Dan Minette wrote: > ----- Original Message ----- > From: "Robert Seeberger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[email protected]> > Sent: Saturday, June 11, 2005 12:25 PM > Subject: Re: Gulags > > >> Ronn!Blankenship wrote: >>> At 11:31 PM Friday 6/10/2005, Dan Minette wrote: >>> >>> >>>> 2) The treatment of prisoners in our regular prisons. Prison >>>> rape >>>> is >>>> winked at by government officials on both sides of the aisle. >>>> There >>>> is no national outrage concerning this. You may think it is an >>>> outrage, as do others of us on this list, but it really is off >>>> the >>>> radar. >>> >>> >>> In fact, the whole topic is treated as fodder by comedians. And >>> many >>> otherwise reasonable people think it is no worse than many of them >>> deserve, especially those convicted of rape or child abuse. >>> >> >> Ahhh....so let Joe Bob Redneck be the standard by which our moral >> compass is set?
I'd like to apologize to Ronn! for misreading him. I found it very disappointing to think someone I find to be a reasonable person might harbor such a sentiment. At work, I am constantly surrounded by Joe Bob Rednecks who do harbor such sentiments, and it is an endless source of frustration for me. > > Part of the problem is that people who should be considered much > more > refined are saying that. Yeah, it is like a kind of cynicism that has taken up permanent lodging in many peoples minds. "It happens all the time, you cannot change it, therefore it is OK". To me, that is reprehensable, and it is to a great degree directly opposed to the direction that justice and righteousness have been moving us the last 60 years or even the last 145 years. I find this opposition to crop up in discussions of current events all the time with very little comment from any quarter. > >> I find it disappointing in the extreme that people are abandoning >> morality, ethics, and the rule of law in favor of excusing the >> kinds >> of things that they know are absolutely wrong. "It happens all the >> time" arguments don't impress me. > > I certainly wasn't making excuses for things I consider wrong. Unless my newsreader is messing up attributions, I thought I was commenting on Ronns! remarks. (Sadly out of place I was) >To me > questions about whether something is one of the worst threats ever > to > our constitutional rights are different from questions concerning > whether something is right or wrong. I do consider how we handle > normal prisoners a greater moral outrage than how we handled > Gitmo....and I'm prepared to argue why. One of the things that is done with regularity at Gitmo (according to one our Congresspersons who was *allowed* to visit there), is tying a prisoner down till he defecates and urinates on himself and then leaving him there for 18 - 24 hours. This is supposed to deliver intelligence to our Mil/Int services. But I see no valid comparisons between the abuses of our penal system and the way political prisoners are handled at Gitmo and the other places where Americans are paid to leave their humanity at the door. ********************* Dear Mr Bush, Anyone who builds a torture chamber or employs torturers, is most assuredly going to burn in hell for eternity. There are no subclauses or exceptions that will give you an out. God will not care about your appeals to reason. Rather, he will let you burn in the company of the lawyers and televangelists that advised you to commit unchristian acts upon your brothers and sisters. Yes, God will forgive you, but you will burn just the same. Your best bet is to pray to Satan for mercy, since God's judgement is final. Luv, rob ********************** >But, I never mean to imply > that, because I can show that that A is worse than B, that B > becomes > acceptable. > I agree that A is bad, very bad, but I doubt you can make such an argument succeed if one keeps the argument contemporaneous. xponent Wild Hair Day Maru rob _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
