Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (78335)	10/17/2004 11:15:42 AM
From: Lane3	Respond to of 793845

The criminal justice system doesn't use all means of preventing murder because it doesn't have the authority to do so. Exactly!! And it doesn't have the authority to do so because, recognizing feasibility and cost issues, we tacitly accept a certain murder volume rather than give it the authority. all murders are wrong, period, and law enforcement is obligated to stop all murders. Of course all murders are wrong. But no, law enforcement is not obligated to stop all murders but rather to investigate and prosecute all murders. That's a big difference. We're never going to stop all murders, terrorist or otherwise. We authorize law enforcement to expend every effort to get justice in each case. But we know in our guts that the cost of prevention is too high so we don't authorize prevention beyond this informal threshold. We have authorized greater prevention in the case of terrorism than we have for ordinary murder. Getting terrorism outside the criminal justice system and authorizing war actions did that. I think that's a good thing because terrorist murder has different characteristics, which require different tools. But even with the additional tools and moneys, we aren't fully committed to preventing it any more than we are fully committed to preventing murder. Nor can we be. Nor should we be. Anyways, knowing our history, this conversation is going to descend into circularity because of the definition of a term, and we'll end up nowhere. :P I don't think we're having any terminology problems this time, knock on wood. Murder is murder. Terrorism is murder, too. "Prevent" and "stop" are synonyms. "Tolerable" might be problem... <g> In this case, if we aren't going do whatever it takes to prevent it, we are implicitly and effectively tolerating/accepting it.