What the English settlers did is in the past. We can't change the past. We're not even English settlers. We've very much become our own countries.
Well, my Northern Ireland example is hardly lost in the mists of time. The Provisional IRA formed in the 1970s in response to brutality by the police and military. It became essentially a paramilitary civil war that ran right through to the 90s (with the peace arrangements still fragile) and anyone in uniform was a marked man. One of my relatives was nearly killed in one bombing. If you think that people who feel oppressed are going to accept that they just ought to submit to the authorities or accept being roughed up, I’m afraid that ain't how things work.
Here is a lady more passionately stating what I was saying about the
social contract last week. Now, you can refute that perspective or you can mock it, but, if you ignore it, life can become very grim indeed. I brought up the Northern Ireland troubles because I think it illustrates that many communities facing such conditions would have proceeded to the revenge stage a long time ago.
Yeah the protests are about racism and it really does exist, however there is exactly zero evidence that the George Floyd incident had anything to do with racism. It's a fabricated narrative.
I think the key point is that police conduct has become so prone to the phrase that @Capt. Huggy Face; mentioned from the definition of 3rd degree murder: “depraved indifference.”
One could say that the first order problem is that the police have become something of a law unto themselves, and are dispensing unlawful degrees of violence with impunity. The second order problem is that the impact falls disproportionately on minorities, whose systematic oppression (segregated till the 70s) is again hardly a matter of ancient history. So, one can rarely be certain that a given incident is specifically racist in motivation, rather than just an example of “depraved indifference.” What we have is a particularly graphic incident that has become emblematic, as it featured a daylight murder of another black man. But, that doesn’t mean we can be sure this officer’s motivation was racist – it might well be case of that general callousness and police culture. Yet its shamelessness is the straw that breaks the camel’s back.
No, not at all. We're just pro-freedom and believe people should, largely, be able to make those choices for themselves in this case. Nothing is stopping you from staying in your house if that's what you want to do. You shouldn't have the right to force that opinion/decision on the rest of us - it's authoritarianism, plain and simple. I'm sure you disagree, that's fine, just explaining to you how many of us see it, since it seems you aren't at all aware.
During the war, Londoners were required not to shine light at night, including compulsory blackout blinds, so as not to assist the targeting of enemy bombers. No Christmas lights, no Menorah in the window for Hanukkah. I really don’t think that’s a case of authoritarian infringements on religious or general liberty – it was clearly rationally justified by the extraordinary conditions.
A
study just came out from Imperial College, estimating that 3 million lives might have been saved in Europe due to lockdowns. That’s the degree of seriousness the scientific community is warning of, and I'd say it very clearly justifies wartime-like, extraordinary, vital restrictions. I think it’s a very good instinct to be wary of authoritarianism, but I think it’s wildly misdirected in this case.
