Posted on 11/01/2012 1:25:42 PM PDT by Red Badger
Police: Mom Knocked On Man's Door For Help, Was Turned Away
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) – The search for two missing boys on Staten Island has ended tragically.
The NYPD spent more than two days searching a marshy area off Father Capodanno Boulevard.
The boys, 4 and 2, were with their mother trying to leave the area during the height of the storm Monday when their SUV hit a tree and stalled.
Glenda Moore and her boys got out of the car and went to a nearby home looking for help, CBS 2′s Emily Smith reported.
Moore knocked on a man’s door for help but he said no and turned her away, Smith reported.
Moore was then clinging to life — hanging on to a railing — when a surge of water came up and took her 4-year-old son Connor, and her 2-year-old son Brandon — who came right out of her arms, Smith reported.
When the water receded, the boys were nowhere to be found.
Their bodies were found Thursday morning in a wooded marsh.
Moore was on the scene when police confirmed her worst fears, Smith reported.
Sandy has been blamed for at least 37 deaths in New York City.
If the account in this story is true, the man who turned her and her children away is beneath contempt.
The Post story says that she had her two kids on the roof of her car and that her car was then washed away.
J6P, which one of these reporters, in your opinion is lying?
Or has the mother told two completely different stories?
Or has "the fog of war" descended on the details?
I agree with AC, there is something here that is very fishy either with the reportage or with the story being reported.
Fair enough. I read this post after I wrote post 42.
The article I read said the children were swept away and then she asked for help.
I am so sorry for this family, but how many days of warning did they get before the storm hit?
Not a big fan of stupid.
Let me give you an alternate scenario, which might change your mind.
Suppose the man opens his door and lets the woman and her children in. Then, a few minutes later, three of her thug boyfriends show up and she forcibly opens the door a crack and they force their way in.
They proceed to perform a horrific home invasion, and since all law enforcement is preoccupied with the storm, there is no hope of rescue for the man, nor even a hope of justice, as evidence is washed away by the storm.
I have personally been scammed by low-lifes using children as props.
It could even have been the plan in this case, except the storm thwarted her by sweeping away the children before the thugs showed up.
Everything in life is not what it seems on the surface.
This story smells to high heaven.
This occurred at 6pm Monday, well after the surge began and right at the time Sandy made landfall.
For those unfamiliar, that location is on the ocean-facing side of the island. It is maybe 250 feet from the boardwalk of a duneless beach. There is zero natural barrier between the ocean and the road.
You could not have picked a worse time or a worse place to be driving than there.
There shouldn't have been anyone in those houses at all, they are almost all ranch style homes.
It is amazing to me that the children were found so close by, I would have assumed that they were swept out to sea.
Poor little guys.
I'm re-reading The fountain Head. You should find a copy and read the account of the initial meeting between the protagonist, Roark and the sculptor Steve Mallory and why it is that Roark helps him.
Boiled down; the reason Ayn Rand "followers" would help this lady and her children (or anyone else for that matter) is not because of pity, but because the human spirit to "live" is amongst the highest and best of values and virtue.
Now there will be those who are familiar with the character Mallory who will say "but Mallory had given up the will to live - doesn't that contradict?". True. But Mallory possessed something else of value - namely that he was perhaps one of the best sculptors in the world. Thus, Roark helped him out of his own self-interest - namely he needed the best sculpture he could get.
So how does does one tie these together? Again, Rand posits that life - and the desire to live it to it's fullest is a virtue. Also, ability - and the love of ones work is also a virtue.
Where Rand or one of here devotees might NOT lift a finger to help someone is: 1. that someone is not interested in living (either for their own enjoyment or their own purpose). 2. they are actively squandering their ability to produce and are instead seeking to "loot" both life (the will to live autonomously) and goods from those who do produce.
Yes, she "saw nothing wrong with it." How virtuous. She did resist the idea that there was such a notion as a "moral duty," however, particularly when it conflicted with one's self interest.
Well, she didn't belive in God, so she couldn't prove the necessity/value of a moral duty.
This is a huge gap in her philosophical system.
I think of as being kind of like calculus.
In calculus, you learn how to calculate the load on a parabolic dam, for example. No real dam is a perfect parabola, though... because no real dam site will accomodate a perfect parabola.
That doesn't mean calculus is useless for calculating the load on an actual dam. It simply means that finite-element means must be used to account for all the detailed forces on a real dam, and calculus is used on each element separately. Computer power is used to come up with an actual value for the force, but the computer is just acting as an accounting device.
My personal theory is that Ayn Rand eliminated God from her thinking for the same reason that a calculus textbooks analyze only highly simplified cases, like parabolic dams. They oversimplify the real world, but they do so to introduce the student to a very useful way of thinking, useful in its own right.
Obviously, we can't know how God felt about this. I'm glad I wasn't in Ms. Rand's place when I had to face Him on 6 March 1982.
I knew of I scrolled down I was going to get a better picture of the story.
Still, it’ll probably haunt him that he could have helped one more but was unable.
I'm not a lawyer, but this link suggests that depraved indifference only applies to reckless conduct that the guilty party engages in - such as driving while drunk, or firing weapons wildly.
There are three parts of the test for this offense. One requires the defendant to cause the death. In this case the defendant hasn't done so; the children drowned. Another requires the defendant to engage in reckless conduct. In this case the defendant did nothing. The third part requires that the court finds that the defendant acted with depraved indifference to human life. In this case this is probably true. But all three parts must be true to convict.
Being an a-hole is not a crime. Leaving someone without help so that later on that person dies is not a crime either - humans generally cannot see the future. One could think of a contrived case where someone is in imminent danger and you can help. For example, a robber is about to stab a child and you can shoot the robber in time. There is no law that would require you to do that. I think one of the reasons for that is that the law wouldn't be enforceable. A passerby "will not notice" the robbery three feet away; a homeowner "will not hear" the knock on the door if these actions can expose them to a charge of murder. In case of assault that is already likely today: a pimp pulls a gun on his worker; you protect the prostitute and wound the pimp; then they both say that they were standing still and you are just one of them raysis, like GZ, walking around and looking for a minority person to shoot.
But that's just general thinking in that direction. I do not believe the man actually denied entry to a woman in distress. He may have rejected the idea of swimming in cold water, at night, trying to find someone - even a platoon of Olympic swimmers in dry suits wouldn't find anyone in rushing black water. As other posters said, there are several versions of the story, and there is no need to rush to judgement. I'm sure the death of two people will be properly investigated by professionals. At this very moment the guiltiest person in sight is the mother who failed to take her children to a safe place ahead of time. Everything else just failed to salvage a barely survivable situation.
I'm certainly not saying I have all the answers, but as a Christian, I dare say that any weltanschauung that is not God centered is fatally flawed. Having said that, I would also contend that any human's perspective is, by definition imperfect. My biggest disagreement with Rand is in the nature of moral imperatives and our duties as human beings. Mine and many others are (as we envision them) defined by God, whereas those of Rand and others in her camp are defined by self.
I'm re-reading Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments. You should find a copy...;-)
And Rand was quite correct on that point.
It seems to me that the problem is that thinking about the role of government must necessarily be part of ones weltanschauung, and as long as people who are part of government want to take to themselves the responsibilities and characteristics of God, we end up with a lot of dirty business.
Just look at Obama, who not only thinks of himself as god-like, but who has succeeded in convincing a lot of third parties that he's god-like, as well.
I read almost every word Ayn Rand wrote for public consumption when I was in my twenties. I have always been a believing Christian, as well. Ayn Rand didn't believe in God because she hadn't invented Him as part of her philosophical framework. She had not "derived Him from first principles" as it were.
Personally, I don't see that much of a problem with Objectivism and Chritianity, but then I have recourse to the rather personalized rationalization/apologia I described in #49. Whether any other Objectivists - or Christians, for that matter - would take my theory seriously is highly dubious I'm sure.
So if you saw Jerry Sandusky molesting a boy in the shower, you’d have just walked on by, if it meant your coaching career?
Of course not. Killing Sandusky under those circumstances would be not only be in my self interest, it would be a true pleasure.
L
Of course, for now, the law would be on your side since pedophilia is still illegal. But, let's say Nambla has their way, and the age of consent was lowered to 10, 11 etc. and Sandusky's victim insisted it was consensual?
the problem with abandoning the notion of a(n absolute) moral imperative is that it leaves such judgments up to the interpretation of every person, and/or the laws of man, which we know has, in different societies permitted the torching of Jews, the murder of the unborn, etc. You can argue, as I'm sure Rand would, that those actions impede on the rights of others (i.e. the Jews or the unborn), but if we don't recognize an unalienable source for what we accept as unalienable rights, then by definition, those rights are as malleable as those in power wish them to be.
Sandusky’s “self interest” involved directly harming another human being, something which Rand specifically rejected. But you knew that.
I do not suffer fools gladly. Indeed at my age I try not to suffer them at all. Therefore this conversation is over.
I’m not a lawyer either, but I do watch a lot of “Law and Order: SVU.”
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