You seem to be using the terms "left leaning person" and "right leaning person" when you actually mean "normal people" and "sociopaths." Left and right have nothing to do with it.
List the rational arguments in favor of the so-called "right-leaning" point of view (OP's term, not mine) with respect to the Pretti killing. Spoiler: there are no such arguments, effective or otherwise. To apologists it looks like a Rorschach test; to normal people it looks like a snuff film, brought to us by the same studio that is now distributing child pornography.
Meanwhile, it's possible to favor free enterprise, (genuinely) smaller government, low taxes, free trade, and other so-called "right-leaning" perspectives without joining a slack-jawed personality cult that demands that you deny the evidence of your own eyes.
In my country, lifting a finger against an officer on duty will land you in big trouble. If you got a gun on you and you resist arrest, like happened in this case, you are absolutely getting shot. I can’t really understand you Americans. What do you think an armed person reacting to arrest is going to do with that gun given the chance? If you were a cop would you take chances?? If you did you wouldn’t be here complaining about anything as you would be dead.
1. In the United States, we have Constitutional rights, including the right to carry a gun with proper permits. Like other rights, the state can't murder you for having a gun on your person, but if they have a credible reason to think that you are an immediate threat, they can shoot you. The legal standard for "immediate threat" does not cover this scenario because (1) Pretti wasn't resisting (2) the police stripped him of his gun before they executed him and (3) the agents approached Pretti for no reason at all; Pretti was clearly peacefully recording with his hands clearly visible.
> If you were a cop would you take chances
I wouldn't be a cop if I was afraid that every person with a cell phone might shoot me with a gun, or if I was afraid that every soccer mom in a car might try to run me over. And while American policing is riddled with accountability problems, it's important to emphasize that the crushing majority of American police can manage much riskier circumstances without murdering anyone--it seems to be exclusively the agencies under the Department of Homeland Security that behave like secret police on a regular basis.
Reflexes. When you're attacked without provocation by several people, you put out your hands involuntarily to fend them off. When you are knocked down, you involuntarily try to get back up. On icy ground you are also trying to maintain your balance.
You are demanding that the victim maintain a clear head under stressful conditions, while holding his attackers to no such standard. But you knew that.
If the "different values" are whether or not the state should be allowed to execute someone for peacefully exercising their right to film agents in public, then yeah that constitutes sociopathy in my mind. I'm okay with being intolerant of such sociopaths. You may also find my distaste for Nazism to be "intolerant". Guilty as charged, I guess.
Yes. Karl Popper's 'Paradox of Tolerance' applies. TL,DR: tolerating intolerance turns out to be a bad idea.
Glancing at your user page, this should be an exercise in preaching to the choir. You do understand that the only reason the Republicans in the US support Israel is because embracing fundamentalist Christian eschatology gets them votes they don't have to work for. Right?
No, actually, it seems to me that Americans support Israel because we have the same system of values (democracy, human rights, rule of law), and have the same enemies who wish to destroy both our societies.
How can you say this, out loud, and not immediately hear yourself as the villain? This is such a cartoonishly deluded and paranoid belief, it truly boggles the mind.
Hear myself as a villain? Maybe because I recently had several coworkers and friends murdered, by people who publicly call for the genocide of my people? I can not fathom what you support if you see it any other way.
> Karl Popper's 'Paradox of Tolerance' applies. TL,DR: tolerating intolerance turns out to be a bad idea.
To provide some additional context to an often over-(ab)used quote:
I often see it used as a "thought-terminating cliché". Applying it this way would likely meet his definition of intolerant at least half-way:
Popper defines what he means by 'intolerance'. According to his definition, it requires both (A) the refusal to participate in 'rational discourse', and (B) incitement to and use of violence against people with different views.
You will find 'intolerant people' on all sides of the political spectra. (I don't see how dumbing it down to 'left' and 'right' really serves any rational discourse.)
> "I do not imply, for instance,
that we should always suppress the utterance of intolerant philosophies ; as long as we can counter them by rational argument and keep them in check by public opinion, suppression would certainly be most unwise. But we should claim the right to suppress them if necessary even by force ; for it may easily turn out that they are not prepared to meet us on the level of rational argument, but begin by denouncing all argument ; they may forbid their followers to listen to rational argument, because it is deceptive, and teach them to answer arguments by the use of their fists or pistols. We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant. We should claim that any movement preaching intolerance places itself outside the law, and we should consider incitement to intolerance and persecution as criminal, in the same way as we should consider incitement to murder, or to kidnapping, or to the revival of the slave trade, as criminal." (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945)
(It's well worth to read as a whole, given how often it is used and abused out of its surrounding context in the book.)
> "Conscience could be defined as the intuitive capacity of man to find out the meaning of a situation. Since this meaning is something unique, it does not fall under a general law, and an intuitive capacity such as conscience is the only means to seize hold of meaning Gestalts. […] True conscience has nothing to do with what I would term “superegotistic pseudomorality.” Nor can it be dismissed as a conditioning process. Conscience is a definitely human phenomenon. But we must add that it is also “just” a human phenomenon. It is subject to the human condition in that it is stamped by the finiteness of man. For he is not only guided by conscience in his search for meaning, he is sometimes misled by it as well. Unless he is a perfectionist, he also will accept this fallibility of conscience. It is true, man is free and responsible. But his freedom is finite. Human freedom is not omnipotence. Nor is human wisdom omniscience, and this holds for both cognition and conscience. One never knows whether or not it is the true meaning to which he is committed. And he will not know it even on his deathbed. Ignoramus et ignorabimus—we do not, and shall never know—as Emil Du Bois-Reymond once put it, albeit in a wholly different context of the psychophysical problem. But if man is not to contradict his own humanness, he has to obey his conscience unconditionally, even though he is aware of the possibility of error. I would say that the possibility of error does not dispense him from the necessity of trial. As Gordon W. Allport puts it, “we can be at one and the same time half-sure and whole-hearted. *The possibility that my conscience errs implies the possibility that another one’s conscience is right. This entails humility and modesty. If I am to search for meaning, I have to be certain that there is meaning. If, on the other hand, I cannot be certain that I will also find it, I must be tolerant.* This does not imply by any means any sort of indifferentism. Being tolerant does not mean that I share another one’s belief. But it does mean that I acknowledge another one’s right to believe, and obey, his own conscience. […] Suffering is only one aspect of what I call “the tragic triad” of human existence. This triad is made up of pain, guilt, and death. There is no human being who may say that he has not failed, that he does not suffer, and that he will not die." (Viktor Frankl, The Will to Meaning, 1972)
> "For tolerance, rightly understood, has not the slightest thing to do with indifferentism. And if we finally ask ourselves: how can I, being one hundred percent convinced of my own faith, possibly accept another's faith, another's conviction? Do I not, by that very act, become unfaithful to my own faith and my own conviction? We must answer this question in the negative. For I do not respect another's faith because I can share it, but because I must respect the other person himself. Note: Tolerance does not consist in sharing another's view, but only in granting the other the right to be of a different view at all. On the other hand, tolerance is also misunderstood if one goes so far as to grant the other the right to be, for his own part, intolerant." (machine translated from the German original)
(A) the refusal to participate in 'rational discourse', and (B) incitement to and use of violence against people with different views.
The armed and belligerent government agents who killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good certainly meet both criteria, as do the Trump administration personnel who repeatedly and maliciously lied about the events in question. History tells us that societies that tolerate such actions eventually pay a terrible price.
The rest of your wall of text doesn't seem relevant, unless I'm missing something.
Depends on what those values are. Epstein had different values than I do.
I don't think parent commenter is saying that leaning right is sociopathic, but that some people try to pass their sociopathy as a simple act of being right leaning.
