Originally Posted by Ken Howell
Originally Posted by Barak
� the injuries and deaths of the bystanders are more tragic than the injuries and deaths of the politicians. �

That in itself relegates the politicians to the status of subhumans and directly implies that they're less entitled to the same God-given rights as humans � which therefore implies that anyone who "violates" any of those rights is justified in doing so.

No, I think you're making too big a leap there. A horse, for example, is pretty uncontroversially subhuman, but that doesn't imply that anyone who kills a horse is justified in doing so. There are good reasons to kill a horse and bad reasons to kill a horse, and in general somebody who kills a horse for a bad reason should expect hard times ahead.

Nevertheless, a situation where a human dies and a horse survives is more tragic than a situation where a horse dies and a human survives.

As to whether politicians are subhuman or not...it's an interesting question. If they are simply fundamentally incapable of restraining themselves, then they don't bear any moral responsibility for the death and devastation they cause, but they're also pretty undeniably subhuman.

On the other hand, if they're fully human, it means that they've chosen to commit the crimes they've committed, when they could have made different choices instead, and are therefore fully responsible for them.

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An odd way, indeed, to love your neighbor as yourself.

I'll admit that it'd be awfully difficult for me to love a politician. Much easier to love an armed robber.

Say--if it works out that they're subhuman, does that mean they don't count as neighbors?


"But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain--that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case, it is unfit to exist." --Lysander Spooner, 1867