Ideological Criminals

[ballaw hare]

Re: Ideological Criminals

All I was implying is that western-style society supports open democracy...

Um...no. No country in the "west" has an open democracy.

[dore]

Re: Ideological Criminals

Do you have the freedom to do whatever you want without informing government authorities at all times? Then you're in an open society. Can you vote for political leaders? Then you're in a democracy.

Don't call me out on a technicality when you know perfectly well what I mean.

[ballaw hare]

Re: Ideological Criminals

Do you have the freedom to do whatever you want without informing government authorities at all times? Then you're in an open society. Can you vote for political leaders? Then you're in a democracy.

Don't call me out on a technicality when you know perfectly well what I mean.

Well my government (u.s.) has the ability to tap my phones or walk into my house anytime they want since the twin towers fell. Second off I can't vote for my leaders on the large scale. The representatives from each state vote for the president, hence why bush won against gore way back when.

[tsugomaru]

Re: Ideological Criminals

Kilroy, I meant to write something about that a long time ago, but then I realized that the thread was about ideological criminals so I decided not to mention anything about it. I'm pretty sure they meant dealing with the criminals, not the "heroes".

~Tsugomaru

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Ideological Criminals

kilroy: The OP stated that this was about stopping criminals. I can, however, see that if we were to stop ideological criminals outright, then we would probably also stop the good ideologists as well. And freedom.

Well, MLK and Ghandi both did illegal things. Consequently, they were technically criminals, and they also went to jail. Neither of them had a problem with that, strangely. If you want to understand it better I would suggest you read Civil Disobedience by Thoreau. It's public domain so you should be able to find it online. I think there's more to it than that, but it should be a good start.

Tsugomaru: The heroes are, formally, criminals, so the two things aren't exclusive. We consider them heroes because we agree with either their ends, or their ends in conjunction with their methods (in other words society considers a pacifistic civil rights activist a hero, or even a violent civil rights activist, on occasion but it doesn't tend to think of pacifistic anarchists as heroes). We agree with their ends or their methods because we have (hopefully) thought about them. We should extend this same courtesy to anyone we evaluate. Civil rights is an relatively easy issue to understand in comparison to some criminal motivations, but that shouldn't stop us from doing things the right way.

The best way to stop ideologists from doing rash, harmful things, is through discussion. Things like forums. Furthermore, teaching critical thinking and open mindedness are crucial in order for discussion to be of use.

Yes, good point.

And then you need a layer or morals upon which should rest the base of always trying benefit people.

I'm not sure about this. Deterrence frequently substitutes for morality in the form of legal sanctions and even simple normative pressure. There are also developed moral systems which evaluate moral character by a standard other than utility.

Even a sociopath who has no empathy can logically understand that other people have feelings, needs, and desires too, even if they themselves don't feel bad or good when they hurt/help people. [...]
If that person can do that, then a sociopath, who has no empathy for other people, can also do that.

Yes, good point. I suspect the problem would be giving them a reason to do so. It seems the label of sociopathy is applied most often to people who have committed actual crimes. Given that I'm not sure I see the substance of the label. I honestly just see a sociopath as a person who has not been persuaded to act in accordance with prevailing social and legal norms. There may be any number of reasons for this, clearly, including an unsound mind which is incapable of discerning valid arguments, but as the label is handed out currently I think it a bit presumptuous. I would put Ghandi, MLK, Malcolm X, John Brown (the abolitionist), and Ted Kaczynski in the same group. They were all ideological criminals. Some were violent, others weren't, some had ideologies we consider respectable, others didn't.

Actually, now that I think about it, all criminals have to be, by definition, ideological criminals. Everyone has some motivation for their actions, even if it's very poorly developed. The loftiness of it seems insignificant. So all criminals are people who haven't been persuaded to act in accordance with social customs and laws. Some of them haven't been persuaded because they've never been exposed to critical thinking, or to specific arguments, some because their minds are unsound, some because they're actually correct about some social convention or law being wrong.

A reasonable person should sort these out carefully, looking at their ideas rather than trying to make inferences based purely on their actions, because as we have seen a murderer might be an abolitionist or an anarcho-primitivist. Understanding how sane their actions were is a matter of understanding how reasonable their underlying notions are in relation to the persons exposure to different ideas and arguments, and the corresponding reasonableness/correctness of those.

Obviously I'm a bit biased, since I think argument is either the solution to everything or the road to the solution, but I would honestly like to exchange some criticism with actual psychologists on this matter, if I could ever find any willing to argue or even admit their arguments are falsifiable. The second is pretty LOL, but tragically people seem to not understand that unfalsifiability is a bad thing, it seems.

Oh hey, my 666th post. That's kind of perverted. Oh well, have a youtube video

[MDMAngel]

Re: Ideological Criminals

To me, this is one of those questions you can not answer, fool-proof.

Even the best idea has its flaws, so I don't think there's a moral way (in modern terms) to stop this 'thing'.

Anyways, there's not a best way to handle this type of situation.

[AquaTeen]

Re: Ideological Criminals

This coming from a lawyer-in-training's standpoint the best way to describe this is say a child has a parent that is terminally ill and is suffering the child may kill that parent to end the suffering that the parent is endeavoring. So that would be considered an ideological crime. Best way to deal with crimes such as my hypothetical is to just let them go because they only wanted their parent to die with dignity and they basically did. So the child was punished enough by killing the parent they shouldn't have to endeavor the pain of having to go to jail just because they did something they felt was morally right just to stop the pain and suffering of a sick and dying parent.

[devonin]

Re: Ideological Criminals

Unfortunately, you run into some problems. Where do you set an objective legal standard to determine what is or is not "A crime that we'll let go, because"?

What that person did is either murder or assisting suicide depending on how they did it, and that's illegal, pretty highly illegal too. So you're suggesting, as a "lawyer-in-training" that someone who does something THEY feel is morally right should be allowed to commit crimes?

What if I think it's morally right to steal bread from a big chain grocery store because I'm poor and my children are starving? Is that something that should be allowed? If so, how poor do I have to be and how starving do my children have to be, before I qualify to be allowed to steal without punishment?

[AquaTeen]

Re: Ideological Criminals

Unfortunately, you run into some problems. Where do you set an objective legal standard to determine what is or is not "A crime that we'll let go, because"?

What that person did is either murder or assisting suicide depending on how they did it, and that's illegal, pretty highly illegal too. So you're suggesting, as a "lawyer-in-training" that someone who does something THEY feel is morally right should be allowed to commit crimes?

What if I think it's morally right to steal bread from a big chain grocery store because I'm poor and my children are starving? Is that something that should be allowed? If so, how poor do I have to be and how starving do my children have to be, before I qualify to be allowed to steal without punishment?

I would say to qualify for it to be right to commit a crime because it's morally right is when the parent is terminally ill with a week to live or in your hypothetical you should be living in an environment that is filled with poverty (basically the slums). That was a great question if I may say so.

[devonin]

Re: Ideological Criminals

Okay, and what is the objective legal definition of "filled with poverty" Do you have a property value figure? A monthly income figure? If we're talking legal defenses in a court of law, these things need to be very clear.

If my defense is "I should be allowed to have stolen, because I'm very poor" there needs to be a strict border between "poor enough" and "not poor enough"