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PaperclipPerfector  2d ago (text post)   7893 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 16, 2024

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Which makes me wonder how long until some asshole tiktok prank becomes smashing that button as many times a day as possible until gas stations across the country have to start locking them up. Which then leads to more avoidable accidents at gas stations.

By law, they can't lock them up. In a blue state we'll just get op-eds and politicos opining about how this is why we need to ban gasoline cars and go to all electric. There IS a solution to this particular class of problems, but it's banned. Basically the "railroad bull" solution -- swift and painful punishment for the assholes that do it.

I have lately wondered if what we're missing is a bunch of, I suppose, nuns with rulers or the equivalent to punish modest anti-social behavior (defecting, in this conversation) promptly with a transient painful stimulus that neither leaves lasting marks nor a permanent legal record.

But I don't think it would work in all cases, or maybe even at all. And it's almost certainly disallowed by the Constitution. And suffers from a lot of ambiguity as to where to draw the lines.

And it's almost certainly disallowed by the Constitution.

There's nothing in the Constitution that bars corporal punishment. There's a prohibition on "cruel and unusual" punishment, but we know this doesn't mean all corporal punishment, because it was widely practiced at the time and not ended until long after the ratification of the Bill of Rights.

Certainly it's plausible that a Supreme Court containing at least five left-leaning Justices who take a somewhat cavalier attitude towards their oath to uphold the Constitution might rule that the Eighth Amendment bans corporal punishment, but that would be them, not the Constitution.

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