“The Onion” Files a Supreme Court Brief
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
> Eleven Facebook users called the police department's nonemergency line about Novak's spoof, which was the basis for the claim that he had disrupted police operations. When the case was presented to a grand jury, Detective Thomas Connor claimed the callers "honest to God believed" that Novak's creation was the department's official page. But when Novak sued Connor and six other officers, the Institute for Justice notes in its Supreme Court petition, "Connor admitted at deposition that none of the callers thought that."
I'm pretty sure we all know why this person was arrested, and that there is only one way the court should rule.
[1] https://www.nyulawreview.org/issues/volume-89-number-3/polic...
There's a broad disconnect between the police departments, their hiring and disciplinary practices, and the consequences of the lawsuits their actions generate.
Tying the payouts specifically to the police budget would mean that when the city's residents' policing service expectations failed to be met, one could point to that being a direct consequence of police actions costing them their own policing budget, increasing pressure on the public to do things like elect effective police oversight commissioners who will act to reign in their abuses and provide good value-for-cost policing.
The status quo instead disconnects the oversight from the consequences, leading to the quiet defunding of other services for political reasons (since it would require city counsels to constantly vote to cut police budgets in proportion to each damage award, rather than happening "neutrally" by centering the legal defense and payouts within the police budget to begin with).
This is a very tall order that I predict would not come true. It is already very easy to see how much police misconduct costs a city’s tax base, but push come to shove, most people will think they are isolated cases and will not happen to them.
> The status quo instead disconnects the oversight from the consequences, leading to the quiet defunding of other services for political reasons
This political reason is that voting in local elections is not common. 100% of the police and their allies will be voting, while most others will be spending their evenings on things other than paying attention to local politics.
There are a few exceptions, but overall, I would not expect voters to react to feeling the pain of reduced police budgets with “let’s dig into why police budgets are getting smaller”. By and large, they will simply vote for the politician that provides the simplest message, which is the incumbents are refusing to properly fund the police department, and if you vote for me, I will properly fund it.
The only solution I see is holding individual cops accountable, including for criminal charges like perjury for lying such as the detective in this case clearly did.
Your point is irrelevant as Novak is suing the city, not any individual officer. This has nothing to do with qualified immunity.
https://reason.com/2022/09/28/a-parodist-asks-scotus-to-let-...
>After a jury unanimously acquitted Novak of that felony, he sued seven officers for violating his First Amendment rights.
>But this year the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit concluded that the officers he sued were protected by qualified immunity, which shields police from liability for violating constitutional rights unless their alleged misconduct ran afoul of "clearly established" law.
I fail to see why it should protect the police from engaging in cold, calculated retribution of perceived enemies.
I think what vkou is saying (and I agree) is that while there currently are some police in prison who have been convicted of crimes, the difficulty factor of convicting a police officer is much higher than the difficulty of convicting a normal person. If the same higher standard for obtaining a conviction was applied to everyone else, hardly anyone would be sent to prison.
Further reading: https://aele.org/loscode2000.html
To read the bias read up on the Jason Van Dyke case, first time in 50 years a Chicago cop convicted of murder after being caught on camera and he served 3 and 1/4 years in prison. “The U.S. attorney's office confirmed on April 13, 2015,[57] that they had been conducting a federal criminal investigation of the McDonald case in conjunction with the state attorney's office, after contradictions were found between the initial police report and the dash-cam video”
Look, if you have zero counter evidence than any evidence to the contrary should be persuasive.
edit: looking at this again, I think I misread your point. You're claiming that unless I have evidence that shows that police are usually held accountable, then any evidence that they are not, even anecdotal, should convince me. I would say that's plainly not correct. If I know nothing about whether police are held accountable, a single case demonstrating one not being held accountable does not warrant assuming they usually are not. It only demonstrates that they are not always held accountable and tells me nothing about frequency. Drawing broad inferences from too little data is a pernicious problem in our society. That said, I can find plenty of anecdotes where cops were held accountable. How am I to know which is more typical?
It’s unrealistic to actually carry that out in every case, but in cases where you have zero evidence updating your views based on the first bit of evidence you receive is absolutely the correct choice. The degree to which any single piece of evidence should change your mindset is of course minimal, but holding a view with zero supporting evidence in the face of multiple pieces of counter evidence is a sign of insanity.
In the United States between 2005 and 2020, of the 42 nonfederal police officers convicted following their arrest for murder due to an on-duty shooting, only five ended up being convicted of murder.
By comparison:
In 2018 70% of US murder cases resulted in conviction.
Conviction rates of 12% vs 70% show a very strong bias.
Cops doing their job in a routine way doesn’t make the news. Cops taking steps to de-escalate things and avoid killing someone doesn’t make the news. Cops killing someone (justified or not) typically does.
If every time you see a news report of a police officer killing someone, you come away thinking “police must just be killing people left and right”, you’re forming an inaccurate conclusion. If you get your news from anything that’s driven by attention/clicks (that is to say, approximately everywhere), it’s a doubly inaccurate conclusion.
There aren’t that many documented cases of cops shooting people without justification, but in those cases you often find instances of cops covering up for other cops. That’s evidence not just for these cases but also otehr cases which where successfully suppressed.
there seem to be a large number of complaints against police officers in the U.S.
very few of these actually go to an indictment.
of these ones that go to an indictment it seems fewer get heavy sentences in comparison to the rest of the population for similar infractions.
all of this seems to make the police a statistical anomaly in comparison to other people accused of criminal conduct.
Occam's razor would suggest that the reason that police do better than other people in not being indicted, not being convicted, and receiving lesser sentences is because they are police.
Have there? I haven't seen them. Best I've seen is a study suggesting that killings by police may be undercounted due to mistakes in reporting, but doesn't make any claims that these represent crimes committed by police.
> there seem to be a large number of complaints against police officers in the U.S.
Google tells me there are 900,000 cops in the US. That's a large number too. What's the complaint/cop ratio?
> very few of these actually go to an indictment
How many fewer than we'd expect? What's the normal indictment rate? What should it be?
> of these ones that go to an indictment it seems fewer get heavy sentences in comparison to the rest of the population for similar infractions.
Again, how many fewer? These are all things I would expect could be demonstrated empirically. What are the actual numbers? It seems like people are mostly going by their gut feeling, which I just don't find convincing.
https://www.security.org/resources/police-brutality-statisti...
note however this is violence, not corruption which would be a separate thing https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/grants/249850.pdf
as it happens statistics on corruption in police in U.S are very few, even fewer than those about violence which only recently have started becoming available.
>How many fewer than we'd expect? What's the normal indictment rate? What should it be?
obviously the normal indictment rate would be how many 'civilians' who get the cops called on them then go on to have an actual court case.
https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2019/crime-in-the-u.s.-...
would be where I would start on that. But of course that is very low-level, as you can see from the earlier link in this post https://www.security.org/resources/police-brutality-statisti... they say there are few indictments, I would just accept that as the case as the experts having done the low level work instead of doing the low level work because everyone doing the low level work themselves is unfortunately very inefficient and if we had to do that we would not be able to do anything else, which sometimes it seems to me that people who do not accept the conclusions of the experts but demand that the low level work be done on an individual basis in order to argue fairly are actually hoping that nothing will be done at all.
That's understandable. Looking back on our interaction, it does seem unfair that I should say I don't necessarily need stats, but then immediately ask for stats. It reads like a bait and switch. My apologies, I think I just got caught up in all the back and forth. I really do want to be openminded about this, but I didn't do a great job of showing it.
I also understand where you are coming from about it seeming like I'm asking people to google things for me. However, from my perspective, I see people making a lot of assertions as if they were common knowledge and yet when I look I don't see what they are claiming. As an example, the sources you provide don't directly bear on any of the questions I asked.
We can see for instance that blacks are arrested a lot more frequently than whites. But we also know that blacks are disproportionally poor, and poor people are more likely to be arrested and convicted than middle income or wealthy people. The reasons for that can be debated, but without controlling for income and other confounding factors, you don't really know to what degree blacks are disproportionately represented. That's just basic statistics. Maybe there are studies that do this, but I haven't seen any, nor apparently have the other commenters here.
But that's not even directly relevant to whether police generally are held accountable for breaking the law generally. As you yourself said, there aren't many statistics on this. And yet people are claiming it a well established fact. I think that's wrong. I'm sure it happens to some degree (everything happens to some degree for large populations), but we need to understand the scope of problems so we can address them properly. As I said elsewhere, do we need to tweak the system or replace it? We can't know until we know what we're dealing with. Just assuming it's really really bad may feel helpful, but I don't think it is.
> I would just accept that as the case as the experts having done the low level work instead of doing the low level work because everyone doing the low level work themselves is unfortunately very inefficient
This is a good point. However, it's not clear to me that the experts are saying what is claimed. Take this from the conclusion from your first link:
> While there’s room for debate over policy interventions that might limit the number of police killings, there’s inadequate accountability or scrutiny for these incidents. When police kill a civilian, the initial assumption by some is that the incident was justified, while others automatically assume it wasn’t. While the truth may be somewhere in between, the public can’t possibly make informed decisions without cold, hard facts.
Totally agree! This is exactly what I'm saying. But this report isn't claiming to provide those cold hard facts, they are saying they are needed. Great! But why is everyone acting like they already have them?
People keep pointing at the disproportional numbers of minorities killed, but don't discuss confounding factors. For example, it should not at all surprise us that native americans would be highly represented in this area because they are among the poorest people in the country, many living in areas with no jobs and high drug and alcohol abuse rates where domestic violence and other violent crime is well above the national average. It would be strange if this didn't result in higher rates of conflict with the police, and hence higher rates of death. Is there more than that going on? Maybe. It needs to be studied. For instance, how does it compare to similarly impoverished white communities? That's the sort of thing I'm looking for.
In short, I'm really not trying to be difficult here, but it seems to me that people are not asking basic questions, so I can't really trust their conclusions. I do appreciate your taking the time though and I hope you don't feel like you've been trolled. I do appreciate your patience.
It is possible that police are both "commonly" held accountable, yet not "often enough" for the good of society. Devil is in the details.
If this decision doesn't show there is something deeply, fundamentally, disgustingly wrong with your legal system, I don't think anything else can show that.
It seems to me like in fact governments are working to improve the law in that area.
Your comment has a baked in assumption I want to question, though. Why do you regard police accountability as the most plausible default?
You know that's not true. It's not the Democratic candidates that regularly trot out the Willie Horton ads. As I write this, Mehmet Oz is running ads against Fetterman for being soft on crime.
https://whyy.org/articles/election-2022-pennsylvania-senate-...
The police reform bill was the work of the Democrats:
https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/08/politics/democrats-police-leg...
The party position:
https://democrats.org/where-we-stand/party-platform/protecti...
Go ahead, show me the GOP position on policing.
It’s true that Republicans are an order of magnitude more bloodthirsty — which makes the Democrats’ full-throated embrace of carceral policies all the more baffling. If I wanted regressive faux–law and order, why would I vote for them instead of a Republican?
But I also recognize that defunding the police is an incredibly unpopular position even among most Democratic voters. Even in the communities affected most by crime and bad policing[1]. Most people do not want fewer police. They want better police.
So the Democrats "embrace policing" because if they don't, they lose elections. Especially with crime on the rise, whether real or perceived. But that doesn't mean that the two parties are the same with respect to policing and I don't think it helps the progressive cause being cynical about it.
1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2021/10/26/growing-sha...
Yes, that is what makes them cops, the police are authorized to do many things that are illegal for us ordinary citizens. they can restrain people, go through stop lights, speed, threaten, sometimes even kill.
We as society recognize that these things are in general bad to do, however there are special cases where it is needed. so we authorize some people to professionally break the law where needed.
That being said, the quote "Who watches the watchmen?" is as always very relevant and those authorized to break the law need to be held to a very high moral standard.
Let’s take your red light example. Cops are allowed to go through red lights when they’re responding to an emergency and they’ve put on their lights/sirens. That’s a reasonable special power. In practice, what I see happening is either (a) police briefly turn on their lights/sirens as they cross the intersection, then immediately turn them off, or (b) police simply run the red light.
But not whenever they want. When needed. You could do any of those things legally in most states. The first to prevent a suicidal person from killing themselves, the next two when driving a serious case to the ER, the last two when defending yourself from an armed home intruder.
But it has since been interpreted as this: even if it is clear to all parties that the duties were not performed in a reasonable manner, qualified immunity applies unless the case fits the exact pattern of a prior case that held officials accountable.
How exact must the match of circumstances be? https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-lega... (note: opinions in this article and by this organization are not mine) has examples:
> A prior Sixth Circuit case had already held that an officer clearly violated the Fourth Amendment when he used a police dog without warning against an unarmed residential burglary suspect who was lying on the ground with his hands at his sides.42 But the court here held that this prior case was insufficient because “Baxter does not point us to any case law suggesting that raising his hands, on its own, is enough to put Harris on notice that a canine apprehension was unlawful in these circumstances.”43 In other words, prior case law holding it unlawful to deploy police dogs against nonthreatening suspects who surrendered by laying on the ground did not make it clear that it was unlawful to deploy police dogs against nonthreatening suspects who surrendered by sitting on the ground with their hands up.
> Nevertheless, in spite of this objectively unreasonable shooting, a majority of the Sixth Circuit panel found that the officer was entitled to qualified immunity. The court itself acknowledged that several prior cases had clearly established that “shooting a driver while positioned to the side of his fleeing car violates the Fourth Amendment, absent some indication suggesting that the driver poses more than a fleeting threat.”46 Even though that statement would seem to govern this case exactly, the majority held that these prior cases were “distinguishable” because they “involved officers confronting a car in a parking lot and shooting the non‐ violent driver as he attempted to initiate flight,” whereas here “Phillips shot Latits after Latits led three police officers on a car chase for several minutes.”47 The lone dissenting judge in this case dryly observed that “the degree of factual similarity that the majority’s approach requires is probably impossible for any plaintiff to meet.”48
To make an analogy to our industry, it's like the famous Reflections on Trusting Trust compiler paper here: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref... - if your compiler is compromised to the extent that even when compiling a compiler, it inserts the same exact compromise in the newly compiled compiler... then there's no turning back.
And here we have a concept of qualified immunity that cannot ever be given nuance, because it's impossible to adjudicate based on a no-longer-existing version of the case law that allows nuance to be added to the concept of qualified immunity. It's, quite literally, a cancer from any logical perspective. We should be ashamed as a society to have allowed such a system to exist. Only new national legislation, to my knowledge, can stop the rot, and that will come far too late for many who have suffered at the hands of law enforcement officials.
(IANAL, this is not legal advice)
But then there's the reality, which is that it's been abused via a "chicken and egg" problem.
It's called "piercing the veil of qualified immunity" and the standard for doing so is "currently established law". IOW, if it's not been pierced in the past for exactly (and I mean exactly) the same thing, then the default is that qualified immunity applies.
What ends up happening is that even if the broad strokes are exactly the same, they'll claim there is no currently established law if some of the minutia of the details is different. The police officer kicked the pregnant woman in the face instead of the stomach.
The effect is that qualified immunity stopped being reasonable.
---
If I may, I suspect most reasonable people understand that qualified immunity is there because police officers are human and mistakes happen. But it's been abused, and as such it needs to be reformed.
---
editing this in as a perfect example of what I mean about courts using specificity to effectively make it impossible to pierce the veil of qualified immunity.
Many thanks to btown for the link, I went looking for something similar and was unable to find it.
https://www.cato.org/policy-analysis/qualified-immunity-lega...
> In other words, prior case law holding it unlawful to deploy police dogs against nonthreatening suspects who surrendered by laying on the ground did not make it clear that it was unlawful to deploy police dogs against nonthreatening suspects who surrendered by sitting on the ground with their hands up.
If you do, too, contact your US House legislators about HR 1470 and your desire to end qualified immunity: https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/1470
I've heard this before, but I don't completely get it. Can someone explain it in more detail? Does this mean the only thing that can pierce the veil are rulings from before qualified immunity was put in place? What about new laws or constitutional amendments?
Initially, courts ruled that the police lost qualified immunity if they performed an action that they knew violated peoples rights (Malley v. Briggs)
Lately, courts have basically said "how could the government know it was a violation of this guys rights? Sure, there is a very similar case which said you can't violate this right, but the details are slightly different, so how could they know the persons rights were protected in this specific case? Case dismissed." (Zadeh v. Robinson)
It's absurd, not just because the details are always different, but because the initial case law was set without any similar precedent. It basically takes a particularly egregious violation of your rights to overcome the qualified part of qualified immunity and sue the government (Taylor v. Riojas)
(Not a lawyer, but married to one.)
Last time I checked, all humans are human ... and mistakes happen. Try using that line the next time you're explaining yourself to the police.
I'm not sure I understand why police officers should get any kind of extra leniency? I'd probably want to hold police officers to higher standards than the public, not lower.
/s
Often courts rule that a search was invalid or a conviction is tossed out, but almost never are the cops punished for the invalid search or arrest.
The detective's legal vulnerability may rely on the transcript of his exact testimony both to the grand jury and at trial.
It could be that, at the grand jury, he almost defined parody in two parts - with one part easily quoted out of context. "Oh, erm, what I meant was the complainers said 'at first I thought it was honest to god real' and then 'I figured out it was a parody'".
It could also be the detective only mentioned the first part (people being confused) at the grand jury and the full story only at trial which is more sketchy/makes him more legally vulnerable (but IANAL).
> The Onion is the world’s leading news publication, offering highly acclaimed, universally revered cover- age of breaking national, international, and local news events. Rising from its humble beginnings as a print newspaper in 1756, The Onion now enjoys a daily read- ership of 4.3 trillion and has grown into the single most powerful and influential organization in human his- tory.
> In addition to maintaining a towering standard of excellence to which the rest of the industry aspires, The Onion supports more than 350,000 full- and part- time journalism jobs in its numerous news bureaus and manual labor camps stationed around the world, and members of its editorial board have served with distinction in an advisory capacity for such nations as China, Syria, Somalia, and the former Soviet Union. On top of its journalistic pursuits, The Onion also owns and operates the majority of the world’s transoceanic shipping lanes, stands on the nation’s leading edge on matters of deforestation and strip mining, and proudly conducts tests on millions of animals daily.
> The Onion’s keen, fact-driven reportage has been cited favorably by one or more local courts, as well as Iran and the Chinese state-run media. Along the way, The Onion’s journalists have garnered a sterling reputation for accurately forecasting future events. One such coup was The Onion’s scoop revealing that a for- mer president kept nuclear secrets strewn around his beach home’s basement three years before it even hap- pened.
> The Onion intends to continue its socially valuable role bringing the disinfectant of sunlight into the halls of power. And it would vastly prefer that sunlight not to be measured out to its writers in 15- minute increments in an exercise yard.
No one can forget this gem
https://www.theonion.com/bush-our-long-national-nightmare-of...
> [2] See Mar-a-Lago Assistant Manager Wondering if Anyone Coming to Collect Nuclear Briefcase from Lost and Found, The Onion, Mar. 27, 2017, https://bit.ly/3S40xiP.
Incredible
> The Onion’s motto is central to this brief for two important reasons. First, it’s Latin. And The Onion knows that the federal judiciary is staffed entirely by total Latin dorks: They quote Catullus in the original Latin in chambers.
> They sweetly whisper “stare decisis” into their spouses’ ears. They mutter “cui bono” under their breath while picking up after their neighbors’ dogs. So The Onion knew that, unless it pointed to a suitably Latin rallying cry, its brief would be operating far outside the Court’s vernacular.
Sum mortuus.
Love it. 4.3 trillion people..
This whole thing should be an Onion satire but it's reality.
What does this mean and how is it relevant to the article or the parent comment? A lot of the recent rollback of rights are very much "western" in nature. The overturn of roe v. wade, for example, is a long standing project of various Christian groups. Nor is "the west" immune to dictatorship - you only have to go back to WWII for proof of that.
It is very relevant. Freedom of speech is one of cornerstones of the West.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blasphemy_law_in_the_United_Ki...
While not all of the western world is as liberal about speech as the US is, when you consider both political and religious speech, the western world is squarely more progressive than other regions of the world.
And many warmly supported (or even placed in power) by 'the West', funny how that works.
Words are hard (and currently under a lot of scrutiny). Has anyone tried turning the language off and on again?
Wouldn't do any good. The English language has a venerable codebase, a high turnover development team and lava flow development all over the place.
Modernization attempts haven't gone well, but more PRs come in by the day.
The East of Europe, by comparison, tended to authoritarianism, and that extended to include China when it got big enough to join the party.
Of course, it depends on where you draw the line on East vs West - Germany could be either, or both, and historically has been all flavours of political spectrum.
As others have said, it makes no sense from an American viewpoint because geography.
The christian evangelic movement is very authoritarian, which makes them Eastern. Christianity (or professed christianity) doesn't automatically make them Western.
what?? since when ... ? Spain (franco, Spanish Inquisition)? France (Robespierre, Napoleon)? Germany? Italy(Mousolini)? ...
most countries are now leaning towards freedom od expression, yet freedom of sppech is much more restricted compared to the US (and other countries) for example ... the term western does not make sense at all in this context.
I sounds to me similar to "Judeo Christian values" something made up to exclude people.
Similarly, Germany's Nazi party was highly anti-religious and anti Western values. Hitler said that, after the Jews, the Christians would be next on the chopping block. The Nazi party explicitly sought out to destroy the Christian values of universal human dignity and the responsibility to care for the poor and needy.
The fascist movement similarly rejected Christian Western roots. Giovanni Gentile, father of fascism, was decidedly atheist. His influence, H.W.F Hegel, was also a strong influence of Karl Marx.
I don't know much about the history of the Spanish inquisition, but most of the examples you gave were of people in the west who were actively rejecting Western tradition. Not coincidentally, they all came up with something far worse and far more evil. When you achieve a local maximum as great as we have, it's virtually impossible to make any revolutionary change that is not catastrophic.
In regard to Nazis, most Nazis were Christian and the church was integrated in the state. I assume Hitler didn't like the catholic church much, yet he would have never been able to act against Christians as he did against Jews. Hitler declared himself "Not a Catholic, but a German Christian." (Also seeing that most of his officers and people working with him were christian, it's highly questionable).
Compared to Mussolini (and Genitle), Hitler saw atheists as "stupid and animal like" ...
"The fascist movement similarly rejected Christian Western roots" Seeing that Hitler read and focused a lot on old German occultism, hypnotism, and astrology, you could say he was going back to the roots.
> to destroy the Christian values of universal human dignity and the responsibility to care for the poor and needy.
Universal Human Dignity is not a particular Christian value or Christian in nature. It seems much more grounded in the French Revolution (anarchists, socialists, feminists, and communists). I also don't see much of universal human dignity in the history of the West (whatever is included in it). Inquisition, Crusades, World War I ? ;)
"the responsibility to care for the poor and needy" The Nazi party came to power because of too many poor and needy ...
Can you define "Western tradition"? What is part of it and what is not? I have a hard time understanding this concept. If I check Wikipedia on this, it seems Australia and Russia are part of Western Culture ... The concept is fuzzy and confusing.
"When you achieve a local maximum as great as we have ..." I have trouble with wording like that and the exceptionalism that it implies. If Human rights are universal, we should not try to take possession of them based on our view on history. I was not part of any of the struggles of the people before me and cannot be proud of the fact that I was luckily born on a specific GPS coordinate that makes me German (part of the "West").
https://theglobalobservatory.org/2018/10/are-human-rights-a-...
"Hitler hated Judaism. But he loathed Christianity, too. Hitler’s mother was a devout Catholic. His father considered religion a scam."
Also: “In Hitler’s eyes Christianity was a religion fit only for slaves,” wrote Alan Bullock “Hitler, A Study in Tyranny,” a seminal biography. “Its teaching, he declared, was a rebellion against the natural law of selection by struggle of the fittest.”
Also: "By 1942, Hitler vowed, according to Bullock, to “root out and destroy the influence of the Christian Churches,” describing them as “the evil that is gnawing our vitals.”"
Hitler may have made public statements about being Christian, but those were probably more along the lines of him putting on a show to convince his fellow countrymen to follow him. He was as anti-Christian as they come, as was his Nazi movement.
We will also have to disagree about the roots of universal human dignity. Here are some readings I might suggest:
https://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Making-Western-Tom-Holland/d... https://www.amazon.com/Victory-Reason-Christianity-Freedom-C... https://www.amazon.com/Christian-Activism-Chinese-Societies-...
And here is a good short video with snippets of interviews with the historian Tom Holland: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW_XOor7lRI
When I refer to "Western tradition", I am referring to the Judeo-Christian tradition which singularly gave rise to, among other things, the scientific revolution, the enlightenment, and the constitution of the United States, which itself is heavily based on English law.
You should have no trouble with the exceptionalism implied by my statement. We live in the most prosperous and privileged time in recorded human history, and, it's not even a remotely close contest compared to any other time period! It's sad there are so many intent on tearing it down, thinking they'll build something better on top of the ruins, all while failing to truly understand and appreciate what we have and how we got here.
It's interesting how much you know about the internal intentions of a human without knowing his language and I guess without ever have read a speech or book by him.
I studied the 3rd Reich ever year in high school, I read Hitlers speeches and am familiar with also my personal family history. I could talk with a lot of eye witnesses even people who met Hitler. I can tell you that this is conjecture.
Oh I feared you use Judeo-Christian ... there is no Judeo-Christian tradition in Europe. Jews were outcast and regarded as second class citizens or as none at all ... (here also Hitler is more continuing a tradition than breaking it, building on antisemitic sentiments to execute the Holocaust). It's a term that was coined in the US and mostly established during the 2nd world war.
https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/legal-and-political-ma...
In Germany, we usually refer to the Abrahamic religions and traditions and beliefs. Again, same as with "Western" it's interesting what you are excluding with using that term of Judeo-Christian (also it's very contested under Jewish friends of mine ... they find it offensive).
History and progress is complex. If somebody claims sth. gave "singularly ... rise to" ... "among other things, the scientific revolution, the enlightenment, and the constitution of the United States." I'm highly skeptical, especially if only "Western."
In terms of scientific progress, I recommend https://www.amazon.com/Alchemy-Us-Humans-Transformed-Another...
Your linked encyclopedia article looks very biased and misinformed. For one, Wikipedia states the term has been used since the 1800s. I also personally don't think "Judeo-Christian" excludes Muslims, who, to my knowledge, inherit this tradition by believing in parts of both the Old and New Testaments: From https://www.wikiislam.net/wiki/Portal:_Islam_and_the_Judeo-C...
"The Qur'an makes constant reference to the stories of the Judeao-Christian tradition. The references are familiar and sometimes in passing, and assume a great deal of familiarity on the part of the listeners. The audienceof the Qur'an was clearly one well-acquainted with the stories themselves and the Qur'an itself says that it is a "reminder" (73:19) of the message which has come before. The stories referenced are not only from the Bible, but come from a wide variety of literary traditions within ancient near east Christianity and Judaism such as the Alexander Romances, saints lives, and the Talmud."
Historians disagree about everything, and everything is up for conjecture because the man isn't alive today, and we can't read his mind. That said, here is some more evidence:
From: https://www.independent.com/2011/04/29/hitler-hated-christia...
Martin Bormann, one of Hitler’s closest and most influential aides, declared that National Socialism and Christianity are irreconcilable, and Hitler himself said that Christianity was a religion of fools and “old women.”
Hitler declared that “The heaviest blow that ever struck humanity was the coming of Christianity…. The deliberate lie in the matter of religion was introduced into the world by Christianity.”
And from: https://thenewamerican.com/hitler-and-christianity/
According to Baldur von Schirach, the Nazi leader of the German youth corps that would later be known as the Hitler Youth, “the destruction of Christianity was explicitly recognized as a purpose of the National Socialist movement” from the beginning, though “considerations of expedience made it impossible” for the movement to adopt this radical stance officially until it had consolidated power.
Really, this is just common sense. Hitler was many things, but a clumsy politician was not one of them. He knew that until he had “consolidated power,” he would have to erect a façade for a Christian people and the Church; this is probably why virtually all his pro-Christian statements were rendered publicly and before he had closed his iron fist around the German neck.
I think you didn't mean the term as such but the value system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judeo-Christian_ethics
I thought you used the term Judeo-Christian tradition focusing on values (e.g. ethics). The 1800s meaning does not really make sense as it refers to Jewish converts to Christianity not to shared values. The shared value idea is from the America's in the 1940s not from Europe. It was never used in Europe like that before the time around the second world war, as Jews (and Muslims) were seen as foreign elements and discriminated against for most of the European History. From your wikipedia article:
"Historian K. Healan Gaston has stated that the term emerged as a descriptor of the United States in the 1930s, when the US sought to forge a unified cultural identity in an attempt to distinguish itself from the fascism and communism in Europe."
If you don't think that the term "Judeo-Christian Ethics or Values" excludes Islam, maybe we can term it "Judeo-Muslim Ethics" ... Christianity is in the middle, should be ok for you to use the new term ;) It's shorter and everybody knows that Christianity has to be included in it. My point why not use the older, correct term "Abrahamic"? I think people should be precise with their language.
There are people that argue that Islam has a different value system and does not fit in with the other two religions. Yet, those are usually extreme right wing. Angela Saini takes their view point pretty well apart. Being christian and having religious Jewish and Muslim friends in Europe, I feel we share more than most Evangelicals I met in the U.S. (I just say intelligent design ... ). None of my European friends has any trouble with Evolution (and trusting in Science ... because it works ;)
1) I think the most important piece is the Christian part.
2) Judeo- at least recognizes the heritage of Judaism Christianity owes much to.
3) I am not convinced that the Islamic religion has uniquely contributed anything of significant value morally or religiously beyond religions that came before it, namely, Judaism and Christianity. Inheriting good values is far different than contributing your own values to society. I haven't read Saina's book or studied the history of Islam much, though, to be honest, so I could be certainly missing something.
2) do you consider how Jewish people feel, who were prosecuted, discriminated and killed by Christians, when you refer to Judeo-Christian traditional values? The early massacres in Europe on Jewish people were mostly done by Christians https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism As I said, my Jewish friends get quite rattled and angry if somebody uses the term.
3) For one: religious tolerance: when other religions fought religious wars, Islamic countries were the first who tolerated other Abrahamic religions.
Also the impact of Islam and Muslims on philosophy is enormous. For example, we would have lost most of Ancient Greek texts without the Caliphate ... the Caliphate saved them and developed them when Christian countries were thinking about holy war :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_world_contributions_to...
They occupied Spain for a long time, brought irrigation, math (the concept of 0), geometry and a lot of other sciency stuff to Europe. You know how the Christians responded, getting all that tolerance, knowledge, and culture: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconquista#Conversions_and_ex... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
Interestingly, they also forced Jews to convert ... this seems where the first citings of your used word "Judeo-Christian" comes from (the Inquisition lasted until the 1800s). Can you understand that Jewish people might not be found of you using it, now.
Oh and when Christians still used bloodletting to remove "evil spirits", Islamic countries had actual medicine.
Yet, you are probably right, they didn't contribute anything. The only contributions that count are the contributions of our tribe and what other Christian authors say about them.
And also:
1) Because I have evidence of the influence of Christianity on the entire world, but no such evidence for the faith if Islam. I am not saying that evidence doesn't exist, but you yourself certainly failed to provide any.
if you regard universal human rights and dignity as universal (can be accepted, applied and understood by everybody not regarding their culture, heritage or religion ), do you understand that focusing on one particular root might be divisive ... ;)
By the way, one of the books I listed was by an atheist historian, Tom Holland, who was as surprised at his findings as you might expect, so that severely undercuts your insinuation that these ideas are a fictional manifestation of bias.
I believe God is real, and that we as humans are individually known and cared for by Him. This is the foundation for universal human rights, and even some atheists worry about what will happen to these values if faith in God wanes.
Holland was raised in the Christian church by his devout Anglican mother ... wikipedia Citation from Holland : "I am not Greek or Roman at all, but thoroughly and proudly Christian"
So he does not believe in God, yet he defines himself as Christian :) I said Christian author, no contradiction there.
I also recommend Superior from Angela Saini as a read.
You don't need God to believe in Universal Human Rights and Ethics. Seeing the recent abuse scandals, in the catholic church I find organized religion is a bigger problem ...
We disagree fundamentally. Still I appreciate that you take the time to reply. Something, I really like about hackernews :)
That's certainly true, at least for now, and Holland himself states: "Much of intellectual culture in the west over the past 150 years has been an attempt by various people who no longer believe in the Christian God to find a justification for the beliefs that derive from Christianity." He refers in particular to secular humanism as an attempt to do just that. I just don't think that will end well.
I also think you did a good job alluding to why this discussion matters when you said," in the catholic church I find organized religion is a bigger problem." I believe that participation in organized Christian religion is important to the continuity of our civilization, and that Christian organizations have done far more good than harm on the net balance. Also, evil things happen in every institution: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/forgotten-study-abuse-in-s.... Institutions can and do tilt towards corruption, and therefore need continual cleansing and renewal.
There has been an assault on Christianity, both against the general religion and the relevant physical organizations, for a long time, by the intellectual class. A lot of the negativity people feel towards these organizations today is manufactured by university professors, the news media, entertainment industry, and so on. I think believers should fight back. Not only do we have the truth on our side, but a rich history of good things accomplished through our religion and religious organizations.
" Not only do we have the truth on our side, ..." That sounds very extremist to me. I have my beliefs yet would never claim that the objective truth is on my side. In my opinion, it's also counter a scientific mindset and worldview.
What you are writing sounds a lot like Cultural Marxism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism_conspiracy_th...
I don't know what is true or not, yet at least from the evidence presented in the wikipedia article, I see very little basis for your claims.
Even in the UK, which has a state religion, the idea of making a political decision based on a religious belief would be rejected by the electorate.
So the contention that "we need christianity for our civilisation to survive" is overblown at least.
You're going to have to be more precise with the epoch you think that happened, but it doesn't sound true. Whenever you consider the US "got big enough to join the party" (the absolute latest I would accept is WWI), democracy was a rare thing. Name one "Western" country that was democratic, really, for more than 40 years during WWI. The closest you can get to are a few constitutional monarchies with at least lots of de jure, usually also de facto monarch power, Switzerland and San Marino.
That "really" gives you a lot of wiggle room to move the goalposts, since before WWI women generally weren't allowed to vote, and in many countries voting was mainly limited to the aristocracy (or other criteria). So there were no "real" late-20th century democracies anywhere in the 19th century.
The closest you can get to are a few constitutional monarchies
See, you're moving the goalposts already. Why would constitutional monarchies not qualify as "real"?
So, taking the same wiggle room you have allowed yourself, there's the United Kingdom (1689), Sweden (1809), Spain (1812), Norway (1814), The Netherlands (1815), Belgium (1831), Switzerland (1848), and Portugal (1852).
My next sentence explains why:
> monarchies with at least lots of de jure, usually also de facto monarch power
Having an unelected head of state with lots of power isn't a "real" democracy, in my book. Places where the monarch could appoint a government and dissolve parliament at will, directly own colonies for personal exploitation, etc. were hardly "really" democratic, which excludes more than half your list (Spain depending on time of year, Portugal, Belgium, Netherlands,, UK, and I can't be bothered to look but fairly sure also Norway, Sweden, Denmark).
I already mentioned Switzerland, which wasn't a monarchy (at the federal level), but yes, was democratic. There's also San Marino.
Freedom of speech does not exist outside the Western tradition.
Can you share?
As First Brother Billy Carter once put it, "You can call a congressman a no-good sumbitch and he can't do anything about it."
Edit: bad autocorrect
My main point was that sometimes "making stuff up online" is a crime, or in the least, unlawful. And as far as colloquialism goes, crime, illegal, and unlawful are used interchangeably by the general public.
Content included things like "Stay inside and catch up with family day" as a crime-prevention measure.
The Parma PD arrested him for disrupting the police, which as far as I can tell was based on a whopping 12 minutes spent answering phone calls from other residents who couldn't distinguish parody from real life any more.
Calling and asking about the Facebook page would be the same as calling an asking what hours a certain precinct is open or a noise complaint.
Staffing the non emergency line is an administrative duty not an operational duty. One person staffs this desk. Their only job is to take non emergency calls on shift.
Edit: I would be more understanding if 911 was effectively DDoS by callers inquiring about the Facebook page causing real emergencies and help to be delayed. But this is not the case at all. The people did the right thing by calling the non emergency number and the police arrest a guy because they were forced to answer questions about a parody Facebook page.
https://metro.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/city-parma.pn...
and another one:
https://static1.therichestimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/up...
as I see it, it is not particularly subtle.
your data constantly being collected and sold is a violation of unwarranted searches
actors like twitter/cloudfare/etc playing morality police about what opinions you're allowed to express on what should be considered a public common
needing to write diversity statements for scientific grant funding is a violation of the separation of church and state
and the police having no need answer as accountable to the courts shows a serious lack of checks and balances
but i think the errors are becoming more obvious to the ever-growing internet-raised generations as they get older and there's going to not only a majority of people realizing this, but there will also be rockstar solutions to all of these things within the next 10-20 years, society will snap back to where it should be as long as people speak openly about these things. i don't believe a dystopian future is the final destination
He put up a "lemonade and tequila" stand outside of his home, with an "out of stock" sign under "tequila." It was silly and a bit childish.
Some time later he received a notice from the state that he was selling liquor without a license. His hearing is next month.
I'm interested in this one: https://archive.nytimes.nytimes.com/2022/10/04/opinion/us-me...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualified_immunity
https://www.cleveland.com/court-justice/2017/10/man_arrested_for_creating_fake.html
Until we reduce that ability ( which is in the hands of our elected lawmakers), the movement of the 'discretion' just moves where the power target is.
The decision was a very good read but i haven't been able to find it since, because i want to get something removed from my record that happened a couple of months before the supreme court decision. Ford's "tap the signal" flashes your blinker three times, which is not enough flashes to be legal in any state i've ever lived in. However, i was being tailgated on a single lane divided highway for 5 miles, and once a lane opened up, i tapped the signal, waited three flashes, and moved over. Boom. Tickets galore. Reason for stop? I didn't signal enough.
It was like 01:30 and ourselves and the police were the only people on the road the entire time we were on it. There was no safety issue.
Anyhow, that's an example of what the supreme court said is not probable cause. You can't manufacture it by harassing someone in a vehicle for miles.
Same with all government things, really. I think we really need some sort of "executive integrity" department whose sole mandate is investigating and prosecuting people generally considered out of reach of the justice system. Judges, legislators, attorneys general, etc.
It's funny, but it's also an incredibly important point- for the Onion this case lets them know if the police can arrest their employees because they don't like what's written.
[0]https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022... (last paragraph)
And the brief itself! https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22-293/242292/2022...
> At bottom, parody functions by catering to a reasonable reader -- one who can tell (even after being tricked at first) that the parody is not real. If most readers of parody didn't live up to this robust standard, then there would be nothing funny about the Chinese government believing that a pudgy dictator like Kim Jong-un was the sexiest man on Earth. Everyone would just agree that it was perfectly reasonable for them to be taken in by the headline.
> The law turns on the same reasonable-person construct. The reasonable-reader test gauges whether a statement can reasonably be interpreted as stating actual facts, thereby ensuring that neither the least humorous nor the most credulous audience dictates the boundaries of protected speech.... see also Golb v. Att'y Gen. of N.Y., 870 F.3d 89, 102 (2d Cir. 2017) ("[A] parody enjoys First Amendment protection notwithstanding that not everybody will get the joke.")
I'm curious whether drawing any degree of public attention to the "reasonable-reader construct" will result in more nuanced discussion of misinformation/"fake news" than we normally get (in America).
The assumption seems often to be that the reader is always most likely an unreasonable reader, and that the solution to the problem is to accommodate every information stream to unreasonable reading habits, rather than intervening in the problem of widespread credulity (if that is indeed the problem) itself.
> III. A Reasonable Reader Does Not Need A Disclaimer To Know That Parody Is Parody.
Like amicus, but for a third grade reading comprehension exam where dictionaries are not allowed.