I'm on a misanthropic kick. I think that people are selfish and mean. I believe the truth of the Colonel Sherburn chapter in Huck Finn, that humanity is vicious and cowardly and easily swayed. And our religions are outmoded and encode the worst impulses in tribal society.
Well, below are excerpts of the statement made yesterday by Joe Clementi, father of the late Tyler Clementi, after the conviction of his son's former roommate Dharun Ravi in the hate-crime spying case at Rutgers that caused his son to commit suicide in 2010.
The statement on behalf of the Clementi family contains no thanks to the jury, no celebration of the conviction. In its crucial paragraphs, you will see that Joe Clementi steps outside his family's pain and puts himself in the shoes of all the other young Dharun Ravi's who will meet people they don't like:
Just a word about personal responsibility.
To our college, high school and even middle-school youngsters, I would say this: You’re going to meet a lot of people in your lifetime. Some of these people you may not like. But just because you don’t like them, does not mean you have to work against them. When you see somebody doing something wrong, tell them, “That’s not right. Stop it.”
You can make the world a better place. The change you want to see in the world begins with you.
I sense that the Clementis want to forgive Dharun Ravi, and they seek some statement/action from him that will allow them to do so.
Also in this statement is the Clementis' own dedication to a purpose. Like the Corrie family that built a foundation out of the loss of their daughter in a politically-charged crime nine years ago-- for which there has been no accountability from the Israeli government or the American government-- the Clementis are taking this evidence of the worst of humanity and trying to change social mores for the internet age:
We have come to understand that the criminal law is only one way of addressing these problems and that there are other ways that are better, particularly when it comes to changing the values and behavior of young people in [the] important areas of respect, privacy, responsibility in a digital world.
As you know, our lives have taken a new turn, and we’re on a mission to address these issues in an affirmative way through the Tyler Clementi Foundation, which we have set up in memory of our son. We hope that the media attention will not fade and that positive efforts on these important issues will be acknowledged.
I'm focused on the worst of humanity these days. But there sure are some exceptions.
Yes that certainly does deserve applauding.
RE: “I’m on a misanthropic kick. I think that people are selfish and mean. ” ~ Weiss
MY COMMENT: Our Knight-errant nightmare in shine-less armor! By the way, I wonder whatever happened to Phil’s “hobbyhorse”.
A Knight’s Tale – My Name is William (VIDEO, 03:38) – link to youtube.com
Maybe Ravi hated how his room was being constantly used by Mr.Clementi for his sexual gratification
did you even read the links? is there any evidence of mr clementi ‘constantly’ using the room in this manner. the article explains how ravi found out his roomate was gay before he even met him and didn’t like that. how do you know he killed himself ‘on exposure’, perhaps he killed himself because of the form of intimidation. perhaps he would not killed himself had he found out his roommate just told someone he was gay.
but hey,that’s life
actually in this case it was death.
As long as MW has a moderator, why don’t you remove Dahoit’s hateful comment?
In addition to Annie’s points, I just had to finally de-lurk to say WTF over this gem:
He killed himself on his exposure as homosexual,and list all the heteros whose exposure as such brought about their suicide?
Seriously?! Because being hetero in our culture is such a stigma that most of us live in fear of being ‘outed’ as such, right?
And how exactly was Ravi also a victim of spying?
Hate crime laws are such baloney. They require jurors to figure out what was in the mind of the defendant. Ravi was callow and insensitive yes. But if those were illegal most teenage boys and nearly all girls cheerleading squads would be facing criminal charges too.
setting up a camera to spy on someone having sex or showering for the purpose of blackmail or self gratification or humiliation or whatever..is against the law. i think.
Yes, Annie, and it is called ‘invasion of privacy.’ Ravi was charged and convicted of such, in addition to a hate crime. That is 10 years in prison for humiliating someone. How can you support that?
Well maybe the court should have given him 5 years and his parents 5 years.
If it’s against the law to use a camera to spy on someone having sex let’s convict the person on that. Why do we have to add additional charges based on what a prosecutor thinks the guy was thinking at the time? Most prosecutors have a hard enough time getting the charges right when all they have to think about is what the suspect did. How they possibly know what he was thinking too?
They can’t. It’s pure vengeance under color of law.
it was the jury not the prosecutor.
How they possibly know what he was thinking too? They can’t.
how does this differ from any crime?
It differs because people are convicted for their ACTIONS not what they were thinking at the time. He absolutely should have been charged over the gross invasion of privacy and in most countries the law hasn’t caught up with technology on that front, but spending 10 tears in prison for being an asshole, one that wouldn’t stand out in most schools and many workplaces, is too much.
It differs because people are convicted for their ACTIONS not what they were thinking at the time.
Not true. What a person was thinking at the time is a major element of whether that person is convicted of negligent homicide, manslaughter, or murder, or found innocent because he/she was acting in self-defense, when that person has killed someone.
“it was the jury not the prosecutor.:
That is what is known in the law as a distinction without a difference. The prosecutor claimed to know what Ravi was thinking. He made that case to the jury and the jury bought it. If the prosecutor hadn’t charged Ravi with a hate crime the jury couldn’t have brought it up themselves.
Here’s what I don’t understand. Since it apparently is a crime to secretly record someone else having sex and Ravi was subsequently convicted of that, isn’t that enough for you? Do you also want to throw in an optional hate crime conviction based on the prosecutor’s assertion that he somehow knew what Ravi was thinking?
If you really think that’s reasonable, there’s no logical stopping point to hate crime charges. If there’s anything Ravi could have done to show he loved gays but didn’t do, then to prosecutorially minded people that’s seen as proof that he hated gays. As far as I know, Ravi didn’t wear gay pride pins or lavender AIDS ribbons. Do we really want to nail him for that as well?
Ravi violated his roommate’s right to privacy. He got convicted of that. It seems to me that ought to be plenty.
“Ravi violated his roommate’s right to privacy. He got convicted of that. It seems to me that ought to be plenty.”
And it is your right to think that. But those who make the laws in NJ believe that it isn’t, and wish to specifically deter crime based on a desire to inflict in on people based on animus toward minorities and so forth.
It’s an ELEMENT but not an actual separate charge, seriously you can’t see a massive difference between the two?
“It’s an ELEMENT but not an actual separate charge, seriously you can’t see a massive difference between the two?”
It’s also only an element in a hate-crime prosecution. One can’t be prosecuting for simply hating someone.
It differs because people are convicted for their ACTIONS
that is what i meant, that no one can tell what another is thinking when they commit a crime.
“They require jurors to figure out what was in the mind of the defendant. Ravi was callow and insensitive yes.”
Interesting that you don’t seem to think that a jury could determine what is in the mind of the defendant, and, in the very next sentence, you take a crack at it. If you can determine that Ravi’ acted out of inexperience and insensitivity why is it a stretch for a jury to determine that he acted based on an animus based on characteristics such as race or sexual orientation??
As I private citizen, I can form any opinion about anything (though some people would like to make that illegal too). But as a private citizen sitting here in my office I have no power to help sentence anyone to a long prison term.
I don’t think there should be such things as hate laws. They remind me of what some Nation of Islam militant once said about some whites–that they should be shot and buried and then dug up and killed again “cause they didn’t die hard enough.”
If a person commits a crime, you punish him for that, not because of what you believe he was thinking at the time. People who rob convenience stores often pistol whip the clerks, curse them, and in some cases shoot them. Most of the time, they then get charged with assault, assault with a deadly weapon, murder or whatever. Upon conviction, the assailant gets a stiff penalty, which seems to me proper and right. I would not however want however to allow prosecutors to also charge him with a hate crime and thus vastly increase his penalty if while cursing his victim he happened to include a racial, anti-woman or anti-gay epithet.
In short I don’t want to go down the slippery slope of double penalties for the same crime. In politically charged cases these days, if prosecutors fail to get a murder conviction in state court, they turn their evidence to federal court and use the same evidence to charge the defendant with a violation of the victim’s civil rights. Many legal scholars have complained that this is nothing more than sophisticated double jeopardy, where you charge someone with one crime and if the jury disagrees with you, you then charge him again (or a different court charges him) with something else. Well, phooey on that.
“As I private citizen, I can form any opinion about anything… But as a private citizen sitting here in my office I have no power to help sentence anyone to a long prison term. ”
My point was simply to counter the point you appeared to be making, that it was not possible for the jury to make those determinations.
“I don’t think there should be such things as hate laws.”
I disagree. I believe they are very useful.
“If a person commits a crime, you punish him for that, not because of what you believe he was thinking at the time.”
But punishment is only one reaons for the criminal justice system. Another is deterrence. If enhanced sentences keeps the perpetrator and others like him from committing hate crimes, then that is a good thing, in my opinion.
“In short I don’t want to go down the slippery slope of double penalties for the same crime. ”
It’s not a double penalty. It is an enhancement. Just like we don’t want people to kill cops or to use guns in committing crimes, so we apply sentencing enhancements to deter these crimes. I see no problem with doing so to prevent someone from preying on antoher simply because of their race, gender, sexual orientation, etc.
“Many legal scholars have complained that this is nothing more than sophisticated double jeopardy”
That’s a different issue. There’s no legitimate double jeopardy implications in hate-crime enhancements.
No one who claims to have compassion, who exhorts on the need for humanity, can rightly support a 10 years sentence for Ravi. What he did was cruel, but invoking hate-crime and tossing him in prison for 10 years is equally cruel.
“And our religions are outmoded and encode the worst impulses in tribal society.”
I disagree. It depends on the theologians who shape religious practice. Religions, in their pristine form, actually endowed humanity with ethics. Examples like equal rights for women, a historically persecuted half of humanity, have to be ongoing. When the prophets disagree with homosexuality, it is in the context of violence in which homosexuality was considered immoral and indeed was, e.g. sodomy was perpetrated against vulnerable men in the context of war and conflict. The problem is when people refuse to think and attach themselves to understanding that do no apply in new contexts. The religion which I know best (Islam) is opposed to tribalism but tribalism is widely practiced by Muslims. In fact, terrorism committed by Muslims is chiefly a tribal act. As Chris Hedges noted: “The problem is not religion. The problem is the human heart.” But I would argue that it is actually many human hearts that have failed to lift themselves up. There is good in some men and women that I believe will always last.
>> Religions, in their pristine form, actually endowed humanity with ethics.
Human ethics were created by humans and have evolved over time. Not surprisingly, religions – also created by humans – reflect the ethics and knowledge available to their inventors around the time they were created, and require “re-interpretation” in order to (attempt to) remain relevant.
>> The religion which I know best (Islam) is opposed to tribalism …
Religions are a form of tribalism. They developed out of tribalism and they encourage tribalism.
Wrong– Islam and Christianity arose out of the fight against insular tribalism. Both have at their center a Greek philosophical notion of common humanity, which unfortunately even the Greek city-states did not adopt under the influence of their philosophy alone. They also adopted it after the translation back through Christianity.
Funny, how the nation and nationalism never gets the critical treatment that religion gets since 9/11. Far more people have been killed by extreme nationalism than religious fanaticism in the 20th century : 84 million alone in WWII and 50 million in WWI.
I would bet that all of you atheists would never ever dare not to stand when they are playing the national anthem at some event. But somehow religion is the thing that is the cause of all of our problems.
Madrid,
All you are pointing out is that there are other irrationalities besides religion which must be fought. I agree. But to ignore the irrationality of religion is insane.
And I often don’t stand for national anthems. It is a very bizarre atavistic event.
Paul’s letter to the Galatians 3:28:
There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.
In other words, all of humanity is equal before Christ. The same notion runs through the Koran as well.
>> In other words, all of humanity is equal before Christ. The same notion runs through the Koran as well.
And each religion demands adherence to its tenets and dogma. Very tribal.
>> I would bet that all of you atheists would never ever dare not to stand when they are playing the national anthem at some event.
Standing represents courtesy, like standing or sitting in a church or temple. The hypocrisy lies in singing the anthem or reciting the prayers. And I don’t do either. You lost your bet. :-(
>> I would bet that all of you atheists would never ever dare not to stand when they are playing the national anthem at some event.
Also: Given that atheism simply denotes the non-belief in a deity, and not the non-belief in nationalism or tribalism, your point is pointless.
>> eljay: Standing represents courtesy, like standing or sitting in a church or temple. The hypocrisy lies in singing the anthem or reciting the prayers. And I don’t do either. You lost your bet. :-(
Correction. Atheism denotes the non-belief in a deity, and not the non-belief in nationalism or tribalism, so there is no hypocrisy in singing the national anthem.
There is no such thing as non-belief. You can only come to a conclusion if you believe in something in the first place, even a conclusion against religion is the end product of a belief in materialism or earthly utopia. Simple logic.
The American national anthem is the Star Spangled Banner not God Bless America. After 9/11 it somehow became the norm to stand, remove hats for God Bless America. I was most put out by being asked to do so at a Phillies game last summer. I stood out of courtesy but didn’t sing along. One of the powerful themes in The Star Spangled Banner is shaking off the colonial yoke. God Bless America is nonsensical piffle about how God should smile on our Amerian nation. They should retire that song. Let em sing it in church but keep our real anthem alive in places like the Phillies baseball stadium.
>> There is no such thing as non-belief. You can only come to a conclusion if you believe in something in the first place … Simple logic.
So, the fact that you do not believe in non-belief means you believe in it in the first place. Simple logic. That’s just too funny. :-)
“In other words, all of humanity is equal before Christ.”
Oh, what nonsense. Like all religions, Christianity professes an inherent inequality between believers and non-believers. And like the other Abrahamic religions, the treatment of women is barbaric.
“There is no such thing as non-belief.”
Nonsense. I don’t believe in many, many things (including all of humanity’s various beliefs regarding gods, fairies, pixies, angels, ghosts, and other things “supernatural” [whatever THAT'S supposed to be]) simply because there is insufficient reasonable basis to conclude that those concepts are, in any way, true.
“You can only come to a conclusion if you believe in something in the first place, even a conclusion against religion is the end product of a belief in materialism or earthly utopia.”
False. One can simply entertain materialism or naturalism as a rebuttable presumption and not believe it is anything other than that which has shown it self useful to date, but always subject to being proved wrong. If religion and believe in spooks and hobgoblins can defeat a materialistic outlook, then let it try.
Really? So either you believe you are being stalked by an invisible green furry monster or you once believed that?
“There is no such thing as non-belief.”
What you seem to be asserting is that all non-belief entails belief. The opposite is also true: all belief (in some things) entails non-belief (in other things). In other words, everyone is an “infidel” of some sort.
Yes the opposite is also true, which was my point. Everyone believes. I choose to believe in God, which I consider to be the highest, truest and most romantic of feelings, rational processes and the whole meaningful sum. There is no division in its parts and it cannot be expressed. It makes the world coherent because that’s what made the world, I know the purpose of the sun, or how the leaf got on the tree, and what man’s moral purpose is on earth.
Muhammad Asad betters me: link to youtube.com
To you your way, to me mine.
“Like all religions, Christianity professes an inherent inequality between believers and non-believers. And like the other Abrahamic religions, the treatment of women is barbaric.”
I agree that the treatment of women by religious discourses has been abysmal. I personally fiercely criticise the building hyper-masculinity in Middle Eastern nations. But you appear to excuse how many secularists, including liberals, view women.
“All of humanity is equal before Christ”. Sure. But the problem is that none of the major religions have the framework to deal honestly or capably with the threat to humanity posed by climate breakdown.
We don’t need to work for life after death. We have to save life on earth first.
It’s so satisfying that this quote, which many atheist readers probably saw for the first time here, got so many of Phil’s readers so fired up and upset. Most of Americas elite, outside of a few elite universities who study such stuff or have thriving theology departments, are conditioned by the media they read, the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Village Voice, the Guardian, to never have to confront the radical equality at the heart of Christianity. They are conditioned by such publications to see all the Abrahamic faiths as equally barbaric. But the fact is that at least two of them do espouse such radical, non-tribal equality. I could produce a plethora of other quotes from the New Testament that speaks to the same issue– equality before Christ is at the heart of the entire religion.
The quote says nothing about believers or non-believers– it implies that all members of humanity, gentile and jew, men and women, slave and freeman, are equal before Christ. The verse, and other similar verses which say things like the gentiles have law written in their heart, were, according to intellectual historians, used during the early modern period to claim the equality of women, to provide the grounding of democracy which is founded on equal rights, and to fight slavery. In other words, you would not have your quaint Enlightenment notions of universal human rights, if it were not for Christianity. The difference between you lot and the Enlightenment philosophers like Locke and Kant that are responsible for positing a notion of universal rights is that at least the latter had the decency to credit Christianity for their idea. You lot think that such ideas appear out of thin air, not noticing that without a Deity to ground them in, they mean nothing in any case. They are just worthless claims without the theological tradition that produced them.
“I choose to believe in God, which I consider to be the highest, truest and most romantic of feelings, rational processes and the whole meaningful sum.”
I would suggest that you have no idea what the word “rational” means.
“I agree that the treatment of women by religious discourses has been abysmal. I personally fiercely criticise the building hyper-masculinity in Middle Eastern nations.”
But the point is that it is inherent in the religion. If you are going to pick and choose among the nasty doctrines of all three of these religions (and they all have abhorent doctrines, rules, ideas, mandates and commandments) then you might as well throw the whole lot in the garbage as the useless relic from the infancy of humanity which it is.
“But you appear to excuse how many secularists, including liberals, view women.”
Actually, I made no mention of the secular treatment of women, nor said anything which would suggest any inference on the subject whatsoever. I can only surmise that you are attempting a defense mechanism, typical of religious, of trying to deflect criticism onto the person who is critical of your beliefs. Why are you doing that? What do you have to hide?
Madrid,
Most atheists are well versed in the bible, indeed most of us became atheists after growing up in religious traditions; indeed, it is often reading the bible, and seeing what a horrific thing it is, that is the turning point on many people’s journey toward atheism.
It is often amusing that you appear to buy into the stereotype of atheists being readers of the New Yorker, the Atlantic, the Village Voice, the Guardian. It sounds like you have some unresolved issues concerning New York urban dwellers. What that has to do with anything is left unsaid.
Further, anyone who seriously posits that Christianity is, at heart, about the equality of man is simply wrong. INdeed, one of the strongest (and biblically supported) arguments that the slaveholders had was Christianity and the mandate for slaves obeying masters, and the repeated places where the bible condoned the institution. Historically speaking, it evolved to espouse a more egalitarian philosophy, only because thing like the modernity was cleaning tradition’s clock. If it weren’t so then there would have been no need for the Englightment after 1500 years of Christianity in Europe.
And whether modern Englightenment grew out of Christian thought or not (certaintly nothing in Christian thought concerning equalilty in native to the religion, but was grafted upon it from outside sources) is irrelevant. Even if Christianity was the midwife to modern thought and equality, once the baby is born, the midwife goes away, as she becomes irrelevant.
>> It’s so satisfying that this quote, which many atheist readers probably saw for the first time here, got so many of Phil’s readers so fired up and upset. … The quote says nothing about believers or non-believers– it implies that all members of humanity, gentile and jew, men and women, slave and freeman, are equal before Christ.
If all members of humanity are equal, the tribal element of Christ becomes unnecessary. That upsets you. :-(
>> You lot think that such ideas appear out of thin air, not noticing that without a Deity to ground them in, they mean nothing in any case.
Such ideas (equality, freedom, deities) don’t appear out of this air – they are generated by humans. Some (equality, freedom) have value; others (deities) do not.
Funny post. You keep denying that Christianity has nothing to do with the equality of humankind against all the evidence that points the other way. I could point to a plethora of different verses from the Bible and countless quotations from the church fathers.
Your ignorance is displayed all over the place as well: there was no slavery per se (ie. ownership of other humans) in Christian Europe until the 16th century after the encounters with the New World and Africa. In Spain there was a well known debate about slavery between on the one side, University of Salamanca Professor Father Francisco de Vitoria and Bishop Bartolome de las Casas and on the other side, Aristotelian humanists and court hanger-ons such as Juan Gines de Sepulveda. The priests used precisely the lines from the New Testament to which I am referring to argue that there was no such thing as a natural slave– ie. all of humanity is one, while Sepulveda used Aristotle’s Politics and Nicomachean Ethics to argue that the New World inhabitants were natural slaves and could be justly enslaved by Europeans. While the Church won the academic argument in Spain– the debate occurred at the Spanish court at Vallodolid before the King, they didn’t win the war on the ground in New Spain or with regard to African captives either, which resulted in the ignominious history of slavery until the 19th century.
You got humanism wrong in thinking that humanists such as Erasmus in the 16 th century were anti-religious, but regardless, let’s posit for the sake of argument that the humanists were less religious than the scholastics (something that is really dubious to argue since one argument of the humanist critique of the scholastics was that the universities were not religious enough), you still see that the innovators, the humanists, were the ones that were originally in favor of slavery while the conservative traditionalist scholastics were against it.
In any case, when the battles over slavery re-emerged in the 19th century, the Quakers, the Mennonites, the CAtholics, the Presbytarians, and the Methodists were all on the anti-Slavery side. And when Southerners expressed misgivings about their own slaveholdings, they did so in religious terms.
It may surprise you that I am not what you would call a religious person– I find religious history more interesting than doctrine, but please have the decency to give credit where credit is due. Don’t deny historical reality.
“You keep denying that Christianity has nothing to do with the equality of humankind ”
No, I’m not saying it’s about equality. As the society has evolved toward greater and greater human equality, Christianity has been fighting a rear guard action by highlighting those portions of its corpus which are arguably in tune with modern sentiments and ignoring those which aren’t.
And the fact that Christian societies went hog-wild for slavery in after the 15th Century demonstrates the point. If, as you suggest, Christianity was all about the equality of all humanity, slavery would have been anathema. But it was endorsed by Christians of all stripes, often, again on specifically Christian scriptural authority.
“Your ignorance is displayed all over the place as well: there was no slavery per se (ie. ownership of other humans) in Christian Europe until the 16th century after the encounters with the New World and Africa”
False, on a number of grounds. First, while the notion of Christians enslaving fellow Christians was at a nadir, slavery existed in many areas of Europe. But, more importantly, even where chattel slavery did not exist, similar social structures did, and often on specifically religious bases. While a peon, peasant or serf were not technically slaves, they functioned as such.
“And when Southerners expressed misgivings about their own slaveholdings, they did so in religious terms.”
And when they expressed religious approval for slavery, they did so by quoting the actual bible, including Colossians, Ephesians and 1 Peter.
“Human ethics were created by humans and have evolved over time. Not surprisingly, religions – also created by humans – reflect the ethics and knowledge available to their inventors around the time they were created, and require “re-interpretation” in order to (attempt to) remain relevant.
“Religions are a form of tribalism. They developed out of tribalism and they encourage tribalism.”
The idea that we are morally progressing is called a Whiggish sentiment and it is very much a “sentiment”. In fact, we have utilised research theories and new surroundings to construct and shape behaviour we deem suitable.
A book you might find interesting is the anthropologist Talal Asad’s Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam.
Additionally, there is a lot of evidence which shows that early religious communities were persecuted for opposing tribalism. The Christian libertarian Henry Grady Weaving writes in his book The Mainstream of Human Progress (1947):
[Abraham insisted] that man is free and self-controlling and responsible for his own acts; that each person is free to do good or evil, as he may choose, but that any wrong act will result in punishment to the evildoer.
Chris Hedges has also stated:
This individualism—the belief that we can exist as distinct beings from the tribe, or the crowd, and that we are called on as individuals to make moral decisions that at times defy the clamor of the tribe or the nation—is a gift of the Abrahamic faiths. This sense of individual responsibility is coupled with the constant injunctions in Islam, Judaism and Christianity for a deep altruism.
>> Additionally, there is a lot of evidence which shows that early religious communities were persecuted for opposing tribalism.
Tribal rivalry – non-religious vs. religious. The latter steals people and power from the former. No surprise there.
“Tribal rivalry – non-religious vs. religious. The latter steals people and power from the former. No surprise there.”
That does not come close to how the word “tribal” is used. Before the formation of nation states, human beings were naturally divided into “tribes”. The word is no more crude or vulgar than the word “nation”. The Amazon rainforest hosts a number of “tribes” which is very different from the tribalism elsewhere. It is close to how the word “tribe” was used before. Religions like Islam and Christianity transcended the tribe, joining tribes into an ethical community. One God, one humanity: it can’t get better than that. It is to accept that people come from different places but only as far as presenting an opportunity for them to get to know each other and live as brethren.
Phil ought to read your post a few times, Aiman, before he condemns religion per se. Without Christianity and Islam, there would be no transnational, anti-tribal discourse in the world to fight nationalism and tribalism, which have been the most destructive human discourses of the modern age.
As for Ravi, he was convicted of 15 counts that will get him potentially 10 years in jail for watching a few seconds of his roommate kissing another person. The room was his own– he had a key, and he could have legally walked in at any moment. It’s a huge miscarriage of justice. How can you spy on your own room?
Here is my prediction: the hate crimes laws will soon be used by Zionist college students and faculty to target pro-Palestinian groups on campus, so Annie and Phil should not be celebrating this ruling. It will be used to persecute their allies at Rutgers and elsewhere.
It’s a bad precedent and excessive. And weren’t hate crimes pushed in large measure by the ADL? Anything they are behind (in current times) causes me to be suspicious.
Madrid, I like this series of posts. And yes, I fear the hate crimes laws will be used like that.
“As for Ravi, he was convicted of 15 counts that will get him potentially 10 years in jail for watching a few seconds of his roommate kissing another person. The room was his own– he had a key, and he could have legally walked in at any moment. It’s a huge miscarriage of justice. How can you spy on your own room?”
I don’t understand the invasion of privacy either. If Ravi had just opened the door, not knowing anyone was in his room and then just watched the two of them having sex for a minute or so, would that be a crime? If not, and it’s hard to believe it would be, since people have been walking in on their roommates in situations like these since time immemorial, then what’s the critical difference that turns this into a crime–knowing about it in advance? Recording it with his computer camera? Bragging about it? Showing it to other people? What if Ravi’s roommate wasn’t have sex with an older man but just sitting there say, reading poetry to him? Is watching that an invasion of privacy too? Or is sex a critical element of the offense?
I suppose the use of a camera represents a bit of a red line. Otherwise, we’d make felons out of half the kids in the country since so many of them have walked in on their parents during romantic encounters.
it helps if you read the article. clementi told him he had a date and asked if he could have some privacy. that is when the roommate set up the camera and tweeted about it while it was going on. under these circumstances he would not have just walked in.
also, i seriously doubt he will get ten years.
“also, i seriously doubt he will get ten years”
What do you think is an appropriate punishment for recording your roommate having sex?
that would depend on the circumstance. if ones roomie is an exibitionist and laughs it off nothing. if they press charges something else, if they kill themselves that would be another matter. i think the guy who spied on him knew it was something his rommie would not like. i think he was doing something he knew was wrong. i think if it was your child you would not take it so lightly. given the fact most first time offenders get light sentences and then about a 1/3 off their sentence for good behavior i think 5 years is reasonable, minus the 1/3 they would spend about 3 years in prison. at his age he’ll be out by the time he’s 24-5 and have the rest of his life in front of him.
i think if he was another ethnicity he might have gotten away with it. or if the ethnicities had been different..
link to thinkprogress.org
“that would depend on the circumstance. if ones roomie is an exibitionist and laughs it off nothing. if they press charges something else, if they kill themselves that would be another matter.”
This, I must say, clearly illustrates the difference in our worldviews. I don’t see how it is possible to have a rational legal system if the punishment depends on the victim’s reaction. In that case, we’d have a situation where someone wouldn’t be charged with a crime at all if the victim laughs it off but given severe penalties if the victim takes offense.
Our legal system is supposed to be based on what the accused objectively did–not on the victim’s subjective reaction to that act.
I’m also troubled by the implication in your post that Ravi should be punished more harshly because the victim committed suicide. Over the years many people have killed themselves because their lover or spouse rejected them. We don’t on that account haul up the survivor on murder charges. A courthouse is no place to right all the world’s wrongs. It’s only a place to punish people convicted of a definable crime.
There is a reason the district attorney in this case didn’t charge Ravi with murder. He didn’t do it because Ravi didn’t murder Clementi. What he rather did was humiliate him. Prosecutors don’t have the right in this country (or at least shouldn’t have the right) to accuse a defendant of multiple minor crimes out of spite because the law didn’t permit him to allege a major one.
“if they kill themselves that would be another matter.”
How someone reacts to a crime should not in any way change the punishment for the crime.
If Ravi was your child you likely wouldn’t be taking the thought of a ten year sentence too lightly either. Thankfully enlightened systems have trial by jury not trial by vengeful relatives.
How someone reacts to a crime should not in any way change the punishment for the crime.
it shouldn’t but it does. as i mentioned earlier, if a victim laughs it off there’s a good chance it would never even come to the attention of the authorities. if someone robs their mother and she doesn’t press charges and no one knows about it of course the punishment will be different.
the reality is, under the law, a person is responsible for the outcome of the crime, not the just the amount of participation or intent in it. if you are the driver of a get away car for a robbery and a victim gets shot and dies you become responsible for it too, even if you had no intent for your partner to kill someone.. if someone has a heart attack and dies while you are committing a robbery you can be charged with manslaughter. a heart attack is a reaction. or if the victim tried to jump to safety for fear of being killed and accidently broke their spine during your robbery you could be made responsible over and above just the robbery.
but the person driving the get away car would have done the exact same thing, just drive the car.
“if you are the driver of a get away car for a robbery and a victim gets shot and dies you become responsible for it too, even if you had no intent for your partner to kill someone.”
This is true but it is also an apples and oranges comparison when you consider that neither Ravi (nor anyone associated with him) went out and killed Clementi. Clementi killed himself (after apparently being so humiliated by Ravi that he didn’t think life was worth living anymore.)
“Without Christianity and Islam, there would be no transnational, anti-tribal discourse in the world to fight nationalism and tribalism, which have been the most destructive human discourses of the modern age.”
If that is true, then we are doomed. Thankfully humanism exists, so it is not true.
It’s such a sad case. Ravi was an idiot. Why did he have to broadcast what he saw to the world ? Where do they teach people about discretion nowadays?