This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Short answer: I believe that the constitutional rights of a subject should be upheld. If that is generally the case, then any suspect who could only be convicted through evidence obtained illegally will go free. Like the framers, I think this is acceptable. If suspects rights are respected 99% of the time due to any effective enforcement (e.g. incentives due to exclusionary rule, punishment of police), then we are just quibbling over the 1% odd cases where deterrence of police misconduct failed and we have to decide what to do with illegal evidence. The exclusionary rule will not lead to worse conviction rates than respecting suspect rights in the first place.
If you are unable to say 'the world would be better if the cops had not illegally searched the suspect and found the murder weapon, which lead to his conviction' then you are not anti-exclusionary, you are anti-4th.
Wait what? The way I read the 4th:
This seem pretty narrowly tailored to express that the government (whose action the Bill of Rights limits) can not conduct unreasonable searches. Your interpretation seems to be along the lines of 'people have a right to security of their person, so the government has to make homicide illegal'.
Famously, the constitution says what the SCOTUS says it says, so if you have a SC ruling that the 4th mandates government action to protect people (e.g. by driving away natives, or defending you against a mob, or forcing states to build hurricane shelters), I will concede this to you.
It seems obvious that the constitution tries to strike a balance between civil rights and police efficiency. The 4th seems a good example here:
You might have noticed that police rarely face criminal charges about their conduct. For example, if they get the address wrong while executing a warrant, i.e. they perform an action which has no legal basis, they are still treated very different from private citizens. A motorbike gang who decides to storm some home to look for their dope will generally be tried for robbery, while due to the qualified immunity doctrine police storming the wrong home will face no criminal charges unless you can prove that they acted in bad faith.
On top of that, the DA generally has a symbiotic relationship with the police: they need the cops to investigate and testify. While public pressure will these days make certain that they bring murder charges if there is video evidence, having a policy to aggressively investigate any allegations of police misconduct will lead to the police becoming very uncooperative, which will jeopardize your reelection chances. And the blue code of silence means that you would likely not get very far in any case.
This applies to even routine police misconduct like giving a suspect a black eye without reason. I may judge 'blatantly violating suspects rights to gather evidence to secure a conviction' as 'evil', but I am confident that a significant fraction of cops would judge it as 'heroic'. The chances that the criminal justice system would be able to punish cops enough to deter them from doing so all the time are basically nil.
--
How about a compromise: the exclusionary rule can be voided if a cop takes responsibility for the violation of the suspects rights. This involves giving testimony in open court about the gathering of the evidence, asking for forgiveness for violating the constitution and committing suicide through sepukku on the spot. Any inheritance or widow's or widower's pensions will go to the suspect whose rights were violated instead of the family of the cop.
This would both of us get what we want: you would have a way to get around the exclusionary rule, and I would have effective incentives set against violating suspect rights which will keep convictions on illegally obtained evidence rare.
More options
Context Copy link