Microbet, you miss my point on multiple levels as you work to take down your straw man. One kiddy fiddler fiddling with kiddies is a problem. However, when that guy is on the state Supreme Court and issues orders that gays cannot marry (because god's law is higher), you move from a society that has kiddy fiddlers to one where we live under an irrational order with arbitrary rules run by morons. Fiddling with kiddies does not prevent minorities from voting, refusing to apply the voting rights act does. One is a problem, and the other is a structural defect that threatens to bring down the entire system.

The law is always subject to reason and argument and development with our evolving understanding of reality and the good--in fact, the explicit (minority) position of conservative jurists is that law should not be subject to the dictates of reason or our evolving understanding of reality. The law is words, and those words are sacred and must be followed. Well, as anyone who knows anything about words, or reasoning, or language knows, it is inherently ambiguous--words are interpreted in a given context which provides much greater content to the meaning of words or language generally than the words themselves. This is one reason why many words have 20 or more dictionary "definitions."

One thing conservative jurists have trouble doing is "explaining" seminal legal decisions, good and bad, which everyone agrees were correctly or incorrectly decided. E.g., Dread Scott or Brown vs. Board. If the law is merely the law, there is no basis for it to evolve, but the law isn't just the law. It may be "conservative," as it must be, but there's always room to argue what is right and just, and sometimes what is right and just is manifest, and the motives of those opposing it so transparent, that 1 or 3 or 9 reasonably intelligent and informed people agree that that is what the law must be, because for it to be otherwise would be unacceptable. You see, unlike statutes passed by Congress, legal decisions must be written out and justified, and the conclusions defended, by reason and argument. In fact, some legal opinions take the form of, sure Congress said X, but that would be too stupid to accept, so we'll go with interpretation Y. "The Consitution is not a suicide pact" is not a legal maxim, it is a counter-argument against literalists.

There's a reason much of the most significant social progress in the last 100 years have gone through the courts and not through the legislature.

Anyway, much more can be said, and the law is very often unjust, because there is a tension between "simple", bright-line rules and what would ideally apply in ad hoc contexts where the agents and motives and resources on all sides are known [there is a common legal saying, "hard cases make bad law."], not to mention efforts to distort and twist the purpose of law in new contexts, whether technological change or the arms race between taxation and attempting to avoid taxation (e.g., storing assets in offshore tax havens), but if you want a decent world with the ability to make plans and investments and undertake projects that are not subject to arbitrariness and caprice, and that is also congnizent of developing uhnderstanding of reality, then law is your friend, whether you know it or not.

This reminds me of BoredSocial's point in that other thread, that he voted for Obama even though Obama never did anything for him. No, Obama did a ton for him, and for everyone else. He did exactly what he was supposed to do, keep American developing toward a more perfect union by making responsible decisions and putting responsible people in positions where they would exercise power responsibly. The mere existence of Trump in power is manifest proof of the thousands of things Obama did for everyone, but most people simply lack the understanding to appreciate it.

I’ve been checking pornhub every day

Simplicitus,

The bolded part of your post was not a strawman I invented. If you want to rephrase that part as it's more dangerous to more people that a judge uses the bible instead of the laws is more dangerous to more people than his being a pedophile, instead of saying that it's as least as bad a pedophelia, then feel free. It still may not be true, but there's a difference. And one judge doesn't change the methods of interpreting law in the country, but one pedophile judge does abuse children.

As for the rest, the law is sometimes my friend and sometimes my enemy. Total disregard for the law is dangerous, but so is reverence for it.

Must be more than the pee tapes imo. Would that even matter really?

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

I more or less agree with you here, but you're fighting a losing battle.

It's just very uncomfortable for people to admit that anything is worse the molestation of a child. For example, even if on an intellectual level someone realizes that oppressing millions of people is worse than a single instance of molestation, no one is going to say "Yeah, I guess I'd overlook that molestation in order to relieve all of that oppression".

You will probably have more luck in SMP. But not much more. It's just the way people are wired.

Is that meant to be agreeing with me or as a sarcastic rebuke? Because it reads like the former, but I think it's the latter.

Apparently electing a Democrat to the Senate is worse than molesting a child for at least a plurality of folks in Alabama.

Can you explain what the critical difference is between the two statements is? It seems like you think it's fairly significant.

1. A is more dangerous to more people than B
2. A is at least as bad as B

Doesn't statement 1 generally imply statement 2?

No, that's not it. I'm perfectly willing to say that something like Trump's twitter war with KJU may be worse than raping a child. Bill Clinton's sanctions on Iraq and Obama's bombing of Libya may also have been worse. Simplicitus' claim (maybe not his intended claim) was that this one judge's actions which had him removed from office were worse than pedophelia, not that judges actually leading USA down a path of Biblical Law is worse than pedophelia.

1. His being a pedophile is not the same as pedophelia in general.

2. Yeah, badness is a moral judgement of his actions and not necessarily the same as danger. Someone could be extremely dangerous without being immoral even. Forgetting that Trump is also a horrible person, his being an idiot is far more dangerous to the world than one person being a pedophile. But, I guess this is semantics if you want to define bad based on outcome.

Well, first of all, I guess I was really referring to most posters here.

Secondly, if you were to ask any of them the question, they would say obviously child molester is worse than and Dem. The Moore voters are going with one of two justifications

1. Accuser is lying
2. She was 14, which is not really a child despite what the law may say

So they would claim that Moore vs Jones is not really a child molester vs Dem choice.

I'm pretty sure if Moore admitted that he had sex with a six year old (which avoids the above two justifications), Jones would be the lock. At least I hope so. It's possible I'm underestimating how deplorable they are.

However, even if they would vote on a secret ballot for the six-year-old-molesting-Moore over Jones, because they think Jones is an even greater evil, they are never going to say or post that.

It's neither, it's an invitation to realism. To twist Churchill, laws are the worst system of organization, except all the others.

I realize you have some issue with law x,y, and z (and, for you, probably r, s, and t as well). The only way to change them is to argue for laws, a, b, and c instead, which are still laws.

You don't get to opt out while still pretending that organized society where brute force is not the ultimate arbiter is a good thing. I'm open to arguing many/most laws are unjust and founded on faulty reasoning, etc, but there is no get out of jail free card. We're living in the cave doing what we can with what we have.

And note that any "radical" rewriting of laws in accord with some advanced or ideal understanding of human beings and society has, more often than not, led to almost inconceivable misery.

I interpreted him as saying the bolded, which I guess is the source of the problem.

Also, to me your occasional pot shots at the law often seem like judge-judy or Law and Order type griping. Are there ****ty lawyers who scam people and overcharge and overbill? Sure, maybe even most of them. I criticize lawyers all the time--I have to deal with them. But I think you would be surprised at the standard level of practice, which is above that you see from the type of lawyers Trump hires (which is likely so poor because they seem to follow his clueless instructions)

I haven't read the last couple posts yet, but I want to very clearly say that I am not accusing simplicitus of being ok with pedophelia in any way. I'm offended by his attitude towards the law.

That's not it at all. Although I think the law attracts more than its share of mercenary and immoral people it's certainly not all of them. My brother is a judge, I have two cousins who are environmental laywers, an aunt who is a lawyer and a relatively close friend who is an immigration attorney. None of them are scummy. That's in regard to the scamming people part anyway. The Law and Order part, that gets closer to the issue and touches most of the attorneys I know, especially my brother.

edit: by "Law and Order" I didn't mean the show, although now I think that's what you meant. That damn DA from the show, Jack McCoy, oh how I hate him.

That may well be the case.

That Trump is perfectly at home with the insane mass murderers should make us pause.

You don't "opt out", you selectively opt out. You take into consideration the value that law has for society and you respect that for what it's worth. When law is unjust enough, and you don't have the power to change it, you disobey. Like the Underground Railroad. Perhaps like employing undocumented workers right now. Perhaps a fake marriage to a Syrian refugee. Nullifying on a jury when it's someone's third strike for a minor crime. Sometimes just following laws is immoral and disobeying them doesn't lead to everyone living in caves settling disputes with clubs. Just sometimes. Not all the time, but not never either.

And the idea that without formal law all disputes are settled by violence is bad anthropology.

Everyone who this should make pause is already paused for myriad reasons.

And it's not going to do anything for those who aren't.

I've literally never seen Trump laugh. What a spot to pick.

We really didn't need Trump taking lessons from someone who goes harder to the paint than him.

Something for OurHouse, in the event of his return.

One Year After Trump’s Election, Revisiting “Autocracy: Rules for Survival”

By Masha Gessen November 8, 2017

https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-c...s-for-survival