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Re: law and order -- a query to St. Christian (fwd)
douglass st.christian (stchri@MCMAIL.CIS.MCMASTER.CA)
Tue, 19 Apr 1994 20:05:49 -0400
Forwarded with permission of the original poster...
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Mon, 18 Apr 94 15:04:13 MDT
From: WP Anderson <clay@sail.cuug.ab.ca>
To: "douglass st.christian" <stchri@mcmail.cis.mcmaster.ca>
Subject: Re: Re: law and order -- a query to St. Christian
Not my field and haven't followed the Fay case, but it *does* seem to
exemplify the classic conflict between individual freedom and good order.
I think the principle of 'proportionality' obtains here. Punishment that
"fits" the crime. Admittedly this sense of fit is both culturally and
politically determined to a great extent. But extending this principle
ad absurdum suggests a limit well short of the death penalty for
littering (or poaching the King's game).
Personally, I fear that much of this humanistic ground,
which was so bitterly fought over - we may have thought once and for all
- will be reopened to disputation, as the global balance of power tips ever
farther away from the common individual ...
A process accelerated to the extent that powerful economies in
Asia succeed in harnessing a free market system without giving rein
to individual liberties. Western humanism may well prove not to be
an expression of human 'progress', but rather a historical aberration.
cordially
WP Anderson
clay@sail.cuug.ab.ca
>
> And second...at the heart of this appears to be a concern for human
> rights as i universal code of conduct....i would be curious to know what
> anyone out there sees as the fundamental content of a list of universal
> human rights...it sounds like an interesting animal, but like the blind
> scientists describing the elephant by touch, i wonder just what such a
> list would look like....
>
> thanks again mike...i be thinking even as this missive flies off into the
> great electronic unknown....
>
> dougl....
--
clay@sail.cuug.ab.ca (WP Anderson)
writer / student / teacher (on a good day): Calgary, Canada.
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