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Originally Posted by TSGracchus
This does not address Norrin's point. He was making a moral statement; you are shifting ground into a legal one.
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Dead. Wrong. Both are 'guilt' issues and issues of responsibility. if you disagree with me, just say it.
No, if you commit murder a police officer isn't going to arrest everyone in your house. However, a preacher might suggest that those around you were a bad influence, or that they should have stopped you or talked you out of it. And he would have a point.
The law must stop short, for practical reasons of the public good, from moral exactitude. But that doesn't mean we must do so. We are not the law.[/quote] Fair point. But in the United Sates, we are in fact the law, as the laws are supposed to reflect our beliefs and morals.
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Originally Posted by TSGracchus
W/r/t government atrocities, as I said before, no government can exist without public support, and that's true whether or not the public support is articulated and expressed through the convenient medium of elections.
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You fail to consider the possibility that 'public support' can be acquired through violence, terrorism, and intimidation and can be acquired against the will of the people.
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Originally Posted by TSGracchus
That makes the people responsible, to a degree, for what the government does. Only if the government acts in complete secrecy is this not true, and even then, the people are still responsible for supporting a government with the propensity to do such things.
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But the government could not commit secret atrocities if it did not have the 'consent of the governed' according to your idealistic and dreamy logic.
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Originally Posted by TSGracchus
For example, even if the German people didn't know about the Holocaust, they certainly knew about Krystalnacht, the Nuremberg laws, and the harsh antisemitism of the Nazi regime, and they were responsible for supporting a government with that kind of propensity.
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Do you only speak about 'public support' in the most general and vague senses in order to make your argument. Why are you failing to address the issue of those who did not welcome Hitler as Furher, but could do nothing about it?