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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30000 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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Why? Neely has been attacking people for years and never got any significant punishment. He served 4 months for assaulting and kidnapping a 7 year old. He served no time at all for punching an old lady. Why is it suddenly so important to charge and punish Penny in particular? We should at most give him some nominal penalty like what Neely got. It's an absurd double standard to allow Neely to rampage around attacking people for his entire life and the the first time someone fights back we make them rot in prison.

By all means, institutionalize mentally ill vagrants.

Also by all means, punish extrajudicial killings. We can do both, NYC police got 10.3 BILLION this year.

Why is it suddenly so important to charge and punish Penny in particular?

Surely the fact that he killed someone should figure in the calculus somewhat, should it not? And in any other context, would you find compelling the argument, "sure, maybe Bob committed a serious crime, but we shouldn't charge him, because his victim was insufficiently punished for completely unrelated crimes"?

What if Joe was a dangerous criminal who escaped from death row, before running into Bob and getting killed in the altercation (Bob knew nothing of Joe’s history)? There’s no real loss here, so punishment would be gratuitous.

And I do think the previously revealed moral character of Joe and Bob should factor in our interpretation of the altercation. If Joe has proven himself unworthy of charity (in the motte sense) , then Bob’s words and actions against Joe should get the benefit of charity in the eyes of the law.

For something like 500 years, Anglo-American criminal law has considered the moral character of the victim, if unknown to the defendant, to be irrelevant to questions of self-defense. So if you are arguing for it to be taken into account in this case, you are arguing for a double standard to be applied.

Can you explain the rationale for the moral character being irrelevant?

Why double standard ? Don't you mean a different standard? Can you refer to, or imagine, a situation where I fall on the other side?

Can you explain the rationale for the moral character being irrelevant?

Note that I said that it is irrelevant if unknown to the defendant

Yeah, explain that argument.

The problem I have with it is that the case becomes about thoughtcrime.

It is harder (perhaps impossible) to ascertain the contents of Bob's mind, than the contents of Joe's rap sheet. Common sense dictates we start looking for the keys under the lamppost, ie with Joe's rap sheet. If Joe's rap sheet (and Bob's ) is empty or light, then we can veer into mentalism and voo, ask him to cry convincingly for the jury etc.

The argument is simple. Under Anglo-American jurisprudence, in order for a person to be guilty of a crime he must have acted [with the mens reas, ie the criminal state of mind] that is required of that crime. However, a person who acts in self-defense lacks mens rea. Thomas v. Arn, 704 F. 2d 865, 875 (6th Cir 1983).

So, the issue in a self-defense case is the defendant's mens rea, and whether the victim is a good person or a bad person is normally irrelevant to that issue:

The flaw in this argument is that it assumes the law of self-defense centers on the victim's acts and intent. To the contrary, the law recognizes the justification of self-defense not because the victim "deserved" what he or she got, but because the defendant acted reasonably under the circumstances. Reasonableness is judged by how the situation appeared to the defendant, not the victim. As the Court of Appeal noted, "Because [j]ustification does not depend upon the existence of actual danger but rather depends upon appearances' (People v. Clark (1982) 130 Cal. App.3d 371, 377 [181 Cal. Rptr. 682]; see also CALJIC No. 5.51), a defendant may be equally justified in killing agood' person who brandishes a toy gun in jest as a `bad' person who brandishes a real gun in anger." If the defendant kills an innocent person, but circumstances made it reasonably appear that the killing was necessary in self-defense, that is tragedy, not murder. The test, therefore, is not whether the victim adopted the third party threats, but whether the defendant reasonably associated the victim with those threats.

People v. Minifie, 13 Cal. 4th 1055, 1068 (1996).

However, because self-defense hinges on whether the defendant acted reasonably based on what the defendant knew at the time, if the victim had a violent history and the defendant knew of that history, that is relevant to whether the defendant acted reasonably. See, eg, California Criminal Jury Instructions 505 and 3470, each of which say, in part, "If you find that the defendant knew that had threatened or harmed others in the past, you may consider that information in deciding whether the defendant’s conduct and beliefs were reasonable."

Thanks for expanding.

I believe you need a guilty act too. And if the victim was clearly a bad person, and he deserved it, then society suffers no damage, and there's no guilty act. Is mens rea (thoughtcrime) alone, sufficient?

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Along the same lines as "Mary Rice Davies applies" i increasingly feel like we need a "Joker's Dark Knight speach applies".

No one freaks out when a homeless schizophrenic attacks somone because its all part of a plan. But when an ostensible "normie" does so everyone loses thier fucking mind because it exoses the central lie that underpins the entire secular progressive/humanist worldview. Rousseau, Locke, Mill, Rawls, Et Al were wrong.

And that lie is? The equal moral worth and dignity of the two? No, that's not it, you like that one.

And that lie is?

That violence and ultimate agency/control resides with the state (or society) rather than with the individual. That the state of nature is "just".

Aren't you a fan of Hobbes? It's the same conclusion, just without the window dressing. The government keeps you from a state of nature. You owe it everything in return and it owes you nothing else. So if it wants you to refrain from acting against homeless schizophrenics, it is your duty to stoicly accept this and not act against homeless schizophrenics.

Hobbes, while he is the father of modern authoritarianism, would be considered a libertarian of all but anarchocapitalism in the modern era.

I don't see how. His social contract is "You accept this social contract which says that we, the sovereign, own you and can morally command you in any way we see fit. The only thing you get from that is you're no longer in a state of nature. If you reject this contract you're in a state of nature and we can do whatever we want to you, because that's how a state of nature works".

This is the standard leftist caricature of Hobbes yes, but as this case aptly illustrates, it completely fails to adress Hobbes' thesis.

Homeless schitzos menacing people is the state of nature. Upstanding citizens killing homeless schitzos out of hand is the state of nature.

The thing about social contracts that progressives do not seem to grasp is that they are reciprocal, imposing duties and privileges on both sides. A Hobbesian could easily argue that the City and State of New York rejected the contract first (or were at the very least derelict in their duties) because what happened on that subway was the state of nature and thus Sgt Penny was under no obligation to obey their rules.

The social contract is, at its base, a lie. It started as a justification of why one should obey the government, and the details are irrelevant, whether Hobbes, Rosseau, or even Locke. All "social contracts" boil down to "Society's representative, government, shall be the sole and final judge of all disputes under this contract". No other term is necessary, though if you want one it can be "Society, through it's representative, government, may change the terms of this contract at any time, prospectively or retrospectively, with or without notice".

Hobbes's just has a bit less window dressing than the rest. There are no enforceable reciprocal duties. An apparent "breach" on the part of the sovereign may only be judged by the sovereign, not answered by a breach on the part of the individual. So even if the city and state of New York were derelict, Penny does not lose his obligation to follow their rules. And if they rejected the contract, why, then Penny is in a state of nature, and the city and state of New York can enforce their laws upon him morally because in a state of nature, the strong do what they will.

The social contract is, at its base, a lie. It started as a justification of why one should obey the government, and the details are irrelevant,

That's certainly a take. I might even go so far as to suggest that the popularity of this sort of take amongst blue tribe professional-types is a large part of the reason the places run by them display the pathologies they do.

To be blunt, the details matter.

For all the talk about Hobbes being the "father of modern authoritarianism" have you noticed that when a state does go full authoritarian it's almost always the ones who are on more Rosseauean end of the spectrum (IE Communists, Socialists, and wacky 'cult of reason' types) who end up building the mountains of skulls?

I have a pet theory about why that is and it basically boils down to the attitude displayed in your comment. Like I said, the thing about social contracts is that they impose duties and privileges on both sides. I believe that the failure to grasp this, and the corresponding inability to appeal to any source of obligation or legitimacy other than violence and raw will to power, is major part of why left-wing ideologies seem so much more prone to totalitarianism and mass murder than right-wing ideologies.

Afterall the social contract is only "a lie" if you don't believe in it.

I might even go so far as to suggest that the popularity of this sort of take amongst blue tribe professional-types is a large part of the reason the places run by them display the pathologies they do.

"Blue tribe professional types" babble on about the social contract all the time, as if it's a real thing that everyone agrees to that means you should obey (often accompanied by a sneer like "and if you don't like it, move to Somalia"). It's not a popular take at all.

Afterall the social contract is only "a lie" if you don't believe in it.

It's a lie if the state doesn't believe in it. And states don't, generally, except in the sense I gave of an entirely one-sided obligation.

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I am, and no it is not, because a core component of Hobbes' thesis is that violence and ultimately control resides with the individual not the state. Accordingly, a state that declines to protect the individual is derelict in its duties and is owed nothing.

In the Hobbesian view an individual chooses to obey the law in the hopes that others will do the same. The job of the cops is not to protect the public from criminals but to protect criminals (and those suspected of being criminals) from the public. The cops failed to protect Neely by failing to arrest him and keep him separate from the public.

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