more taking responsibility

In my last post I spoke about the need to take responsibility for your actions, especially when it comes to changing the law.

You could also look at this from a political viewpoint as well.

Suppose the citizens of Clarendonvale elected to government a party that had as it's stated aims the complete destruction of the city of Hobart, including the death of all it's residents and the assimilation of it's land area into a state that incorporated bogans and housing commission residents from all over Tasmania, no matter where they lived. This would include areas that the bogans had resided in years before but hadn't called home for a long time, potentially even two or three generations.

Suppose the new government of Clarendonvale (let us call the party Bacon-us) than started attacking the people of Hobart. They might start with suicide drivers, VK commodores with one door the wrong colour, with 10 passengers and a drunk driver travelling the streets at high speed, doing burnouts and looking for a way to cause the most mayhem.

Than, once Bacon-us got more sophisticated they might start erecting giant catapaults and firing them into the city, using the trash accreted on the front yards of their resident's houses as ammunition.

Do you imagine after a little bit of this the people of Hobart might be a bit over it? Do you imagine that the police might come round and arrest a few people, bust a few heads and break a few catapaults? And than, because this always happens, the people of Clarendonvale would complain about how they're being victimised by police and it's not their fault they have no money and there's nothing for their kids to do because there's no jobs and they don't have a skate park.

The people of Gaza voted for a political party than has as it's principle aim the destruction of the state of Israel, the death of all the world's Jews and the consolidation of Israel's territory into a greater Islamic entity, a new Caliphate.

They backed this up by launching attacks designed to kill Jews and weaken the state of Israel.

Now they're not happy because the party they voted for is doing what they said they would and Israel has responded? Admittedly, Hamas did get elected on a platform of getting rid of corruption and improving welfare, but always with the over-riding policy of killing Jews, wherever they might be found.

Take responsibility for your actions. You voted for the Jew killing, now that the Jews are coming around trying to stop it get out there and fight them instead of running away like a little bitch.

It doesn't take a genius to work out that this was going to happen eventually.

It's very easy to have the courage to vote for the Jew killing, but when it comes down to it, unless you're going to back up your words with actions than your opinion has less validity.

And when it comes to that, you have to respect Hamas. They might be a bunch of murderous fanatics, but at least they say what they think. They're not saying one thing and doing another, or saying one thing in Arabic and another in English, like most of the Arab states. They know what they want and they say it loud and proud.

Like them? No. Agree with them? Never. Respect them? Yes, I respect them, albeit grudgingly.

cheers

Harry

The Great Debaters

Just finished watching a Denzel Washington movie called The Great Debaters. I'd never heard of it either, but I bought it for a buck fifty in Thailand, so it would have had to be pretty poor not to be worth that much!


http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427309/


Turns out it was actually a pretty interesting movie, about a debate team from a negro university in Texas in the thirties and their experiences.

In the final debate, one of the team pulls out a quote from Thomas Aquinas, about an "unjust law being no law at all".


My opponent says nothing that erodes the rule of law can be moral. But there is no rule of law in the Jim Crow south. Not when Negroes are denied housing. Turned away from schools, hospitals. And not when we are lynched. St Augustine said, "An unjust law in no law at all.' Which means I have a right, even a duty to resist. With violence or civil disobedience. You should pray I choose the latter.


This is similar to the Martin Luther King quote, which was also based on Aquinas, that there are "just laws, and unjust laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws, but conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws."


We seem to get a lot of people in our modern world who are very unhappy about things, although they maybe haven't thought the finer details through of what makes an unjust law. I'm thinking the kinds of anarchists, anti-globalisationists, protectionists, etc who violently protest at any event that features international leaders.


That's all well and good, if you believe that something is unjust than you should stand up and try and change things. However, if you do that you should be prepared to accept the consequences, because that is how civil disobedience works. The reason that nobody takes the anti-globalisation protestors and their ilk seriously is that don't have the courage of their convictions, they hide behind anonymity, they run away from their battles, they try to avoid the consequences of their actions.

That's my thought for the day.


Harry