'Justice For Trayvon Martin' Chants Attempt To Make Insults The Equivalent Of Injury Jul 17th 2013, 08:53
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The liberals that are protesting against "inequality" in the Trayvon Martin case do not seem to realize that they are arguing that "minorities" are inferior and must be treated as such. Specifically, when it comes to matters involving "insult" and "injury" the liberals are insisting that members of certain minority groups must be treated like children.
When someone does something that inflicts tangible harm on you, you have been injured. If they say or do something that hurts your feelings, you have been insulted. Under common law, you are due compensation for injury, but not for insult.
If someone hurts your feelings, you are, at most, due an apology, and that claim cannot be enforced legally. The law will not punish someone for insulting you, although it will sanction him or her if they intentionally (or negligently) injure you.
Injury inflicts damage that can be assessed in terms of dollars (that's why they refer to court-ordered compensation as "damages"). However, the law presumes that hurt feelings impose no economic cost. My grandmother, who had a third grade education, summed up this legal doctrine as follows: "Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names will never harm me."
That said, the law distinguishes between adults and children. Children are considered to be (and in fact, are) psychologically fragile, so angry words directed at them by adults can actually harm them. "Mere words," of a certain kind, said often enough and loud enough, can constitute child abuse, which is a crime.
In contrast, adults are presumed to have sufficiently well developed ego defenses that they cannot be harmed by insults.
As they demonstrate for "Justice for Trayvon," or demand laws punishing "hate speech," the liberals are, in essence, demanding that certain minorities be treated like children. They are arguing that insults, at least if they come from members of the so-called "majority," will cause tangible harm to members of certain minority groups.
No one has a better grasp of the facts of the Martin case than the jury that heard it. If we go with what the jury seems to have concluded, Martin apparently felt insulted by Zimmerman's getting out of his car and following him. In response, Martin physically attacked Zimmerman. Zimmerman was injured by Martin's attack, and (the jury concluded) had reason to fear that he was facing even greater injury, or even death. Under those circumstances, Florida law allows a citizen to use deadly force in self-defense.
The law does not say that it is alright to physically attack someone just because you feel insulted. This is because insult is not considered to be equivalent to injury.
The liberals who are saying that Zimmerman's "stalking" Martin "led to a confrontation" are asserting that Martin was insulted by Zimmerman's following him and that this insult gave him the right to attack Zimmerman and injure him. They are saying that for a minority group member like Martin, insult is equivalent to injury.
Actually, the liberals are going further than that. They are saying that, for members of certain minority groups, insult is worse than injury.
On January 15, 1999, David Howard, a white aide to the black mayor of Washington, D.C., used the word "niggardly" in reference to a budget. Wikipedia says:
"Niggardly" (noun: "niggard") is an adjective meaning "stingy" or "miserly," perhaps related to the Old Norse verb nigla = "to fuss about small matters." It is cognate with "niggling," meaning "petty" or "unimportant," as in "the niggling details."
A black co-worker heard Howard's comment and mistakenly thought that it was a racial slur. He complained, and Howard lost his job.
Now, if Howard had merely accidentally run his co-worker over with his car and put him in the hospital for a month, no one would have demanded his resignation. However, using a word that was not related to an insulting word, but kind of/sort of sounded like it, was enough to cost Howard his job.
The only way that this sort of thing can make sense is if you believe that adult members of certain minority groups are so psychologically fragile that hearing certain words from non-minority-group members can scar them for life. This, despite the fact that hearing those same words pouring out of a comedian belonging to their own racial group as fast as bullets out of a Gatling gun is considered harmless entertainment.
In New York City, the liberals are going all out to end the NYPD's "Stop, Question, and Frisk" program, which has cut the murder rate in the city by 80% and saved thousands of (mostly minority) lives. They call it "racial profiling," even though the percentage of minorities subjected to it is lower than their respective percentage in the violent offender population.
Now, "to racially profile" is one of those wonderful abstract verbs that liberals love, like "to marginalize" and "to objectify." It sounds like an action, like something one person does to another, but it cannot be captured on videotape. It is an assumption made about someone else's intentions.
For an individual walking down the street, there is no such thing as being "racially profiled." There is only being stopped and questioned by a cop, or not.
Being stopped and questioned, or even frisked, will not injure you. At worst, it is an inconvenience. It will cost you a small amount of time.
The arguments that liberals make against the "Stop, Question, and Frisk" program are not based upon the tangible harm that it causes (a few minutes of inconvenience), but upon the insult that it represents. Basically, they claim that it hurts (minority) people's feelings.
Once again, the liberals are asserting that insult causes so much psychological damage to delicate minority egos that it would be better to allow thousands of the same minorities to be murdered instead. They are saying that, for minorities, insult is (much) worse than injury.
Now, just because liberals are delusional regarding "insult vs. injury" for New York's "Stop, Question, and Frisk" program, it does not mean that sensible people should not favor doing something to compensate innocent citizens for the inconvenience (a slight, but tangible, injury) of being stopped by the police. Here is a suggestion that could send the liberals into a tizzy.
About 50,000 people are stopped and frisked each month with no charges being filed against them. The NYPD has an annual budget of about $4.6 billion. Use $12 million (0.26%) of this budget to establish a lottery, with a monthly jackpot of $1 million. Hand out lottery tickets to people that are stopped and frisked, but not arrested.
The lottery tickets would have a probabilistic value of about $20 each, but people value lottery tickets much higher than what they are worth in the eyes of an economist. And, there would be a new "frisk millionaire" on the news every month.
Now, do liberals really think that minorities are so psychologically fragile that they can be harmed by mere words? Or by actions that do not injure them? No. They are after money and power, and they know that guilt is a great tool for extorting these things from the society around them.
Is the U.S. a racist country? No. If it were, Barack Obama could not have been elected president of it. Well, then, why do the liberals see racists everywhere, and racism in everything?
Spiritual teacher Eckard Tolle answered this question this way: "Anything you react to and deeply resent in another is also in you, and sometimes only in you."
What you hear from liberal leaders these days is anger, anger, and more anger. Here is the truth about anger, from A Course in Miracles:
"Whenever you are angry, you can be sure that you have formed a special relationship that the Ego has blessed, for anger is its blessing. Anger takes many forms, but it cannot long deceive those who will learn that love brings no guilt at all, and what brings guilt cannot be love and must be anger. All anger is nothing more than an attempt to make someone feel guilty, and this attempt is the only basis the Ego accepts for special relationships. Guilt is the only need the Ego has, and as long as you identify with the Ego, guilt will remain attractive to you."
Enjoy your guilt trip, guys. Just don't ask the rest of us to take it with you. And, don't ask us to treat adult American citizens like children. Equality means an equal opportunity to shrug off insults.
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