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Philosophy and Behavior

April 26th, 2006 | by Dr. Forbush |

Here’s an interesting philosophical behavioral question:

If someone has broken the law and gotten away with it, then would that same person find it easier to break another law?

One could argue that breaking one law and getting away with it would embolden the person to do it again. One could argue that breaking one law demonstrates to the person how easy it would be to do it again. However, on the other side of the argument one could argue that the person could be engulfed in a sea of guilt and the mere prospect of breaking another law would be unpalatable.

Conservatives tend to argue that a person who breaks the law should be punished in order to persuade the person to learn that the law must be respected. Conservatives argue that the mere knowledge of other people breaking the law, getting caught and being punished is deterrence to other perspective lawbreakers. This is the number one reason for having the death penalty conservatives say. If people know that they can be put to death for a murder, they wouldn’t dare consider it. It doesn’t matter if the murderer is put out of society for the rest of his life, that punishment may not deter others who may be contemplating a murder.

But, this question addresses the other side of the equation. If someone gets away with a crime will they be likely to commit another crime?

This is an important question for Republicans to ask themselves. Since Tom Delay has been indicted for behavior that is certainly questionable. It could be that he is able to get away with the charges in the indictment for technical reasons and judges that are biased toward Republican ideology. Based on what we know Tom Delay certainly pushes the letter of the law as far as he believes that he can legally go in order to get what he wants. Pushing the law to the limits almost guarantees that the vision of different judges may yield different results. Do honest people push the law to the limits? When one pushes the law, are they truly interested in upholding the “spirit” of the law? Or, do they believe that their self-interest outweighs the common good for which the law is written?

Well, Republicans have more than Tom Delay who has crossed to the “dark side.” In fact, Republicans have quite a few people on their team that have determined that the interest of the Republican Party is more important than the common good embodied in the law. Jack Abramoff’s confessed lawbreaking has touched a large number of lawmakers, most of which are Republicans. Scooter Libby’s indictment for lying to the Grand Jury is another case of Republican law breaking for Party ideology. And Justin Rood tells us:

Mitchell Wade, former CEO of MZM Inc., pleaded guilty to several conspiracy and bribery charges a few weeks ago in connection with the Duke Cunningham scandal. But a little-noticed piece of his history goes into one of the most sensitive domestic spying operations we have heard of to date: the Pentagon’s Virginia-based Counterintelligence Field Activity office (CIFA).

But, there is hope. Two years ago the Rasmussen polls of George W. Bush’s job-approval rating showed that those strongly disapprove of his job was at about 33 percent. These were the Bush haters as the rhetoric from the right repeated throughout the election. Similarly there were another 33 percent of Americans who strongly approved of the job he was doing. These were the folks that George W. Bush would allow into his election rallies. The 34 percent in the middle fluctuated back and forth between somewhat approve and somewhat disapprove of the job George W. Bush was doing back in 2004.

Throughout that entire year the strongly approve and the strongly disapprove groups stood unchanged. This was reported as the polarization of America in the media. In the end, the great middle third of American politics decided that George W. Bush would continue to rule our country despite his incompetence. And they voted nearly equally divided.

If you go over to Rasmussen, which seems to be consistently biased in favor of George W. Bush compared to other polls, you can see that those who strongly approve of George W. Bush’s job has dropped to 19 percent. Obviously this is a good turn of events, because it means that Americans are actually beginning to see through the Republican façade. Almost half of the people who strongly approved of him during the 2004 election have most likely moved to the somewhat approve column. And, those who strongly disapprove of George W. Bush, the Bush haters, have grown to 40 percent. The conservatives who tell us through their talk-show pundits that the far-left Bush haters are a small but vocal minority. But, I would say that there are a growing number of rational people who realize that George W. Bush lies and can not be trusted. In the center we have 40 percent who are divided between somewhat approve and somewhat disapprove. At this time 24 percent of these people somewhat approve of the job George W. Bush is doing. About half of these used to be in the strongly approve column. I certainly hope that this means that as Bush increases his rhetoric to build his case against Iran that the American people will at least question the “Bush wisdom.”

The good news is that as George W. Bush continues to do exactly what he wants to do, instead of what he promised to do and the American people will continue to see through his and the Republican Party’s cloak of secrecy.

Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit

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