"The face of order is far from Christ." (Floater)
My only horse in this race is that it looks like people are trying to say: "Oh yeah, it's legal to shoot black people in the US - says so right here! Hell, you don't even need a huntin' license!".
Honestly, sir, that's all to you.
Part of the problem is that you're letting the troll job get to you; this has been, from the outset, an argument about skin color as criterion of danger. I don't understand, for instance―
I got this:
Here it is again, in summary form: It is legal to kill somebody because one feels sufficiently and legitimately threatened by them; it is legal to feel legitimately threatened by someone because they are black; Therefore, in some circumstances, it is legal to kill somebody because they are black. (Would you prefer a less pejorative rewording, less redolent of presumed bigotry?
Here: It is legal to have killed somebody because they were black. Or even: Because they were black, it is legal to have killed somebody. Feel better? )
―your treatment of boldface, which would seem to separate it from what else you quoted from Iceaura's post. And this is kind of important in this moment because, and I will come back to the scare quotes, your only horse in the race would appear to focus on, say, for instance, what you boldfaced, while omitting the part you didn't; I would suggest it's actually kind of amazing, when we follow through the implication, what Iceaura needs to do in order to cover himself:
• Here it is again, in summary form: It is legal to kill somebody because one feels sufficiently and legitimately threatened by them; it is legal to feel legitimately threatened by someone because they are black; Therefore, in some circumstances, it is legal to kill somebody because they are black. (Would you prefer a less pejorative rewording, less redolent of presumed bigotry?
Here: It is legal to have killed somebody because they were black. Or even: Because they were black, it is legal to have killed somebody. Feel better?)
Thus:
▸ It is legal to kill somebody because one feels sufficiently and legitimately threatened by them; it is legal to feel legitimately threatened by someone because they are black; Therefore, in some circumstances, it is legal to kill somebody because they are black.
▸ It is legal to kill somebody because one feels sufficiently and legitimately threatened by them; it is legal to feel legitimately threatened by someone because they are black; Therefore, in some circumstances, it is legal to have killed somebody because they were black.
▸ It is legal to kill somebody because one feels sufficiently and legitimately threatened by them; it is legal to feel legitimately threatened by someone because they are black; Therefore, in some circumstances, because they were black, it is legal to have killed somebody.
I really don't understand your detachment of alternatives from the larger formulation; it doesn't seem logical compared to the rest of Iceaura's argument.
And there's also the bit
you said to Bells↑ about how Iceaura "made a sweeping statement" and "refuses to qualify it in any way". And, you know, it was generally qualified when I said it; Iceaura has put much more effort into making the point that certain participants are simply trolling. (Take the bit about
simile, for instance. The comparison has the effect of erasing a substantive range of discussion, and raising a question about the status of Nazis in society.)
Part of the problem you're running into on this occasion is that you're trying to mediate between
an argument and
a fallacy; your middle ground is going to require distortion of the record.
The thing about the scare quotes, as Iceaura suggested, is that they imply illegitimacy. If the justification for killing is reasonable fear of life and limb, then there isn't supposed to be
any question of legitimacy. This isn't
pseudo-legal, or
quasi-legal. It's
legal.
Your question about statutory authority becomes entirely invested in the question of whether skin color is a reasonable criterion of danger. And the thing is, we kind of know it is. The statutory authority can be construed in the right to self-defense which in theory and practice exists outside specific codification in Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground laws. Whether that suits your vector of inquiry is, of course, its own question. (By the way, did you hear that in South Carolina the state asserts Castle Doctrine means a woman may not defend herself against abuse if she's in his home? Just some random trivia related to the purposes of these laws.)
Here's a depressing reality: A local inquest jury just returned a very problematic pair of verdicts. First, a majority―described specifically as significant, and as I recall equaling three quarters―found that the officers most likely believed they were in danger when they shot.
It needs to be mentioned here that the inquest jury did not rule on whether or not they found that belief reasonable, logical, or demonstrable in the evidence; the question is whether or not the officers believed.
The second verdict returned is that the black man was shot to death while obeying police instructions.
In other words, he was obeying, and they still feared for their lives―and, let's face it, it's a scary situation―so they shot him to death.
This passes muster in Washington state.
If dark skin has any influence increasing their perception of danger?
To some extent I think that is what has TCS going on about as well (aside from the comparing Nazi and transgender) - the statutes specifically and explicitly prohibit "killing someone because they are black" - although the functional outcome appears to be diametrically oposite.
What interests me is that if we go back to the
beginning of this digression↑―
"Again, it's immoral to punch someone who is not attacking you."―we might wonder why the Nazi gets that special assertion.
Funny how that question isn't being addressed.
Answer: None. Not even Nazi's. Do you know how you can tell? Because they are all members of the group named human beings.
Honestly, I think that's ridiculous. There are reasons pretty straightforward according to the fact of civilized society, but you do not get to cover these
choices as some matter of existential necessity. The choice to advocate for an historical
warring enemy of our society can find all manner of human and civil rights protection in my book, but
no, it is not so godforsaken simplistic as merely being human.
I would ask you to think of the Godwin Corollary; why does this custom even exist?
Or, perhaps I can
only reiterate↑ that as much as I disdain the present public discourse representation of Christianity in my society, and such influences and impacts as those elements can have on my own and other people's qualities of life, I would not indict the ministry of Christ that way. I do not accept the proposition that the argument to not strike the Nazi who is advocating
genocide in the public square is the same as the argument to not strike the Christian who evangelizes, "Blessed are the meek and the merciful and the persecuted."
The basic difference in function between one who chooses to identify as a Nazi and advocate such outcomes, to the one, and whole lot of other choices, to the other, is kind of obvious, I would think.
The basic difference in function between choosing to identify as a Nazi and advocate such outcomes, to the one, and merely existing, to the other, ought to be extraordinarily obvious. This isn't some weird question about someone identifying as "Christian", and everyone else having to wonder whether we're meeting a reflection of Christ or a Republican. Even still, I cannot accept that the argument why punching a Republican is inappropriate would be the same as the argument for why punching a Nazi is inappropriate. These aren't Christians or Republicans. We're talking about
Nazis. This is the threshold; we don't have an equivalent to the Godwin Corrollary for accusing someone of being a Christian, and, yeah, there's kind of a reason why.
Nazis.
I consider it a Godwin violation to include Nazis with transgender, Republicans, surgeons, epileptics, babies, &c. The point being that
none of those other people are in the same class. None of those conditions bring any inherent context of harm. Even if I want to disdain Republicans, nope,
I simply cannot elevate them to that valence of evil.
Oh, yeah, you know, I mean ... go ahead and say it:
Yet. And that worry, rippling through American society and around the world, is part of the reason we're even having this discussion about punching Nazis.
But you can be a Christian, or even a Republican, without inherently threatening other people. This is different from, say, the KKK, who inherently threatens people of color; and even the Klan is different from Nazis, who are, as I have reminded, a genocidal
historical warring enemy of this society, and also a symbolic threshold, an allegedly
unique evil.
What about this moment requires we should change that? This change is not required in order to maintain a rational and civilized prohibition against randomly clocking a Nazi.