[lit-ideas] Re: Paying taxes for months on end
- From: Robert Paul <robert.paul@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 07 Jun 2005 17:02:18 -0700
Phil Enns wrote:
> I had written:
>
> "The point of the court action [in the Rodney King affair] was to
> discern whether the police were empowered, that is had the right, to do
> what they did. If they had 'absolutely no right to do that' then they
> would have been found guilty because they did not have the power to act
> as they did."
>
> to which Robert Paul replies:
>
> "I'm sure Phil did not mean to say exactly that. It is a contingent fact
> that some people who have broken the law are, if tried, found guilty.
> Phil seems to be thinking of an ideal world in which what he says would
> be true. This world is not it."
[material omitted]
Phil then wrote:
>It is difficult to see what Robert's objection amounts to then.
Surely it isn't THAT difficult. I wasn't objecting to anything here, nor
did I mean to enter the thicket of talk about rights and powers in
which we have recently found ourselves. I was only pointing out that the
words 'If they had 'absolutely no right to do that' then they would have
been found guilty…' are not, strictly speaking, true, for whether they
would have been found guilty, even if we assume that they had
'absolutely no right' to use the force they did in subduing King, is
contingent upon some jury's finding them guilty. It is as if one were to
say, 'If someone intentionally killed Jones (ceteris paribus), then that
person would (if charged and brought to trial, etc.) been found guilty;
but we know that sometimes neither this nor its converse are true.
I doubt that there were any riots in Lake Oswego, over the first King
verdict.
Robert Paul
Reed College
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