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Title: In a Cop Culture, the Bill of Rights Doesn’t Amount to Much
Source: The Rutherford Institute
URL Source: https://www.lewrockwell.com/2015/05 ... w-whitehead/its-a-cop-culture/
Published: May 6, 2015
Author: John W. Whitehead
Post Date: 2015-05-06 08:20:13 by Ada
Keywords: None
Views: 147
Comments: 20

Police officers are more likely to be struck by lightning than be held financially accountable for their actions.—Law professor Joanna C. Schwartz (paraphrased)

“In a democratic society,” observed Oakland police chief Sean Whent, “people have a say in how they are policed.”

Unfortunately, if you can be kicked, punched, tasered, shot, intimidated, harassed, stripped, searched, brutalized, terrorized, wrongfully arrested, and even killed by a police officer, and that officer is never held accountable for violating your rights and his oath of office to serve and protect, never forced to make amends, never told that what he did was wrong, and never made to change his modus operandi, then you don’t live in a constitutional republic.

You live in a police state.

It doesn’t even matter that “crime is at historic lows and most cities are safer than they have been in generations, for residents and officers alike,” as the New York Times reports.

What matters is whether you’re going to make it through a police confrontation alive and with your health and freedoms intact. For a growing number of Americans, those confrontations do not end well.

As David O. Brown, the Dallas chief of police, noted: “Sometimes it seems like our young officers want to get into an athletic event with people they want to arrest. They have a ‘don’t retreat’ mentality. They feel like they’re warriors and they can’t back down when someone is running from them, no matter how minor the underlying crime is.”

Making matters worse, in the cop culture that is America today, the Bill of Rights doesn’t amount to much. Unless, that is, it’s the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBoR), which protects police officers from being subjected to the kinds of debilitating indignities heaped upon the average citizen.

Most Americans, oblivious about their own rights, aren’t even aware that police officers have their own Bill of Rights. Yet at the same time that our own protections against government abuses have been reduced to little more than historic window dressing, 14 states have already adopted LEOBoRs—written by police unions and being considered by many more states and Congress—which provides police officers accused of a crime with special due process rights and privileges not afforded to the average citizen.

In other words, the LEOBoR protects police officers from being treated as we are treated during criminal investigations: questioned unmercifully for hours on end, harassed, harangued, browbeaten, denied food, water and bathroom breaks, subjected to hostile interrogations, and left in the dark about our accusers and any charges and evidence against us.

Not only are officers given a 10-day “cooling-off period” during which they cannot be forced to make any statements about the incident, but when they are questioned, it must be “for a reasonable length of time, at a reasonable hour, by only one or two investigators (who must be fellow policemen), and with plenty of breaks for food and water.”

According to investigative journalist Eli Hager, the most common rights afforded police officers accused of wrongdoing are as follows:

If a department decides to pursue a complaint against an officer, the department must notify the officer and his union. The officer must be informed of the complainants, and their testimony against him, before he is questioned. During questioning, investigators may not harass, threaten, or promise rewards to the officer, as interrogators not infrequently do to civilian suspects. Bathroom breaks are assured during questioning. In Maryland, the officer may appeal his case to a “hearing board,” whose decision is binding, before a final decision has been made by his superiors about his discipline. The hearing board consists of three of the suspected offender’s fellow officers. In some jurisdictions, the officer may not be disciplined if more than a certain number of days (often 100) have passed since his alleged misconduct, which limits the time for investigation. Even if the officer is suspended, the department must continue to pay salary and benefits, as well as the cost of the officer’s attorney. It’s a pretty sweet deal if you can get it, I suppose: protection from the courts, immunity from wrongdoing, paid leave while you’re under investigation, and the assurance that you won’t have to spend a dime of your own money in your defense. And yet these LEOBoR epitomize everything that is wrong with America today.

Once in a while, the system appears to work on the side of justice, and police officers engaged in wrongdoing are actually charged for abusing their authority and using excessive force against American citizens.

Yet even in these instances, it’s still the American taxpayer who foots the bill.

For example, Baltimore taxpayers have paid roughly $5.7 million since 2011 over lawsuits stemming from police abuses, with an additional $5.8 million going towards legal fees. If the six Baltimore police officers charged with the death of Freddie Gray are convicted, you can rest assured it will be the Baltimore taxpayers who feel the pinch.

New York taxpayers have shelled out almost $1,130 per year per police officer (there are 34,500 officers in the NYPD) to address charges of misconduct. That translates to $38 million every year just to clean up after these so-called public servants.

Over a 10-year-period, Oakland, Calif., taxpayers were made to cough up more than $57 million (curiously enough, the same amount as the city’s deficit back in 2011) in order to settle accounts with alleged victims of police abuse.

Chicago taxpayers were asked to pay out nearly $33 million on one day alone to victims of police misconduct, with one person slated to receive $22.5 million, potentially the largest single amount settled on any one victim. The City has paid more than half a billion dollars to victims over the course of a decade. The Chicago City Council actually had to borrow $100 million just to pay off lawsuits arising over police misconduct in 2013. The city’s payout for 2014 was estimated to be in the same ballpark, especially with cases pending such as the one involving the man who was reportedly sodomized by a police officer’s gun in order to force him to “cooperate.”

Over 78% of the funds paid out by Denver taxpayers over the course of a decade arose as a result of alleged abuse or excessive use of force by the Denver police and sheriff departments. Meanwhile, taxpayers in Ferguson, Missouri, are being asked to pay $40 million in compensation—more than the city’s entire budget—for police officers treating them “‘as if they were war combatants,’ using tactics like beating, rubber bullets, pepper spray, and stun grenades, while the plaintiffs were peacefully protesting, sitting in a McDonalds, and in one case walking down the street to visit relatives.”

That’s just a small sampling of the most egregious payouts, but just about every community—large and small—feels the pinch when it comes to compensating victims who have been subjected to deadly or excessive force by police.

The ones who rarely ever feel the pinch are the officers accused or convicted of wrongdoing, “even if they are disciplined or terminated by their department, criminally prosecuted, or even imprisoned.” Indeed, a study published in the NYU Law Review reveals that 99.8% of the monies paid in settlements and judgments in police misconduct cases never come out of the officers’ own pockets, even when state laws require them to be held liable. Moreover, these officers rarely ever have to pay for their own legal defense.

For instance, law professor Joanna C. Schwartz references a case in which three Denver police officers chased and then beat a 16-year-old boy, stomping “on the boy’s back while using a fence for leverage, breaking his ribs and causing him to suffer kidney damage and a lacerated liver.” The cost to Denver taxpayers to settle the lawsuit: $885,000. The amount the officers contributed: 0.

Kathryn Johnston, 92 years old, was shot and killed during a SWAT team raid that went awry. Attempting to cover their backs, the officers falsely claimed Johnston’s home was the site of a cocaine sale and went so far as to plant marijuana in the house to support their claim. The cost to Atlanta taxpayers to settle the lawsuit: $4.9 million. The amount the officers contributed: 0.

Meanwhile, in Albuquerque, a police officer was convicted of raping a woman in his police car, in addition to sexually assaulting four other women and girls, physically abusing two additional women, and kidnapping or falsely imprisoning five men and boys. The cost to the Albuquerque taxpayers to settle the lawsuit: $1,000,000. The amount the officer contributed: 0.

Human Rights Watch notes that taxpayers actually pay three times for officers who repeatedly commit abuses: “once to cover their salaries while they commit abuses; next to pay settlements or civil jury awards against officers; and a third time through payments into police ‘defense’ funds provided by the cities.”

Still, the number of times a police officer is actually held accountable for wrongdoing while on the job is miniscule compared to the number of times cops are allowed to walk away with little more than a slap on the wrist.

A large part of the problem can be chalked up to influential police unions and laws providing for qualified immunity, not to mention these Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights laws, which allow officers to walk away without paying a dime for their wrongdoing.

Another part of the problem is rampant cronyism among government bureaucrats: those deciding whether a police officer should be immune from having to personally pay for misbehavior on the job all belong to the same system, all with a vested interest in protecting the police and their infamous code of silence: city and county attorneys, police commissioners, city councils and judges.

Most of all, what we’re dealing with is systemic corruption that protects wrongdoing and recasts it in a noble light. However, there is nothing noble about government agents who kick, punch, shoot and kill defenseless individuals. There is nothing just about police officers rendered largely immune from prosecution for wrongdoing. There is nothing democratic about the word of a government agent being given greater weight in court than that of the average citizen. And no good can come about when the average citizen has no real means of defense against a system that is weighted in favor of government bureaucrats.

So if you want a recipe for disaster, this is it: Take police cadets, train them in the ways of war, dress and equip them for battle, teach them to see the people they serve not as human beings but as suspects and enemies, and then indoctrinate them into believing that their main priority is to make it home alive at any cost. While you’re at it, spend more time drilling them on how to use a gun (58 hours) and employ defensive tactics (49 hours) than on how to calm a situation before resorting to force (8 hours).

Then, once they’re hyped up on their own authority and the power of the badge and their gun, throw in a few court rulings suggesting that security takes precedence over individual rights, set it against a backdrop of endless wars and militarized law enforcement, and then add to the mix a populace distracted by entertainment, out of touch with the workings of their government, and more inclined to let a few sorry souls suffer injustice than challenge the status quo or appear unpatriotic.

That’s not to discount the many honorable police officers working thankless jobs across the country in order to serve and protect their fellow citizens, but there can be no denying that, as journalist Michael Daly acknowledges, there is a troublesome “cop culture that tends to dehumanize or at least objectify suspected lawbreakers of whatever race. The instant you are deemed a candidate for arrest, you become not so much a person as a ‘perp.’”

Older cops are equally troubled by this shift in how police are being trained to view Americans—as things, not people. Daly had a veteran police officer join him to review the video footage of 43-year-old Eric Garner crying out and struggling to breathe as cops held him in a chokehold. (In yet another example of how the legal system and the police protect their own, no police officers were charged for Garner’s death.) Daly describes the veteran officer’s reaction to the footage, which as Daly points out, “constitutes a moral indictment not so much of what the police did but of what the police did not do”:

“I don’t see anyone in that video saying, ‘Look, we got to ease up,’” says the veteran officer. “Where’s the human side of you in that you’ve got a guy saying, ‘I can’t breathe?’” The veteran officer goes on, “Somebody needs to say, ‘Stop it!’ That’s what’s missing here was a voice of reason. The only voice we’re hearing is of Eric Garner.” The veteran officer believes Garner might have survived had anybody heeded his pleas. “He could have had a chance,” says the officer, who is black. “But you got to believe he’s a human being first. A human being saying, ‘I can’t breathe.’”

As I point out in my new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, when all is said and done, the various problems we’re facing today— militarized police, police shootings of unarmed people, the electronic concentration camp being erected around us, SWAT team raids, etc.—can be attributed to the fact that our government and its agents have ceased to see us as humans first.

Then again, perhaps we are just as much to blame for this sorry state of affairs. After all, if we want to be treated like human beings—with dignity and worth—then we need to start treating those around us in the same manner. As Martin Luther King Jr. warned in a speech given exactly one year to the day before he was killed: “We must rapidly begin the shift from a ‘thing-oriented’ society to a ‘person-oriented’ society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.”

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#1. To: Ada (#0)

Over a 10-year-period, Oakland, Calif., taxpayers were made to cough up more than $57 million (curiously enough, the same amount as the city’s deficit back in 2011) in order to settle accounts with alleged victims of police abuse.

That's an average of $15,616 per day year round. Wouldn't it be juicy to know the race of THOSE alleged perps and alleged victims considering Oakland is a diversity hellhole only 26% white?

NeoconsNailed  posted on  2015-05-06   8:30:03 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#2. To: Ada (#0)

There is nothing democratic about the word of a government agent being given greater weight in court than that of the average citizen.

I saw this in traffic court recently. A guy who had been charged with speeding argued that the arresting officer was mistaken; he must have had his radar gun pointed at (or at least his radar gun responded to) a nearby vehicle that was passing him and therefore travelling faster than the defendant's vehicle. A very reasonable and plausible argument, and well articulated. The judge's response? "I HAVE to take the word of this officer over yours."

The legal principle of "proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt" went out the window years ago. These days, the government WILL assemble a jury that WILL convict you even absent any real evidence of guilt. A criminal defense attorney told me recently that "juries like to convict".

StraitGate  posted on  2015-05-06   10:40:07 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#3. To: Jethro Tull (#0)

Older cops are equally troubled by this shift in how police are being trained to view Americans—as things, not people. Daly had a veteran police officer join him to review the video footage of 43-year-old Eric Garner crying out and struggling to breathe as cops held him in a chokehold. (In yet another example of how the legal system and the police protect their own, no police officers were charged for Garner’s death.) Daly describes the veteran officer’s reaction to the footage, which as Daly points out, “constitutes a moral indictment not so much of what the police did but of what the police did not do”:

“I don’t see anyone in that video saying, ‘Look, we got to ease up,’” says the veteran officer. “Where’s the human side of you in that you’ve got a guy saying, ‘I can’t breathe?’” The veteran officer goes on, “Somebody needs to say, ‘Stop it!’ That’s what’s missing here was a voice of reason. The only voice we’re hearing is of Eric Garner.” The veteran officer believes Garner might have survived had anybody heeded his pleas. “He could have had a chance,” says the officer, who is black. “But you got to believe he’s a human being first. A human being saying, ‘I can’t breathe.’”

Regarding your comment about "street smart" in another thread, to me the behavior of the swine in this and other cases is hardly street smart.

If anything it's street stupid. I mean how many white officers want to go on patrol in primarily black areas now? After the St. Louis thing too? I'm sure it wasn't pleasant duty before, but doing shit like that is hardly considered street smart, to me it's pure idiocy apart from the fact that it's immoral and psychotic and therefore entirely anti-Christian if not outright satanic.

Katniss  posted on  2015-05-06   12:37:34 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#4. To: NeoconsNailed (#1)

It's $156,164 and change everyday.

But who's counting? it's just taxpayers' jack.

“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken

Lod  posted on  2015-05-06   12:46:47 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#5. To: StraitGate (#2) (Edited)

The key to beating any traffic ticket is to keep questioning the officer until his or her natural instinct to tell a provable lie takes over...

A) I beat a speeding ticket when I made the officer prove to himself and the court that his use of VASCAR on me had begun out of his jurisdiction...he claimed to have *matched* my speed for 6/10s of a mile...we stopped 2/10's of a mile inside of his jurisdiction...a fact that he provided when I asked him for the location where we had physically stopped (an Exxon gas station)...

B) I beat a Stop Sign violation when I got the cop to state the distance from her squad to the intersection was about "one car length"...in fact, I produced photos that showed her 9 car lengths from the intersection with a view obstructed by cars parked on the other side of the street...

C) I beat yet another speeding ticket when I asked the cop to verify his statement that his VASCAR device had been calibrated by him within the 48 hour time period required by PA law...every time that they calibrate they are required to create a certificate verifying the calibration...when I asked him to produce the certificate of calibration it was dated 3 weeks prior...

Yes...fight marginal traffic tickets and always, always question the cop...

--Perfecting Obscurity Since 1958...

war  posted on  2015-05-06   12:52:41 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#6. To: Ada (#0) (Edited)

in the cop culture that is America today, the Bill of Rights doesn’t amount to much. Unless, that is, it’s the Law Enforcement Officers’ Bill of Rights (LEOBoR), which protects police officers from being subjected to the kinds of debilitating indignities heaped upon the average citizen.

Most Americans, oblivious about their own rights, aren’t even aware that police officers have their own Bill of Rights. Yet at the same time that our own protections against government abuses have been reduced to little more than historic window dressing, 14 states have already adopted LEOBoRs—written by police unions and being considered by many more states and Congress—which provides police officers accused of a crime with special due process rights and privileges not afforded to the average citizen.

In other words, the LEOBoR protects police officers from being treated as we are treated during criminal investigations: questioned unmercifully for hours on end, harassed, harangued, browbeaten, denied food, water and bathroom breaks, subjected to hostile interrogations, and left in the dark about our accusers and any charges and evidence against us.

American citizens have a Bill of Rights and a Union of the Constitution too. What we don't have is proper governmental representation of it. That could be the job of State Militias. We wouldn't have to pay them in accordance with the dysfunctional Fed Res system. They could earn Militia Money for the time they're on duty protecting America and our rights. We could form businesses that would use non-debt based Militia Money for purchases. That's a rough start-up draft that could also help us have our own Constitutionalist economy.

Edited next to last sentence.

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"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC

GreyLmist  posted on  2015-05-06   12:56:28 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#7. To: Katniss (#3)

Regarding your comment about "street smart" in another thread, to me the behavior of the swine in this and other cases is hardly street smart.

I was talking about Baltimore niggers in the other thread.

Carry on.

Jethro Tull  posted on  2015-05-06   14:07:34 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#8. To: Jethro Tull (#7)

I was talking about Baltimore niggers in the other thread.

How was your family reunion?

--Perfecting Obscurity Since 1958...

war  posted on  2015-05-06   14:34:53 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#9. To: GreyLmist (#6)

logical ideas twoards positive.furfillable goals? whats that beong posted for? im lidding of course those.ideas are radical and workable in this day and age, and it would be dangerous at first, have a rights assertion force asserting rights granted under the BOR and Constitution.... id love to see it put into practice.

______________________________________

Suspect all media / resist bad propaganda/Learn NLP everyday everyway ;) If you don't control your mind someone else will.

titorite  posted on  2015-05-06   19:46:12 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#10. To: Jethro Tull (#7)

I was talking about Baltimore niggers in the other thread.

Carry on.

You said "THUG," I assumed you meant the swinery.

Carry on.

Katniss  posted on  2015-05-06   20:07:05 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#11. To: titorite (#9)

logical ideas twoards positive.furfillable goals? whats that beong posted for? im lidding of course

: ]

those.ideas are radical and workable in this day and age, and it would be dangerous at first,

State Militias could be a deterrent to rogue government (which is dangerous to the General Welfare of all Americans and a violation of the Constitution). As a deterrent, the State Militias could deliver notices to the rogues that breaking their oaths of office and violating the Constitution, which is the Supreme Law of our land, are criminal offenses for which they could be prosecuted and recalled from office.

have a rights assertion force asserting rights granted under the BOR and Constitution.... id love to see it put into practice.

Step 2 could be to replace the Police with State Militia security patrols of their own communities or make the State Militia their supervisor and review board.

Step 3 could be to replace rogue judges through special elections that are guarded and monitored by State Militias:

It is time to start FIRING judges, not Impeaching them!

Judges, both of the supreme and inferior courts, shall hold their offices during good behaviour,

Where is the “can ONLY be removed by impeachment language”? Oh did I forget to mention that there is nothing actually IN the constitution that says that? lol. That’s right. It’s the same old scam they pull all time.

It says that they shall be removed from office on impeachment. It doesn’t say they shall ONLY be removed from office on impeachment. Again, let THAT sink in.

This “impeachment” provision is there to give Congress a method to get rid of crooked Executive branch “civil officers” like the president, and the people who work for the president, like the Secretary of Defense, When the President wasn’t willing to FIRE THEM.

This impeachment provision is a check and balance on the executive branch. And THAT is why it is IN the executive branch section. Judges are not part of the executive branch. Thus they can’t just be fired by the President!

-------

"They're on our left, they're on our right, they're in front of us, they're behind us...they can't get away this time." -- Col. Puller, USMC

GreyLmist  posted on  2015-05-06   22:36:40 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#12. To: war (#5)

The key to beating any traffic ticket is to keep questioning the officer until his or her natural instinct to tell a provable lie takes over...

Interesting. Thanks for the useful info, war.

StraitGate  posted on  2015-05-07   21:29:39 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#13. To: GreyLmist (#11)

Where is the “can ONLY be removed by impeachment language”? Oh did I forget to mention that there is nothing actually IN the constitution that says that? lol. That’s right. It’s the same old scam they pull all time.

Impeachment was not *invented* in 1786...it had long been used in English jurisprudence to remove unscrupulous officials.

lonang.com/library/refere...ries-law-england/bla-419/

--Perfecting Obscurity Since 1958...

war  posted on  2015-05-08   7:16:03 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#14. To: war (#13)

Shhhhh -- people will start thinking law didn't begin with the Constitution!

NeoconsNailed  posted on  2015-05-08   7:26:33 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#15. To: Katniss (#10)

You said "THUG," I assumed you meant the swinery.

Wrong again, I was referring to the hypocrite s'bags who sign on with high level government agencies and then spout out to others about a lack of morality & religion.

Jethro Tull  posted on  2015-05-08   9:24:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#16. To: NeoconsNailed (#14)

Shhhhh -- people will start thinking law didn't begin with the Constitution!

Ha...

The 8th US Congress, with Founding Father T. Jefferson as POTUS leading the charge, impeached Associate Justice and fellow Founding Father Samuel Chase...

FWIW, Chase was acquitted...

--Perfecting Obscurity Since 1958...

war  posted on  2015-05-08   11:26:20 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#17. To: war (#16)

Life began with America! We're the only real country on earth!!! George and Martha Washington were the real Adam and Eve! Without the Constitution nobody would know right from wrong! Hail democracy and equality!!! USA! USA! USA!!!!!!!!!!!!

NeoconsNailed  posted on  2015-05-08   11:31:46 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#18. To: Jethro Tull (#15)

I'm sorry, I'm highly unclear on what point it is that you're trying to get across. Having said that, read on, I think you'll be surprised to see that I agree with you for the most part.

Seems that you and I are working off of two entirely different pages here. Your above reference has nothing to do with anything that's been discussed.

I understand what you're saying, but it's not making any sense according to what I've said.

If you want to integrate morality (not sure where religion fits in to be frank), then it becomes imperative to look at results of so-called moral actions.

You impugn organized religion, and appropriately so, for saying one thing, let's say adhering to Biblical Christian values on one hand, but then supporting completely anti-Christian values in practice.

So on paper that may be construed as being moral, but in practice it's anything but. Conclusion: Immoral

Same thing in business, someone goes to church regularly, claims to be a "christian," but then screws people over in business or in work otherwise during the week. Actions/deeds speak louder than words. Conclusion: Immoral

In the minds of some, many even, perhaps even most, the words mean more, but that shouldn't alter reality despite the fact that it does.

Most people that work for high level government agencies wouldn't consider themselves immoral. For the work that they do is "legal" by society's definition. Where they fail is in understanding that the work that they do also supports the very things that they complain about.

For example, how can someone complain about government spending when they've become a multi-millionaire by owning a government contracting business? Yet, it happens constantly.

How can someone complain about an increasingly enormous and oversized and overbloated government after taking a job accepting government money to be a part of it? Despite the fact that those are contradictory positions it happens constantly. Many many professions fall into that category.

People complain all the time about people on welfare, but what's the difference between that and overbloated pensions, often being far greater than the median American income, all coming from government monies (really debt nowadays), or the aforementioned grossly overpaid government contractor? I see none. One takes money for nothing, the other gets much more for assisting in the creation of a monster.

The wealthiest counties in the country, like 10 of the top 15 I think, are all immediately surrounding the DC area or close to that. That's hardly by accident. So clearly that's where much of government overspending goes. Make sense?

Can't do much about it except to make one's own personal decisions, but it also doesn't alter the realities.

All I'm saying is that if someone is on welfare, or on a pension existing from money that ultimately is due to government spending, debt or not, then I don't see how anyone as such has a right to complain about government spending when they're a part of the problem. To do so is to say that everyone but them is the problem, which makes no sense, logically, morally, or via common sense.

So in that sense morality, or conversely immorality, is as morality/immorality does.

As to morality, it must come from somewhere, right? It's not biological, it can't possibly be, so "evolution" cannot explain it.

Since there are so many degrees, more or less on a continuous linear scale of some sort, mostly anyway, immorality is a morality too, it's just on the other end of the scale that we consider "good" to be on.

I realize that you are anti-God, you've made that clear often enough. But still, you possess some morals and virtues that are Christian by Christ's standards. So why? How did those cement themselves in you? That's for another discussion that I doubt we'll ever have, certainly not here.

But morality, a central morality, must come from somewhere if it's not biological. There is no other explanation.

Conversely, or perhaps likewise, a central immorality must also have a similar source.

The one thing that does not hold any logical water is that morality is for each and every person to determine on their own. If that were the case, then everyone is right. But why do we have laws then? I mean let's just throw everything up to evolution and survival of the fittest and let the chips fall where they may.

Oddly, that's very close where we are today with might triumphing over morality on a global scale with morality having been dumped on its head and immorality, in so many ways, being established as the centrally approved moral basis from which we operate, with increasingly, those that oppose that centrally approved morality being dealt with violently. First abroad, and now more so here at home in our own country and as one thing we all mostly agree on, "coming soon to a theater near you."

The entire thing is a moral issue however, because it is from the morality of a society(ies) that the civil code of a society emerges and develops.

Hence the issues that we face today.

Bringing this back full circle to your statement, I simply don't see to many people in high levels in government agencies, and clearly politics, that possess any significant degree of true morality.

I realize that's not what you said, but as to hypocrite s'bags who sign on with high level government agencies and then spout out to others about a lack of morality & religion, I agree, if they do that then they are hypocritical, but that's been my point all along, so I'm not quite sure why you phrased it like that. That's what's brought us to our knees as a society and a immoral anti-Christian government, that exact hypocrisy.

I would depart from you however in giving some room to the ignorant that are involved, as they are not ill meaning, they are simply that, ignorant. Now, upon shedding that ignorance, if it were to continue, then yes, I'd agree with you that there's a morality issue in play, or as you put it, a hypocritical one.

But on the same note, aren't those that complain about the largesse of government, yet who draw checks coming from government monies, regardless of the reasons, equal hypocrites? I say yes. Again, we'll leave room for ignorance, however, anyone living off of government money/debt, is indeed hypocritical to hammer others for doing the same, which they do by complaining aobut the size of government. Most government monies spent filters its way to perfectly willing participants in the activities of government largesse.

I really don't see what's to disagree with about any of that. You may not like it, others may not like it, but it's the truth and the facts.

I'll give you an analogy that I'm pretty sure you'll agree with. It is analogous to John Hagee and other people that profess to be Christian, yet that support completely anti-Christian activity in this world, yet complain about the immorality of the world. If they're going to support massive global immorality, either via word, deed (direct participation), or action otherwise, then they have lost any moral high ground for lecturing anyone on morality otherwise.

That would fall into your hypocrite category.

This is why people, like Chuck Baldwin for example, start taking an independent stand. Because they finally have the scales of ignorance fall from their eyes and they see reality after stepping away from ingrained beliefs that have tainted their view of reality for some time.

Problem is that some people are much better than others in seeking truth. Most approach it by trying to find the evidence that matches their vision du jour. The wise person approaches it by realizing that he or she is not the center of the universe and keeps an open mind and constantly challenges and questions their own beliefs. Unfortunately that takes mental energy, and most of America squanders their disposable mental energy on moral filth put before them by an immoral media expanse leaving little left for what I mentioned.

This is exactly why we have the current Holocaust charade, or the current view that America is the heart and focus of global morality, or any other number of things discussed here regularly. Because people then default to the age-old [x number of people] believe it so it's gotta be true mentality, particularly since that's what's pushed in the establishment's culture. Right?

Make no mistake however, morality is the key to it all. Anyone missing that is missing the boat completely. A belief in The Living God explains that.

In Romans chapter one of the New Testament it states;

because that which is known of God is manifest in them; for God manifested it unto them.

God has put his morality into the hearts of men. It's in everyone. This is how generally speaking we know that it's good not to kill someone that isn't trying to kill us for example. That, again, is not something that could possibly have sprung forth from some biological interaction.

There's more, but the influences of the world change that in people and some appear to be possessed by other spirits, and I use the word loosely here, generally speaking, that run contrary to the spirit of God.

I know that you seem to hate God, which may be a good thing in a journey to find him, but the god you hate is not The Living God, it is a god that has been fabricated and contrived and presented to you in substitute yet bearing the same name. And you're very familiar with the first clue given that you realize it, namely that God does not manifest himself in mass global or national situations. He manifests himself spiritually in the hearts of men individually. The greater that people seek him the more they'll find him. Problem is that few truly seek. Those individuals are in an uphill battle in the backdrop of the history of mankind on this planet. They will not win that battle on this planet, which is evidenced by our planet (and nation) today.

So it's no wonder that people hate God, it's because what they're presented as being God, is not really God generally speaking. But then again, how many truly seek the truth as it relates to God? I dare say, not many.

Katniss  posted on  2015-05-08   11:42:49 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#19. To: NeoconsNailed (#14)

Shhhhh -- people will start thinking law didn't begin with the Constitution!

You got that right.

See my post to JT above.

Katniss  posted on  2015-05-08   11:43:35 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


#20. To: Jethro Tull (#15)

BTW, on a related note, I'm curious, where does your definition of what's right and wrong spring from?

In other words, you have a moral underpinning. Where did it originate?

Katniss  posted on  2015-05-08   11:44:43 ET  Reply   Trace   Private Reply  


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