Cartoon removed 2 yrs from air date after fear muslims would attack

Agreed, and I appreciate our discussion.

The problem with your argument is that it's basically the "she was wearing a short skirt in front of a group of young men" argument that is sometimes made when rapes happen.

Your argument defines what is reasonable and responsible by the threat level, which is exactly what those who make the threats want. They want to move the goalposts.

No.

In a free society, we don't let threats define what is reasonable and responsible.

The rapists are 100 % to blame, whether she wore a short skirt or not.

Those who cannot cope with satire and free speech are 100 % to blame for their aggression against free speech.

There is no "is it reasonable and responsible, shouldn't you have better not said anything, to cater to the already heated environment?". On the contrary - those who don't understand free speech need to learn to understand and respect it. The responsible and reasonable thing to do is to carry on exactly the way we did before in a free society, and if you can mock Jesus in Monty Python films in our free societies, then you can also mock Mohammed.

 

I think we've had a discussion on this topic in the past. The rape victim example is a case where the victim has compromised her own safety (either willfully or carelessly) through her decision. I don't think she's morally responsible for her own victimization (and in my view that rule generally applies -- people should never be considered morally responsible for their own victimization). But at the same time, it makes little sense to deny to ourselves that her decision increased the probability of her rape, when it very clearly did. Acknowledging this fact does not in any way lift blame from the rapist, which is something you seem to be arguing. I would add, for the sake of being sensitive to her experience, I wouldn't typically go out of my way to remind her that such dress choices may have been a contributing factor.

But this analogy is flawed, because in this case we're not talking about someone putting only themselves in danger, but rather about people putting others in danger as well. My belief is this: if someone makes a decision, either willfully or through their carelessness, that puts others in more danger, then they have some moral responsibility for the consequences. I suspect you just recoiled at that statement, because you think it is somehow absolving or lessening the moral responsibility of the attacker/terrorist. But I don't believe that at all, since I don't believe the criminality of the attack depends in any way on how offended the attacker was. I would never argue that the punishment for the attacker's crime should be reduced because he was "offended", just as you wouldn't.

To put it another way, there is no arithmetic for assigning blame. You may believe in something like this:

TOTAL MORAL RESPONSIBILITY = RESPONSIBILITY_OF_TERRORIST + RESPONSIBILITY_OF_OTHERS

So, putting some responsibility on others must necessarily take away some responsibility from the terrorist if the equation is to balance out. I don't subscribe to such a view. Moral responsibility is not some tangible quantity that can be divided up or combined together like slices of pizza.

 

I believe in:

TOTAL MORAL RESPONSIBILITY = RESPONSIBILITY_OF_TERRORIST+RESPONSIBILITY_OF_IDEOLOGUES_INSTIGATING THE TERRORIST.

ZERO!!!!!! RESPONSIBILITY_OF_VICTIMS.

ALWAYS. WITHOUT EXCEPTION.

You know I respect you as a poster and I like your even-keeled approach, but I find your reasoning on this topic to be incredibly flawed.

The only possible explanation for this I can imagine for an otherwise rational poster such as yourself is possibly a different cultural background. Your reasoning does not fit with Western values.

The logical misstep you fall victim to is that you ignore the fact that there is a conscious decision by a human being to commit the terrorist act. That conscious decision removes all prior causality you assume, precisely because it is NOT an automatic logical and inevitable consequence of whatever the victim might have done.

That is the moment you should be focusing on, and where blame and criminal and moral responsibility is assigned.

 

Wow.
We come from completely different backrounds.

 

And do you think the ideologues instigating terrorists take some of the responsibility away from the terrorist? Do they take some of the responsibility away from ISIS?

Agreed:

OK. Let's see.

I'll reiterate that I don't consider victims to have moral responsibility for their own demise. So, I'll assume you meant to say "whatever the offender might have done" (where by "offender" I'm referring to the person who was perceived to have caused offense).

Let's parse this argument:

(1) It is not inevitable that the acts of the offender leads to the terrorist attack.
(2) Because of (1), there is no causality from the offender's actions and the terrorist attack itself.
(3) Since there is no causality, the offender can't have any moral responsibility.

I accept (1) as true, but (2) is simply wrong. Just because A doesn't inevitably lead to B, that doesn't mean there isn't a causal relationship between A and B. If A increases the probability of B, all else being equal, then there is a causal relationship.

And even if I accepted that (2) was true, it would follow that not only does the offender have no moral responsibility, but neither does the ideologue instigator. Your argument would therefore be self-defeating.

 

So according to your background, how girls dress or act has no affect on their security when they're with boys? According to your background, is it also the case that how children dress/act would have no affect on whether they're bullied at school?

 

No. They are both responsible. I wasn't the one who said it has to be a zero-sum game. You are arguing a strawman. Just like in any crime, both the person who commits the act and the person who instigated it can be responsible, without the responsibility of either being reduced by the other person also being prosecuted.

You see, I knew that you would say that (last paragraph). Remember, I studied law.

First of all, your labeling as "offender" is wrong. The "offender" is only an "offender" in the perception of the terrorist and the instigating ideologue, and those (Muslims) who choose to be offended. The "offender" is not objectively an "offender".

Secondly, no, (2) is not wrong. The causal chain is broken the moment a person makes a conscious choice to commit a new crime. There is a novus actus interveniens, a new intervening act which breaks the chain of causation. You are wrong to think that (2) is wrong.

So, next, your last paragraph, which was so foreseeable.

The distinction here is that the ideologue instigator is an aider and abetter to the crime, the victim is not and neither is someone who is not himself the victim but whose actions were regarded by the criminal as reason enough to commit a crime (your so-called "offender").

There is a reason why one will be criminally prosecuted and the other one will not be. To put it simple: The instigator, aider and abetter wants the crime to happen. The victim and the wrongly labeled "offender" do not want the crime to happen.

 

Repped.

 

Wrong thread.

 

That equation you used would suggest that what's you meant. Indeed, my purpose with that equation was to make the point that it's not a "zero-sum game". And if you don't think it has to be a zero-sum game, I'm perplexed why you kept insisting on blame being 100% with the attacker when I said some moral responsibility may also fall on the "offender".

Uh oh.

Ah, and I knew you may take exception to the word "offender", which is why I also wrote: "where by "offender" I'm referring to the person who was perceived to have caused offense".

This is interesting. I'm not a lawyer, so that's a new term for me. However, now you're arguing about legal responsibility, which is not necessarily the same thing as moral responsibility. We can talk about a causal chain of events over which legal responsibility for a crime may propagate backwards in time, and I believe this term you're invoking is referencing that. Correct me if I'm wrong. I'm talking about causality in the more general sense, and my definition is no less valid than yours as a means for assessing moral responsibility.

You are of course free to equate moral responsibility with legal responsibility. Recall that I said earlier that this question of what constitutes moral responsibility becomes very subjective, so we may simply disagree here.

So you believe the ideologue instigator isn't merely morally responsible, but is legally responsible for the attack? If its a direct call for violence, sure. But otherwise, we have a very sharp disagreement here over what constitutes free speech. Which is surprising, since you tend to be a very staunch defender of free speech rights in general.

 

Your definition is less valid. You de facto assign moral responsibility to victims, which is reprehensible. It also is in the interest of the perpetrators, and helps validate their actions.

Again, the only explanation I can see that you don't grasp this is that you must come from a non-Western cultural background, possibly the same - at least with regard to the geographic area - as those who are offended by cartoons. As you could tell from others' reactions, I am not alone with that view.

It depends on the circumstances. Unfortunately, it is hard to get to the instigators of violence, especially if they speak in mosques during "Friday prayer". To pin legal responsibility on them might be hard in most cases. They are definitely morally responsible.

 

I didn't even use the term 100 % correctly, because it usually refers to acts by third parties which break the chain of causation regarding the defendant's liability. But that doesn't even matter.

 

Except I don't, and have asserted over and over that moral responsibility does not fall to victims. I'm talking about people who are willing to put the safety of others at risk. The distinction is very clear; I'm not sure why you're having trouble seeing it.

I believe in personal responsibility over the predictable consequences of one's own actions, and I consider this a rational position. I believe my opinions here are based on an adherence to rationalism rather than emotional appeal, and not to any subconscious non-Western bias I may have picked up decades ago growing up. And for your information, I was born and grew up in the US, in a secular household, steeped predominantly in American culture.

If you can't establish legal responsibility, is that because there is a "new intervening act" or some other reason?

If there is a "new intervening act", I understand your argument to be that it follows there is no causal link and therefore no moral responsibility.

 

You are still not getting it. The only ones who are putting the safety of others at risk are the terrorists themselves and their instigators. You are blaming the victims. In your logic, Charlie Hebdo (victims) "put the safety of others at risk".

Mostly because 1) it's hard to prove, 2) if you instigate outrage, but not directly say "kill the Charlie Hebdo journalists", then you are probably already off the hook. Also depends on the jurisdiction, etc., the rules for aiding and abetting are not the same everywhere.

The "intervening act" is the conscious decision by the terrorist to kill, and the subsequent execution of that decision.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiding_and_abetting

See bolded part. Someone who says "Go kill the Charlie Hebdo journalists" and it then happens = Aiding and abetting, because he wishes for the crime to occur. Someone who wrote cartoons at Charlie Hebdo and then a police officer gets killed during the Charlie Hebdo attack, obviously not aiding and abetting, because the cartoonist did not wish for the crime to occur. The moral responsibility follows along the same lines. Your so-called "offender" does not wish for a crime to occur, and the "intervening act" is the conscious decision by the terrorist (and its execution) to commit the murders.

 

Some questions for clarification:

Do you think no one other than the terrorists+instigators did anything that increased the likelihood of the terrorist attack itself?

Or are you saying that they may have, but that doesn't matter because "increasing the likelihood" doesn't qualify as establishing a causal connection in the legal sense?

I'm really confused on which of those (or both, or neither) you think is true.

 

On 2 July 2008, a column by the cartoonist Siné (Maurice Sinet) appeared in Charlie Hebdo citing a rumour that Jean Sarkozy, son of Nicolas Sarkozy, had announced his intention to convert to Judaism before marrying his fiancée, a Jewish heiress Jessica Sebaoun-Darty. Siné added, "he'll go far, this lad!"[25] This led to complaints of anti-Semitism. The magazine's editor, Philippe Val, ordered Siné to write a letter of apology or face termination. The cartoonist said he would rather "cut his own balls off," and was promptly fired. Both sides subsequently filed lawsuits, and in December 2010, Siné won a 40,000 euros court judgment against his former publisher for wrongful termination.[26]..."


I don't have law101 terminology booklet but this show how bias overlapping judgment when it comes to freedom of speech vs. Hate speech

 

I'm saying that, and not only in the legal, but also in the moral sense, when it comes to free speech.

Nobody should ever have to worry about being subjected to violence because of free speech.

And any argument that someone "increased the likelihood" of either themselves or someone else being the subject of violence because of free speech - unless the speech is specifically aimed at inciting the violence in a sense of instigating it and wanting it - is invalid by default.

But that is the argument you are making.

You fail to understand that it is not the same if, on the one hand, a hate preacher says "kill those who make fun of Islam" and actually wants violence or at least intimidation and, on the other hand, someone makes fun of Islam and is then subject to violence or a threat of it.

They are not the same.

The hate preacher is morally and legally at fault, and an aider and abetter to the violence, if not in a legal, then at least in a moral sense. The person making fun of anything within their right to free speech never aids or abets or instigates the violence, and is never legally or morally responsible for it.

Never.

 

ATW, I'll step back and reflect more on this, and respond at a later time. Thanks for the discussion.

 

I don't think anyone should cave in to fear. Censorship should not happen, and it's the worst thing about political correctness.

I disagree with people who intentionally paint cartoons of Mohammed in an effort to elicit attacks which has been done, but it's still allowed, and shouldn't be stopped.

Anyone who tries to force others to follow the rules of their religion is infringing on the freedom of others. I am not in favor of it at all.

 

Bravo.