Chad Perrin wrote:
Ray Saintonge wrote:
Chad Perrin wrote:
Apparently, to you, killing someone for being a Jew is more wrong than killing someone for speaking out of turn. To me, it's equivalent in either case, because in both cases it is murder.
The idea of "hate crimes" is a fairly recent one. This would mete out punishment according to the intentions of the person doing the killing. If a "hate crime" deserves harsher punishment, then a "love crime" such as euthanasia clearly deserves more lenient treatment.
If this was the proper venue and email thread for that discussion, I'd make some well-supported ethical arguments against separating "hate crime" from similarly malevolent crime. Since it's not, though, I'm just noting that I take issue with that division of crime types.
This doesn't in any way mean I think anyone should be more lenient on "hate crimes": only that non-"hate" crimes should not be held to a different standard.
Ultimately we agree. A person killed in a hate crime is no more or less dead than one killed in the course of a bank robbery.
The lack of malevolence is a strong argument in favour of decriminalizing euthanasia.
And also, if we are to begin considering "indirect deaths", well, the US is responsible for quite a lot "indirectly".
Let's not start with the circumstantial ad hominem comparisons. It would be nice if you'd retract that statement.
I see nothing "ad hominem" in that general statement. No specific individual is being attacked.
circumstantial ad hominem (as distinct from the more commonly recognized argumentum ad hominem): the logically fallacious use, as an argument, of unflattering comparisons between disreputable or otherwise disliked figures with other participants in a debate, often achieved by implication rather than explicit statements
All "ad hominem" means is "to the person", in essence. An "argumentum ad hominem" or "ad hominem argument" is an argument that references the person, rather than the opposing argument. A "circumstantial ad hominem" is an implication of the person circumstantially with some subject of discourse, in this case mass-murdering tyrannical regimes.
The reference to the US had no value in proving the repugnance of the swastika in relation to other symbols, though it was an effective implication of unflattering comparisons of American participants in the debate to certain widely-loathed 20th century tyrants and their governments.
While I can readily recognize that there is such a phenomenon as "circumstantial ad hominem", I still can't see how it applies to the present circumstances. While the disreputable figures may have been very well identified, it strains the imagination to attempt to identify which participants were being thus compared. Any participant who so imagines himself to be the subject of such comparisons by virtue of that simple statement could very well be the victim of his own paranoid imagination.
The reference to the US may reflect upon the leadership of the US, whose stars and stripes are viewed by some with equal repugnance. But to the best of my knowledge the members of that leadership are not participants in our debate, and none of us living outside of the United States has suggested that our American participants should be held responsible for the excesses of their government.
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