From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Fri May 03 2002 - 17:55:28 MDT
Hal writes
> Which brings up an interesting point. Historically in many cultures men
> were allowed to beat their wives as well as their children. By Lee's
> argument this might suggest that we should not intervene when we see a
> man beating his wife, just as he argues that we should not when we see
> him beating his child. I would like to hear from Lee if he would take
> the argument that far.
I can't resist answering this first. I already had in mind
exactly the following scenario. Your acquainance Bill exhibits
various facial wounds and other injuries from time to time,
but either won't talk about it, or comes up with some very
implausible stories.
Now it happens that no one wants to even get near, much less
confront the formidable Mrs. Cooper, who is Bill's wife, but
rumor finally has it that she regularly beats the hell out of
him. What to do? My suggestion: see if you can't get Bill
to press charges. "It's against the law, and certainly wrong,
for one citizen to beat another, even if it's your wife."
Your question actually seems kind of easy. Since physical
attacks on citizens are prohibited (in every half-way
egalitarian society), if one "sees a man beating his wife"
in public, then of course it would be reasonable and law-abiding
for passersby to intervene, if only to discover what's going
on, and to ask (out of the man's presence) if he should be
arrested. It gets really tough, of course, as the co-dependency
or masochism, or domination rises. No one envies the police who
are summoned to residences such cases; it's really hard even
to know if any laws are being broken, much less, sometimes,
what one approves of.
But questions concerning children or animals are tougher yet:
just what do reasonable people actually do when seeing some
parent beating a child in public? You definitely have to "be
there" before you even have the first clue. For societies to
attempt to write laws about that, it's true, does keep a lot
of dangerous bureaucrats sidelined who would otherwise do far
greater damage when directing their omnivorous gaze at economic
issues, say, but cannot otherwise said to be accomplishing any
good.
Lee
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:13:48 MST