Posted on 03/12/2005 12:54:00 PM PST by null and void
There was considerable discussion of this thesis on the Atlanta shooting thread, Although we never reached a consensus, we did agree that the shooting thread wasn't the time or the place to debate this.
Here's a place. Anyone got the time?
Two camps, the correct one - mine- says that
Words are far deadlier than gunpowder.
This camp can site multiple examples, From the qu'ran to to the Communist Manifesto.
Example: The Supremes wrote some words in 1963, that seeing a suspect in restraints prejudices a jury. These words are a direct root cause of the recent deaths in Atlanta.
Example: The words of the legal fiction that a 51 year old 110 lb woman can do any job a 6' 2" 250 solid muscle man can, are the words that are yet another direct root cause of this sad incident.
Example: In 1960, Rachel Carson wrote some words in Silent Spring. Those words inspired other words that banned DDT. Half a million people a year needlessly die of malaria as a direct result of these words.
Example: Roe v. Wade. Just words. How many dead babies? Only God knows.
Example: Mein Kampf. Mere words on paper. Words that directly lead to the murder of 12 million Jews, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Communists, Mental Defectives, and Priests, as well as untold combat dead and civilian losses.
The other camp -the whistling in the dark camp- blindly says
"Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me..."
Although they don't site any actual examples of how words can't possibly cause harm, this camp's position is summarized by:
The Koran, the words of a communist--they don't actually *do* the killing. They may inspire people to do it, but there is always an intervening cause--the actual picking up of a knife or gun and carrying out the murder. ~ proud American in Canada
Total focus on the immediate cause, total blindness to the underlying root causes.
In other words guns don't kill people, bullets kill people.
Uh, I mean bleeding kills people...
I find this oddly like the 'thought' processes of a liberal, utter cognitive disconnect between cause and effect.
Ping...
She shouldn't have been alone in handling the prisoner. The prisoner should have been cuffed,etc.etc.etc.
Gunpowere can kill tens of thousands. But words can wound deeper than any bullet, and if made law, words can subjugate millions and billions of people. Until the gunpowder is used to overthrow the despots.
I've said some wacky things at times... but no one ever made it into a thread.
No I'm not. The most critical thing to me is violent criminals not being hand cuffed or shackled. I don't see what the problem would be in having see through plastic cuffs like the kind they give to protestors.
Gunshots don't kill people, a depletion of oxygen in the brain kills people.
Yet.
What words are they?
Well you are correct of course. It is STILL true, the pen is mightier than the sword.
The funny part of cedar's silliness, was that it started out as some kind of argument for free speech, in defense of the person (now banned) who was withholding judgment on whether the murder of the judge was truly horrendous, until she found out if the judge was liberal.
A bullet doesn't fire by itself. It needs a person pulling the trigger of the firearm that causes the bullet to move in a direction.
Is you google broken?
Meet The Supremes.............
Meet the question..... which words of the Supremes in 1963?
The Supreme Court, ya big knucklehead!
;^)
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