I'm sorry. I just don't know how to process this.
A judge in California reduced a potential 25-year sentence to 10 years of a man who sodomized a 3-year-old because the judge claimed he had no violent intentions. "While the crime was 'serious and despicable,'" the O.C. Register account says the judge claimed, "it does not compare to a situation where a pedophile preys on an innocent child." The judge argued, "There was no violence or callous disregard for (the victim's) well-being." To put this poor misguided soul in jail for 25 years would constitute cruel and unusual punishment.
This is what it looks like when words have no more meaning. When sodomizing a 3-year-old "does not compare to a situation where a pedophile preys on an innocent child" or constitute "violence or callous disregard" for the victim's well-being, we can clearly discard our dictionaries for some fluid system of defining terms that changes moment to moment. Worse, welcome to the world where "How I feel" determines right and wrong and "harm" is loosely (because "harm" is loosely defined) used to define morals. This is what a world looks like when we define our own morality.
2 comments:
You've said it before, a slippery slope fallacy is only a fallacy if it doesn't slide. Today, it's reduced sentence for pedophilic rape, next year, nambla will be a legitimate group.
I read a great line today about how "They scream at us for using the slippery slope argument, as they speed by on their snowboards."
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