Many of us were shocked by the scene of Tea Party activists attacking a disabled man with Parkinson’s disease who held a sign calling for health care reform. One man threw money at Robert A. Letcher, 60, and began screaming uncontrollably that him. The man has now been identified as Chris Reichert and he has issued an apology.
Letcher, a former nuclear engineer, suffers from Parkinson’s, was attacked while sitting in front of Rep. Mary Jo Kilroy’s district office. Since my father died after years with Parkinson’s (here and here), the video was particularly disturbing to watch Letcher dealing with such bullies.
Reichert now says “I snapped. I absolutely snapped and I can’t explain it any other way.”
He has added “I made a donation (to a local Parkinson’s disease group) and that starts the healing process.”
For the story, click here.
Byron:
The only thing objective about morality, which we invent and modify with every generation, is that for it to last it must foster an overall societal benefit. Once morality leaves that plane, it becomes either immoral or amoral. Other than that, we get to create good and evil all the time. I give you as an example of slipping off the moral slope, the RCC’s teaching that condom use in sub-Saharan Africa is “immoral” despite more than 3 million preventable deaths from AIDS annually. See any problem with overall societal benefit there? Think that church-conjured directive is moral by virtue of its claimed authorship by a “higher power”?
Mespo:
If morals derive from the superior mind there is no standard only what the superior mind determines. Doesn’t that lead to subjective values based on the idea of morality in the mind of the “superior intellect”? How then can there ever be an objective morality?
Mike:
You need to take a nap.
Byron:
See, what I mean in the post above. Tootie’s always right on cue.
Bdaman: yes, the leftists want to make it seem that only the right-wing has kooks. This is because the left is institutionally dishonest.
It used to be quite successful at doing smearing the right when the left owned all the avenues of media for nearly 50 years (for most of my life). But now there is the internet, cable TV new, and talk radio. With the advent of these opportunities, the left has had a harder time brainwashing people through the media.
This enrages them, naturally. And that is why democrats are desperate to shut down talk radio, muzzle the internet, and pretend that news isn’t news unless democrats ( or his “holiness” in the White House) says so.
What he is saying is not that morals are relative, but that morals derive from the superior mind, and the inferior and shallow one seeks to equate their sensibilities by judging and condemning the superior moral intellect. An apt definition of Tootie when compared to Mike A, I should think.
Mespo:
So what Mr. Nietzsche is saying is that if one has moral judgments on the nature of good and evil one is intellectually shallow? Never having read any of his works the quote you have presented appears to appeal to moral relativism.
If I am understanding this correctly what he is saying is that there is no difference between Sharia Law and our Constitution and anyone who would make a value judgment on the relative merits or demerits of each system is shallow intellectually. Is that right or am I missing something?
Woosty:
The people that lost money at Enron were told to only buy Enron stock for their retirement plans, that should have been a tell. Madoff was known to the SEC many years before and people on wall st had some inclination that he was up to no good. When you have large sums of money you need to be very careful how and with whom you invest. The people that Madoff ripped off were not stupid nor were they novices to the investing world. I have more sympathy for the people at Enron though.
“. . . yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.”
John Locke
“Friedrich.” Damn spell corrector.
Mike A:
“Generalisms are not evidence of insight but of intellectual shallowness.”
**************
I thought that line rang both true and familiar and so it is — with support from Fredrick Nietzsche in his masterwork, Beyond Good & Evil:
The practice of judging and condemning morally, is the favourite revenge of the intellectually shallow on those who are less so, it is also a kind of indemnity for their being badly endowed by nature, and finally, it is an opportunity for acquiring spirit and BECOMING subtle—malice spiritualises. They are glad in their inmost heart that there is a standard according to which those who are over-endowed with intellectual goods and privileges, are equal to them, they contend for the “equality of all before God,” and almost NEED the belief in God for this purpose. It is among them that the most powerful antagonists of atheism are found. If any one were to say to them “A lofty spirituality is beyond all comparison with the honesty and respectability of a merely moral man”—it would make them furious, I shall take care not to say so. I would rather flatter them with my theory that lofty spirituality itself exists only as the ultimate product of moral qualities, that it is a synthesis of all qualities attributed to the “merely moral” man, after they have been acquired singly through long training and practice, perhaps during a whole series of generations, that lofty spirituality is precisely the spiritualising of justice, and the beneficent severity which knows that it is authorized to maintain GRADATIONS OF RANK in the world, even among things—and not only among men.
You “think” in good company, my friend.
Joe:
I’ll bet you have been knonw to do that once in awhile. 🙂
Joe,
You don’t sound like someone who has been playing in the … dirt.
Welcome aboard.
“Nations go crazy. It’s terrifying when it happens, especially to a major nation with the ability to project its craziness outward…
…
Am I the only one who senses it might be America’s turn to go nuts? I don’t mean a family squabble, like the Boomer-Hippie-Vietnam uproar that was essentially an adolescent rebellion against bad parenting in the national household. I mean a genuine descent into madness, with the very high probability of persecution, violence, murder, and mayhem — all more or less sponsored by various authorities and institutions.
The Republican Party is doing a great job in provoking such a dangerous episode by making consensual governance impossible in a time of awful practical problems and challenges. They’re in the process, right now, of transforming themselves from the party of “no” to the party of no decency, no common sense, no ideas, no conception of the public interest, and no respect for the traditions that they pretend to stand for, like due process of law. In the days since the passage of health care reform, they’ve gone as far as inciting mobs to violence against their fellow congressmen and senators — bricks thrown through windows, death threats made, coffins placed in the yards of their adversaries. One day soon, somebody with a gun or an explosive device, someone with a very sketchy sense-of-self, and perhaps a recent record of personal failure and humiliation, is going to sacrifice himself to become the Tea Party’s first martyr by shooting up a shopping mall in some blue district.
…”
http://kunstler.com/blog/2010/03/our-turn.html
Lot of bullies in America … each party and movement has some … this is just another bully who, when challenged, started sniveling. That’s what bullies do.
After all the videos that have gone viral, I’m amazed that these fools don’t notice they’re being filmed but then, I guess, that’s part of being a fool.
“I don’t think Marlon Brando is someone I would rely on for moral advice.”
hahaha! well I almost didn’t put it up there for that very reason but still, I agree with the statement regardless.
I don’t think I am promoting altruism as much as I am NOT promoting it’s opposite. There are a lot of very responsible people who end up in dire straights by no fault of thier own. Ask any retiree that Enron took down, that Madof ripped off…That were smoked into buying flipped and overpriced properties.That ended up in credit card debacles because of predatory lending behaviours. People that behave in responsible ways have no choice but to rely on the information given to them by professionals. They operate within the proscribed societal matrix. Why have a society at all if it is only set up for the benefit of a few honkin heavyweights?
Maybe that man doesn’t have health insurance because he came down with Parkinsons. Maybe getting sick was a good enuff reason for the Insurance Corporation to drop him.
“Battle not with monsters lest ye become a monster; and if you gaze into the abyss the abyss gazes into you.” Nietzsche won’t get me into trouble 😉
Tootie, I enjoy opposing views and arguments, but I am growing weary of reading your constant references to liberals as “evil.” Generalisms are not evidence of insight but of intellectual shallowness. The ability to vent anger through repeated ridicule of those with whom one disagrees does not establish a flair for argument; it merely means that one is angry. I keep looking through your posts for a scintilla of an idea, and abandon the effort when the negativity becomes overwhelming. And I won’t bother to ask how it is that you have developed the ability to discern the intentions and motives of strangers. But perhaps your churlishness is only the voice of the frustration you must feel from having been burdened with the duty of judging the moral character of all with whom you come in contact.
In case any of you are interested you can now watch the documentary The Death of a President on Hulu.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/121903/death-of-a-president
Woosty’s still a Cat and Byron.
To what end? Exactly when do those of us that produce and pay get to stop? An engineer today a crack user tomorrow, the Chinese Governemtn the next day? The altruism is great but has been misplaced and abused for several genrations now and the flaw in the great progressive plan is that at the end of the day those of us that pay will eventually quit and I want to know where the rest of you plan on getting the money to pay for all of this altruism. And just so you don’t think ill of my, I’ll explain further, If my neighbor’s house burns down I will go over and help them that night as much as I can because I care. What I will not do is pay to rebuild his house for him. (re: New Orleans, Haiti etc..) I feeel for that man with Parkinsons, nut why doesn’t he have health insurance? This was not explained, what if it is because he was fired for sexually assualting the female emloyees? Does he then have a right to our help and support? Who gets to choose and when does it stop? The fundamental divide seems to be that you believe that simply because one has a need they have a right to our support etc.. Please name one entitlement program that government has ever put forth that works? Social Security? Medicare/Aid? not one, unless you happen to think that all of those old and helpless people living in abject poverty is a good thing?
Woosty:
He got benefit from his life’s work as well; he was paid a fair wage for a fair days work. He is owed nothing else. It is up to him to put money away for retirement and to take proper decisions for his future. It is not my fault that he made poor decisions. Why didn’t he buy disability insurance? Or put a little extra money away? Or pay off his house early?
Actions have consequences and it is not the responsibility of others to pay for a person’s poor choices.
Corporations should be treated the same way; they should not be bailed out when they make poor decisions.
I don’t think Marlon Brando is someone I would rely on for moral advice.