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From: tdn@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA (Thomas Newton)
Newsgroups: net.abortion
Subject: re: The Moral Vacuum (especially for Ken Arndt)
Message-ID: <341@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA>
Date: Thu, 18-Apr-85 17:55:54 EST
Article-I.D.: cmu-cs-s.341
Posted: Thu Apr 18 17:55:54 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 20-Apr-85 03:27:02 EST
Organization: Carnegie-Mellon University, CS/RI
Lines: 74

> Please also specify how this "displays a child-like faith in the righteous-
> ness of The Law and complete ignorance of how it is formulated or what it
> is based on."  (ie. What exactly do you think the law is based on?  How
> does the acceptance of The Law as the final authority show a child-like
> faith, based upon your previous answer?  ...)

Are you really this completely ignorant?  Do you think that slavery was right
as long as it was The Law?  Do you think that the people in the "underground
railroad" who helped slaves to escape to freedom were doing the wrong thing?
How about the people in German-occupied countries who risked their lives
during World War II to save a few of the Jews from Hitler's slaughter?  Should
they have refused to aid the Jews because it was "The Law"?

The whole point of the Declaration of Independence is that sometimes "The Law"
and "The Government" are WRONG to such a degree that it is the people's right
to sweep them away and to set up a better government with better laws in their
place.  This hasn't stopped our government from passing some bad laws, etc. of
its own over the years (including the decision that allowed abortion).  The
good thing about our system is that it can accept a certain amount of change
from within; if the laws don't agree with 'higher authority' and we get enough
people interested in changing them, we can change them.  If we accepted 'The
Law' as final authority, we'd never change it. . .

But if you accept the laws that were passed by the plantation owners and by
Hitler's bunch, I would say that you have a "child-like" faith in the law.
Unless you think that it is OK to slaughter and enslave innocent people, in
which case I would say that you are completely morally bankrupt.

>> According to him, all a dictator has to do is pass a LAW that the LAW can
>> no longer be changed or resisted and hey presto!  Captive nation.

> That is why the US government is not a dictatorship.  It has a special
> attribute called balance of powers (many other technical phrases
> possible, any political scientists know of the correct term/usage?).
> In short, this is for protecting the nation from your suggestion.

But if we had all worshipped the LAW, as you suggest, there wouldn't be a
United States.  There would be fifty colonies of Great Britain.  Washington,
Jefferson, Madison, and all the rest disobeyed THE LAW to found this country.
Under your standards, they had absolutely no right to do so.

>> WHAT THE HECK WERE WWII AND THE WAR CRIMES TRIALS ALL ABOUT????

> They were tried according to OUR laws.  If they won the war, they
> would not have been tried because they did not commit any crimes,
> according to THEIR laws.

Are you seriously implying that it would have been "OK" for the Nazis
to have killed six million Jews, if only they had won the war?  Certainly
they wouldn't have been punished for it, but this wouldn't have made the
slaughter any more justifiable.

And I suppose you would have turned in all of the "criminals" who were
helping the Jews to escape the death camps, if you had been in Germany
at the time.  After all, you couldn't possibly violate THE LAW.

> One of the things that one learns when one grows up is the lack of
> absolutes in a pluralistic society.  You haven't the foggiest idea
> what that means ... yet.

So all we need to do is to make life as cheap here as it is in Lebanon, and
we're all set.  The lives of unborn babies and (to an ever-increasing extent)
handicapped babies are already rather cheap in this country.  But the lives of
older children and adults still are protected in an ABSOLUTE fashion.  If you
had your way, they wouldn't be.  I can hardly wait [heavy sarcasm].

It's probably pointless to flame at someone who doesn't see what is wrong with
the Holocaust, other than the fact that "we won and it was against our laws".
As I (and others) have mentioned before, once you place no value on human life,
it doesn't matter which way the abortion issue is resolved . . . since neither
the mother or the baby count anymore.

                                        -- Thomas Newton
                                           Thomas.Newton@cmu-cs-spice.ARPA