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Current Events » in reply to So What Now Department

Torture & Death Taxes Questionable
Mark Eby — (archived)

I think most people have a fundamental affinity for the idea that what you accumulate ought to be yours to pass on as you see fit. I felt strongly that way for a long time. It was only after encountering many people who grew up wealthy and witnessing how much concentrated wealth poisons our society that I felt otherwise. There are many poor who don't accept responsibility for their condition through choices of drug use or terminating education who just want whatever they can get and are in favor of any means to transfer money to them so it's easy for the wealthy to point to that attitude as an issue of fairness, but the fairness issue is really on the other end. What do we need to do to assure Our society is as much a meritocracy as it can be? I think exempting everything but multimillion dollar states is a reasonable balancing point.

I think a lot of people have a problem with torture for good reason. We don't want it to happen to our soldiers. I look at it this way If I can stay up 36 hours voluntarilly and go without food for 24 hours voluntarily then I could stand it if those same deprivations were applied involuntarily to break my will without any lasting our permanent damage. The word torture should not be applied loosely as it lessons its effectiveness and people's level of revulsion. Stressing people through lack of sleep, stress positions, and short term deprivation of food or water is a whole different level of stress than endured by our soldiers in Vietnam and many prisoners in the Middle East. These two sets of tactics should not be lumped together.

I think the Geneva conventions don't legally apply to the terrorists since there is no nation to answer for their conduct and they don't abide by the conventions. However, that said just because it would be legal not to follow the Geneva conventions with terrorists doesn't automatically make it the right or just thing to ignore them. It's a tough call that should have been discussed with input from all branches of government and probably the public at large not arbitrarily decided by a small group.

I could live with most of the rest, but I think there are a few more many would have issues with.

Regards.
Mark

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