I actually agree with you more than I’m letting on. I guess it’s just hard sometimes. I still don’t think this guy deserves $215K.
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WBC abused free speech laws to make money. This guy did the same.
“Keep up the good work Mr. Phelps!”
While he was completely within his legal rights, he is still a terrible person who is degrading the value of the concept of free speech for his personal gain.
If he had a real point to wearing a KKK hood to a public meeting I might change my mind, but I’m pretty sure he was just trolling for a chance to sue the city.
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WBC abused free speech laws to make money. This guy did the same.
Keep up the good work Mr. Phelps!
The people who threatened, pushed and harassed the WBC people are solely responsible for WBC making money. As in this case the City Council is totally responsible for violating his free speech protections for which they had to pay out because they knew they screwed up.
Did you see the video of Hunt in the full KKK Regalia at the Police Commissioners meeting? He showed up in full dress, spoke his allotted 2 mins, directly addressing the Police Chief etc. No one made the slightest big deal out of his costume. Totally ignored it. The police commission basically suffered through his 2 mins of ranting and then he was done and gone, no problem. If the council had done the same they would have saved themselves the $200K+ It is not Hunt’s fault they didn’t.
If he had a real point to wearing a KKK hood to a public meeting I might change my mind, but I’m pretty sure he was just driving trollies for a chance to sue the city.
I am just as sure as you he was trying to be as shocking as possible to draw as much attention to himself and his complaints as possible and it seems to have worked.
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Only under a severely constrained and synthetic concept of “responsibility” that you have invented just now to shore up your argument.
If Hunt hadn’t pulled his stunt they wouldn’t have. His actions caused a reaction. You disagree with the reaction. I do too. But I also disagree with the initial action. It is possible to hold both parties responsible for their respective parts. Responsibility isn’t a binary thing. (Unless you invent a constrained and synthetic concept of binary responsibility for the sake of shoring up your argument.)
Did it? Are we talking about his complaints? Or are we talking about the taxpayer money he swindled by abusing free speech rights?
Remember, it cuts both ways. Just because the government cannot curb his free speech doesn’t mean private citizens aren’t free to do so. We can surround his shop and protest. We can use horrible words to refer to him. We can follow him around in public calling him whatever we choose. We just can’t try to use the law to limit his speech unless it presents
an immediate threat to the safety of others.
I totally agree, we are free to do all of that right up until the point a court finds it harassing and/or threatening, but your point remains, we are free to disagree and express that disagreement vehemently.
If Hunt hadn’t pulled his stunt they wouldn’t have. His actions caused a reaction. You disagree with the reaction. I do too. But I also disagree with the initial action. It is possible to hold both parties responsible for their respective parts. Responsibility isn’t a binary thing. (Unless you invent a constrained and synthetic concept of binary responsibility for the sake of shoring up your argument.)
I have to strongly disagree. I am always responsible for my own actions no matter what I perceive as provocation. Your argument is very close, if not exactly the same as suggesting a victim of theft is responsible for being robbed because they owned the wrong item or walked down the wrong street. That is never the case, they should not have been robbed under any circumstances and the thief is responsible for their actions.
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[quote=“TacoChucks, post:26, topic:34336”]
I have to strongly disagree. I am always responsible for my own actions no matter what I perceive as provocation. [/quote]
Then Hunt and WBC are indeed responsible for their actions. As we can reasonably infer that they were attempting to provoke the reactions they received then we can indeed hold them responsible for those provocations.
But beyond that, if you really think this then you have never truly been provoked. Human beings are animals and, as such, they are largely driven by emotion. What we like to think of as “free will” is not absolute (absolute free will is a logical absurdity). Otherwise, there would be no such thing as a “crime of passion”.
My argument is, in fact, nothing like that. I don’t appreciate the strawmanning.
If someone is robbed of $30,000 because they got mugged then my argument does not imply they are responsible for getting mugged. It implies they are responsible for carrying $30,000 around with them. The difference is fairly obvious, right?
Of course, carrying around $30,000 isn’t actually immoral (though it is pretty stupid). Whereas picketing funerals with the intent of suing the bereaved seems to me to be immoral.
I find nothing to cheer about in people abusing the right of free speech for their own gain. They are squandering the social trust we rely on to keep society running. This does not mean they aren’t legally entitled to what they’re doing. It just means they’re not morally entitled to what they’re doing.
If you disagree, please let me know the next time one of your loved ones dies so I can crash the funeral.
You are all over the map with trying to argue your point as some sort of consistent principle.
Immoral, not immoral, who cares, I am responsible for my actions, it actually is binary. There is no difference from my example of your example. I have heard this “people can’t control their emotions” BS before, usually about a different crime than robbery.
What happens if I walk down a street well known for having a high crime rate, waving 30K cash around so everyone knows I have it, at night, by myself. Now, I am robbed. Am I in anyway responsible for the actions of the criminal who robbed me? Should they get a lighter sentence because of my actions?
And since you would come and crash a funeral of someone close to me just for fun or to prove a point is pretty informative.
I’ve been perfectly consistent in my argument right through. If you are going to insist otherwise, please be specific. I don’t feel like guessing at your meaning.
These are two separate thoughts. Most people concede that questions of morality vs. immorality actually are important; i.e. the vast majority of human beings “care”.
At this point, I’m going to ask you to define “responsible” in the sense that you are using it. I think you are playing semantic games to avoid conceding anything.
No, and nothing I’ve said implies that you are responsible for getting robbed or that the robber should get a lighter sentence. Once again, please stop strawmanning my arguments. If you are unclear about something I am saying please ask for clarification instead.
While you would not be responsible for getting robbed, you would be responsible for your substantial financial loss. If you had been carrying $200 instead of $30,000 you would have saved yourself from losing $29,800. You are responsible for your actions including carrying your life savings around with you. You are not responsible for losing them but you are responsible for taking the risk you took in carrying your life savings around with you. I don’t think this is nearly so difficult a concept as you are making it.
The WBC deserves praise for doing it but I deserve scorn for doing the same exact thing? How does that follow? I think you’re being inconsistent. Either we both deserve praise or we both deserve scorn. If that is not the case I’d like to know why.
Besides that, if you are offended by someone crashing a loved one’s funeral then that reaction would (according to your own reasoning) be entirely your own responsibility and not the responsibility of the funeral crasher. It seems to me that according to your own reasoning there is no possible cause for criticizing someone who does something provocative, only for criticizing someone who is provoked.
Nobody said that the WBC deserved praise for what they did, just that the city governments who violated their rights deserved to be sued for violating them. The WBC were usually smart enough to find a level of offensiveness that would anger people enough to violate their rights but not enough to get themselves shot or beaten up by bikers, and if enough towns in a row didn’t try to arrest them, they’d find something more offensive to say.
The actual KKK has done this kind of thing as well, after most of their terrorist activities had been shut down in most places. A friend of mine was on a city council in Simi Valley, north of LA, and some Klan group from somewhere else applied for a permit to march. They were really disappointed that they got the permit and the police kept anybody from attacking them, and they didn’t get to sue the town.
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[quote=“TacoChucks, post:28, topic:34336”]
What happens if I walk down a street well known for having a high crime rate, waving 30K cash around so everyone knows I have it, at night, by myself. Now, I am robbed. Am I in anyway responsible for the actions of the criminal who robbed me?[/quote]
You are partly responsible for losing your $30K since your actions — foreseeably to any reasonable person — triggered the result, but the mugger is also 100% responsible for robbing you. Responsibility is not a pie and can’t always be divided up like one.
No.
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It’s probably a result of years of people asking questions such as ‘has anyone seen Mike Hunt?’ that has driven this poor man to these questionable acts. Innocent people like Hugh Jarse, Jenny Taylor, Seymour Butts and Mike Hunt have suffered far too many insensitive jokes.
(sorry, but I didn’t have the time to start a new account under the name of Wayne Kerr)
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