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Why should a father not protect his son when he is able to? This should be the default position (not an absolute position of course, but the default one, at least) - especially for a crime as minor as tax fraud.
There's something heartwarming about the party that has recently been so obsessed with procedural norms and maintaining the moral high ground learning that there are, in fact, situations where a strict literal interpretation of the norms should be suspended. This may be more of a tactical consideration than a purely ethical one, because it helps Republicans illustrate how absurd the prosecution of Trump has been.
It's an appropriate parting "fuck you" to a political establishment that conspired to replace him without his consent in the 2024 election.
That's not what I said, and that's not the position I endorse.
A father should protect his son when he is able to - when the son is a child. Even if Hunter was in his early twenties, it'd be a lot more understandable if Joe pardoned him - sowing your wild oats is what youth is for. But Hunter is 54 years old and has been a fuckup and prodigal son for essentially his entire adult life. Tough love has to come into effect at some point.
One of the crimes Hunter was indicted on was providing false information when purchasing a firearm, namely lying when asked if he was a drug user. "Crack cocaine addicts should not be carrying guns" seems like a rare gun control policy proposal that I could imagine a lot of 2A diehards getting onboard with. Given Joe's outspoken support for gun control (e.g. his support for the federal assault weapons ban of 1993; his longstanding support for universal background checks; the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which he signed into law two years ago), this makes his leniency all the more hypocritical.
I see nothing heartwarming about this naked hypocrisy and corruption. Espectially seeing as, contrary to your interpretation, I have zero confidence that this pardon will prompt reflection among Democrats and they'll realise "you know, maybe it's more about the spirit of the law than the letter, perhaps we should be more forgiving when the Republicans overstep in future". No - the takeaway from this will be, as always, "it's okay when we do it".
It's weird that I specifically asked you why you think this action was "virtuous", and part of your answer is, in essence, that was a wonderfully spiteful act of malicious revenge. Which is quite far from what I typically think of when I hear the word "virtuous".
I agree in the abstract, but it's still not a serious enough infraction for me to change my assessment of the situation.
Spite and malice can be virtuous. Who told you they couldn't?
Virtue is the appropriate response in the appropriate situation. It's not a static table of naughty and nice feelings that can be drawn up in advance. There's no reason a priori to think that spite is never an appropriate thing to feel.
To give a simple example, if a criminal is breaking into your house uninvited in the middle of the night, then the virtuous thing to do is certainly to respond with malice.
"Spite" may be an appropriate emotional reaction in certain situations, in the sense that it was what we would expect the average person to reasonably feel in that situation. That's quite a ways from saying it's the virtuous emotional reaction. The whole point of virtue as a concept lies in recognising that many times our instinctual emotional reactions to situations are both morally wrong and often counterproductive.
Not only is being spiteful not virtuous almost by definition, in many cases it's counterproductive from the perspective of pure pragmatism - hence the phrase "cut your nose to spite your face". It's an ugly and irrational emotion.
Hard disagree. The virtuous thing to do in that situation is to defend yourself from home invasion using no more than force than is strictly necessary (which, yes, can escalate into lethal force depending on the specifics of the situation). In the hypothetical situation in which you can point a gun at the criminal, force him to surrender and wait for the police to take him away, what do you stand to gain by using additional force beyond that?
The malicious thing to do would be to maim the criminal breaking into your house and then sadistically torture him for hours on end. Your immediate response to hearing someone breaking into your house in the middle of the night should be concern for your and your family's welfare, not "oh goody, now I have a blank cheque to be as vicious and cruel as I please!"
"Bullshit - if someone breaks into my house, beating the shit out of him is a totally understandable, even reasonable response." No argument here. We're not discussing what's understandable - we're discussing what's virtuous. The standards are higher, by design. I can't even truthfully say that this is a standard of behaviour I would succeed in meeting in the heat of the moment - but this is a failing on my part, not a failing of the moral standard I've set myself.
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