Quote:
|
Originally Posted by highthief
Well, no - anyone breaking into a house, to use the original analogy, is a scumbag criminal. Scumbag, bad person, not getting into heaven, pick your description. There's no shades of grey here. Someone takes a deliberate action they know to be seriously illegal and which will (if they successful) inflict significant harm on someone else.
|
Again, you're entitled to your opinion. It doesn't really matter to me all that much. I know people who have broken into places where they didn't belong to take things that didn't belong to them. You might, whilst completely ignorant of any other detail about their existence, call them a scumbag, that's fine. It doesn't mean that your proclamation has any value or any relevance in regards to reality.
Certainly there are a lot of people who do commit crimes like burglary who are scumbags, but the fact that they have broken into a house isn't what makes them so, unless you're aiming to include b&e in the definition of scumbag. This would be novel.
Quote:
|
It's not arbitrary at all - I do not know the laws in the US, but in Canada we have summary and indictable offenses. Summary offences are typically things you would get a fine for or perhaps a few months in prison. Indictable offences get you years in jail and are also crimes for which citizens are entitled to make arrests. So, when I speak of "serious" I refer to indictable offences. I know the laws of my country and my "arbitrary" line is anything but. The laws of the US are of no concern to me unless I'm in that country on business or otherwise.
|
The fact that there are laws for which you would call the cops and laws for which you wouldn't makes your decision arbitrary. Your decision to defer to a list of indictable offenses is arbitrary. Unless you have no discretion whatsoever when it comes to calling the police, your actions are based on your own personal preferences and are therefore, by definition, arbitrary.
I don't want to get into a semantical discussion here, so if that's where you're planning on taking this, don't bother.
If you can't see where i'm coming from that's fine. I can accept that. On this particular subject you see things in black and white, and all i'm trying to point out is that one can't make credible absolute proclamations from a subjective perspective. Especially when you can't even admit that your perspective is subjective.