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Old 06-09-2009, 10:42 PM   #15
chumdawg
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Quote:
Originally Posted by alexamenos View Post
Yes, you think it's a fact that blacks have a higher propensity to commit crimes than white folks. I don't accept this as a fact...

....except by definition as I stated in my very first post.....and when I say, 'by definition', I mean in the "Golden Rule" sense of how we define crime in our society (those with the gold make the rules). Paraphrasing one long since dead dude....'the laws are applied equally to the rich and poor alike, the poor cannot sleep on park benches or beg for bread and neither can the rich.'

In the case of sleeping on park benches and begging for bread, the poor unquestionably commit more crimes from a positivist point of view. That is not a fact I would argue except to say that it is pedantic and useless trivia. (I'm more of a natural law guy than a legal positivist guy, as you're no doubt aware)

So when I see the question "why do black people commit so many crimes compared to white people?", I see the implicit acceptance of a legal positivist world view buried in the premise of the question....accordingly I'm challenging the 'fact' that black people commit more crimes by challenging this implicit premise.

Which is to say, what if we defined 'crime' not as something which group 'a' passes judgment upon group 'b', but intead as an act of aggression (force or the threat of force) by any person or groups of people?

I don't know what the stats would look like but I suspect we wouldn't see quite the disparity.

anyhoo, we have different world views, and if you can't do better than whip my ass with a bunch orthodox, establishment liberal bromides than just leave it be.
You do quite a nice job of arguing your anarchist rhetoric, and sometimes it even does give one pause for thought. Trouble is, though, we've been getting by--and getting by quite well, even in Hobbes' and Locke's time--with whatever "gold standard" you would wish to rail against.

At some point, Alexa, you gotta have standards. I know, I know...it is intellectually more stimulating not to...to think that good and bad are just ephemeral constructs. But when it gets to governance--which I KNOW you hate--at some point the rubber meets the road.

Admittedly, it's not something that everyone has the stomach for.
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