Time Immortal

Teachers, as a profession, have a good model ondealing with the severity of drunk driving. If only other professions and trades could follow suit in this tight labour market! Not that economic need is necessarily an excuse, but if a profession or trade is already short staffed — e.g. the current shortage of nurses or electricians — then following the model of teachers, who usually have surplus members, would be problematic.

Regardless: as a teacher, if I am ever caught driving impaired, there is a good chance that I will lose my teaching certificate as a matter of professional misconduct. It’s almost a certainty unless I am, say, less than a drink over the limit. Or, at least that is how it is supposed to work…

Otherwise, the only problem I have with treating impaired driving as first-degree murder, real or attempted (aside from opposition if Murder One is a capital offence), is that, once plastered, the agent no longer has the mental capacity to have the ‘guilty mind’ and as such any criminal act committed after the becoming plastered has less ‘guiltiness,’ just as children who commit crimes generally do not know what they do wrong. Not that impaired drivers should be given leniency, but: ‘impaired’ crimes ought to have their own criminal definitions, and not be classified in ’standard’ definitions, and should have, instead of lengthy jail time, legal penalties which reduce the possibility of committing future crimes of a similar nature.

For example: long term license revocation, license limited to use of vehicle with ‘breathalizer ignition control’, discriminatory insurance rates — higher, much higher — driving curfews and restrictions (e.g. only for work, shopping or ‘wellness’ visits to doctors/churches), and/or disallowing ‘pleasure’ driving. Also, wage garnishment to support the victims of the crime, or to support groups like AA and AADAC if there were no victims, long term probationary status in one’s profession to make the next mistake very costly (but not deprive the industry of labour on the first strike). Tattoos indicating that one drove impaired might give social disapproval (and approval?) but sounds too close to wearing a Star of David to me.

The bonus of harsh, non-jail penalties are that they save money and keep a pretty tight fence around the life of the convicted, while still letting a first-time offender remain an otherwise productive citizen.

Ken adds: which, I suppose, raises the question…should society take a lenient stance toward even first-time impaired driving offenders? Rare indeed would be the person who could claim ignorance of the relevant statutes, or of the social stigma against the act. And unlike crimes of passion, which are spur-of-the-moment actions, impaired driving only occurs as the culmination of an evening spent engaging in a certain mode of behaviour. There is nothing spontaneous about climbing behind the wheel of a car whilst plastered, expect perhaps the deceleration one experiences some minutes later to the great inconvenience of a phone pole.

A 21 month conditional sentence with primarily house arrest — or dorm arrest, where he can still drink, party and such (unless refraining from any manner of drugs is one of the ‘onerous, numerous conditions’) — is a joke. Especially since they were adults at the time; it was not only rape-without-consent but rape-of-a-child and being-party-to-a-crime the last of which, in the case of murder, automatically increases the severity of the charge, or at least it used to do so.

I just do not get how sparing the victim from testifying — by pleading guilty (there may be some honour there, unless of course it was part of a plea bargain to this ridiculous sentence, then it is simply selfish) — makes the criminals worthy of a lesser sentence. I would say the only time a rapist should get some sort of leniency is if they, shortly after the crime and without broadcasting it and likely getting lawyered up after charges, voluntarily confess of their own accord. For any crime, voluntary confession to police should be the only reason for reduced sentences, other than other cooperation with police to catch a bigger net of criminals — although the benefits should be markedly greater for voluntarism than for cooperation once caught. Not that voluntarily confessing should land one a joke sentence like this one, but if, say, a rapist turns himself in after Church on Sunday for a rape committed early Saturday morning in which the victim can not identify the rapist, perhaps a shorter sentence of 7-10 years in jail as opposed to a 15-20 year jail term would be appropriate.

But bodily mutilation? State-sponsored/mandated bodily alteration permanently changes the criminal so that they can not have a normal life even after a conversion experience to an upstanding, moral life, say by conversion to the one true Religion of Catholicism while in jail. And that is a heavy price to pay for what might be a one time mistake, and then a mistake largely facilitated by current culture where parents know or control or care little about their semi-adult children. More on this later.

As for the true sickos who actually have a deranged psyche, removal of penis and testicles will not necesarily remove the urges and they will do with hands or stubby arms the same violations, and the Church has said that modern societies should not have to use capital punishment, and after a certain point, removing hands an such makes them permanent wards of the state who can not even, say, do prison labour to help pay for their incarceration.

As to parents — I have recently learned that children in a Catholic parish youth group are using hard drugs including meth and some of the students in that high school are prostituting themselves out between end of school and when parents return home. These are underage children who are most likely prostituting themselves out to males over 18 — I will not call them “adults” or “men” as they deserve neither title. Some teachers and the parents must be either oblivious or purposefully not wanting to recognize the emotional, physical and spiritual harm befalling their children and hiding behind ‘mood swings of adolescence’ to sleep at night. Add the scourge of pornography, which has ensnared even many Catholics who desire to be good, and we are in a heap of trouble. I have heard of a co-worker who, while still in high school and/or just graduated (but still under 18), has been stoned to the point of waking up being gang-raped. The depth of this problem is truly terrifying and the piss-poor sentences handed out only serve not to deter further criminal activity.

I have heard there is an old adage that society can only be controlled by cops and/or conscience. But that really boils down to conscience because if the cops have no conscience, they can not make up for the lack of personal conscience whereas strong personal consciences can make up for a dearth of cops. But how are we to instil conscience when certain practices are not to be discussed as they may interfere with particular..cough…Muslim and other primitive tribal practices…cough…cultral practices, all of which are ‘equally valuable’ or some other politically correct bull-skubula. Or when other PC B.S. says we are haters of women when we respect the entire woman, including her fertility? Or when we respect the transcendent tendency of humanity to aspire to something beyond the “four F’s” of feeding, fighting, fleeing and…fertility promotion…and that such aspiration is the human ideal, not the four F’s which makes us little different from animals, neglecting what the Greeks called our rational souls. It is a plague of gnosticism and manichaeism which either deifies or nullifies the body as something to be gloried in or abused (and which the Church is, wrongly, accused of doing with its pronouncements on sex) and as such sacrifices our embodied existence for a disembodied — “as long as we agree to it, it is okay” mentality where the true repercussions of actions are not fully realized or appreciated, to the detriment of our society.

Boy, that was a somewhat disjointed rant.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

…but some commenters are…crazy.

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/09/11/mtl-turcotte0911.html?ref=rss&loomia_si=t0:a16:g4:r4:c0

Two in a row say that Jean-Claude Turcotte either should not have been given the award (if so, then so should not evry other person appointmed by that committee) or should have been stripped of it.

Another argues that human babies in the womb are not more important than born humans (they are not — all humans are of equal, high dignity) and goes on to claim that they are not as important as those killed in ‘back alley abortions’¹. The poster mentions ‘hundreds’ of such women while neglecting the fact that over 100 thousand babies are killed due to abortions. I say killed only because I wish to speak within the current legal framework, although each direct abortion is morally akin to murder, with certain mitigating factors such as compulsion lessening but not eliminating culpability. As a result, the poster is claiming that unborn babies are worth, AT MOST, 1% of a born woman. Even giving generous numbers for back alley victims — in the 10 thousand range — would yeild a value of one tenth. If one thinks an unborn child is worth, say, half as much as an adult, abortion on demand is a moral tragedy, let alone if one thinks mother and baby are of equal worth. Henry Morgentaler apparently saved countless Canadian lives (the ‘hundreds’ or even ‘thousands’ of women from back alley abortions) but since there are a finite number of women in Canada, they can be counted, as can the number of Canadians killed because of abortion (to the tune of 100 thousand unborn Canadians a year).

As to the Church wanting ‘barefoot and pregnant in the kitchen’ women, that does not follow from an apreciation for the feminine genius and for, arguably, the only thing which one sex (female) can do that the other cannot — carry children in pregnancy. (I think that everything else has at least an analogue in both sexes — competition in sports, management of organizations, contribution of gametes — and any differences are only of degree, not kind (lifting 700 pounds versus 400 pounds, for example)). Just because the Church promotes that which is unique to femininity (and to masculinity) and the particular ways in which, aside from pregnancy, one sex has greater ease or proclivity with certain aspects (say, empathy or spatial orienteering), but not the monopoly on said aspects (men can be very empathetic, women great in spatial thinking, even if women tend to have greater empathy and men spatial ability (whether they do is an empirical question which I do not have an answer for, but I am using these as illustrative exampels only)), does not mean that She wishes to determine the life course of individual people. (Holy run on sentence, batman)

That She prescribes and proscribes various actions as praiseworthy or blameworthy does circumscribe an area in which our actions can describe a moral life or not. But, I would think that the church would say that a couple comprised of a wife who was a successful lawyer, say, and a husband who was quite nurturing and worked part time in a school to help children with early literacy and was otherwise a househusband would be perfectly alright. That the woman would have to take some time off of work for children is not the Church’s fault and the Church would actually ask that her employer support her in her journey of motherhood with leave and employment guarantees. That is the way She would approach mothers-to-be, not by admonishing them to return to the kitchen and their husbands to ‘man up’ and get ‘real’ jobs. The Church supports the uses of the gifts of the husband and wife to the betterment of their family and of society, however that may come about. She simply reminds us that there are some things which nature imposes on us and which we must respect, lest we, say, birth control our fish to death by lack of reproductive ability through our abuse of our own nature and that of the rest of the world.