Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

To: A'elian' nation
Practically speaking the government types that I have encountered that believed their paper shuffling or worse represented a higher calling or some sacred activity tend to be in the ‘law enforcement’ area and the regulatory bureaucracies. I recall a conversation with the deputy JAG of Army material Command in which he (a full colonel became visibly angry with my determined assertion that a citizen did not have any obligation to tell any government agent anything beyond having to identify oneself. It just infuriated him that a government employee would believe something so blasphemous as that citizens have rights that trump the desires of bureaucrats uniformed and ununiformed. The ‘right to not say anything’ was to him enraging. Another person i know who spent many years working for the civil investigations arm of EPA truly believes she was doing the lord's work snooping and harassing business owners and individuals Americans about such horrors as ‘improper disposal of motor oil’. He finest hour was helping leading the charge on the vermiculite investigation which helped push W G Grace into bankruptcy. The trace elements of asbestos in various products Grace marketed was in her eyes an abomination and a vast menace to the public health. She got really angry when i said her activities were positively damaging the financial property of all the stock and bond holders of that company in the name of some theoretical notion of potential exposure to a carcinogen.”You are putting money before people’, she fairly yelled. “No, I consider the rights of property ownership to be a foundational right that supports all the others and that is what you are attacking.” She never could get that idea.
69 posted on 11/23/2012 4:02:28 PM PST by robowombat
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 43 | View Replies ]


To: robowombat
Did you see this part of the original article?
In The Righteous Mind, moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt presents volumes of research demonstrating the primacy of moral intuitions which “reason” is then used to buttress. It includes his in-person interviews where, of the 1,620 times that the interviewees were told of a repulsive story that explicitly stated no one was harmed, 38%, tojustify their revulsion at the outcome, nonetheless said that someone was harmed. The interviewees’ moral intuitions immediately led them to condemn the repulsive story, claim there was a victim, and then use their strategic reasoning to support their position rather than truly consider whether there was a victim.
In other words: 38% of the interviewees, when they heard a story that contained actions they considered morally repugnant, invented victimization when none existed.

That's enough to make for a fertile greenhouse for a lotta myths.

137 posted on 11/23/2012 7:32:25 PM PST by danielmryan
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 69 | View Replies ]

Free Republic
Browse · Search
News/Activism
Topics · Post Article


FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson