord 2025, with all the information about germ theory you've (the proverbial "you") been exposed to (not to mention general politeness--I can't imagine knowingly sneezing on your sick friend was considered appropriate even prior to the development of germ theory), yeah, I think it kind of does. At the very least you showed reckless disregard for your friend's safety sufficient to hold you morally reaponsible for his death.

It's possible you may not be legally culpable, depending on the availability of the insanity defense in your jurisdiction, but there is, in fact, such a thing as criminal ignorance.

If I were his widow, I certainly wouldn't invite you to the funeral, that's for sure.

This is actually a perfect metaphor for the moral culpability of naive communists, in my opinion. At a certain point, you can no longer hide behind ignorance. Someone is going to start noticing the pile of corpses you're leaving in your wake (hopefully before you enter the 8 figure range) and lock you up so you can't keep smeezing on immunocompromised people.

If you know your friend is immunocompromised or something, I'd say that scenario actually meets the "wanton disregard for human life" required to be prosecuted as third degree murder in the jurisdictions where that exists.