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Agreed. And I don't think anyone is saying you don't have that right. Rather we're hoping you can forgive the molestor as someone who is ill and needs treatment

Agreed. And I don't think anyone is saying you don't have that right. Rather we're hoping you can forgive the molestor as someone who is ill and needs treatment to get better. The act is not the sum of the person. I wouldn't fault you for not being able to do this though. We are making a choice to punish people for their illnesses. And in a humane culture we would look at those less fortunate and try to help them. This was a central tenet of Progressivisim, which as an ideal has presided over some of the finest periods of our nation's history, and since it has fallen out of favor so has the US. Currently what we're doing is throwing people in jail who are mentally ill, treating them like criminals, and not treating the mental illness. Then we release them onto the streets, where they promptly take up the same habits that got them put into jail in the first place. It's been several generations since we closed up all the inpatient facilities, and two generations since Reagan basically eliminated all federal funding for mental health care. The upshot is we have a bunch of crazy people living among us who don't realize that they're mentally ill, and who cannot be coerced into treatment because there are no treatment programs that have room for them. So they end up in jail or on the street. I think it's time for us to try something different. Clearly jailing the mentally ill is not working.

pteredactyl 7y ago
You say the rights of that person molesting people on the streets is greater than that of the citizen trying to get to work (or an 8 year old en route to school). That's unacceptable to me. So while I agree with you on mental institution funding and it being a solid (Edit: part of the) solution. Compassion still has the inmates running the asylum (streets).
Kalium 7y ago
You're absolutely right. No act is ever, under any circumstances in the whole of the history of humanity, the sum of a person. I applaud the kindness and compassion that fills your heart for centering this key insight. > We are making a choice to punish people for their illnesses. We are making a choice to punish people for their behavior. Their behavior may be due to their illnesses, but the two shouldn't be reflexively equated. Not unless you genuinely desire society to actively seek to punish illness instead of concerning itself with behavior. It's perhaps worth remembering that the American public did not turn against institutionalization for no reason. Those places were visions of Hell that would have turned Danté's stomach. These visions were conjured into reality by our Progressive desires to help the less fortunate meeting an inability to do so reliably and humanely at scale. Good intentions, kindness and compassion and a genuine desire to help, were not enough. I won't fault anyone for being skeptical about that being fundamentally different now.

pteredactyl 7y ago

You say the rights of that person molesting people on the streets is greater than that of the citizen trying to get to work (or an 8 year old en route to school). That's unacceptable to me. So while I agree with you on mental institution funding and it being a solid (Edit: part of the) solution. Compassion still has the inmates running the asylum (streets).

Kalium 7y ago

You're absolutely right. No act is ever, under any circumstances in the whole of the history of humanity, the sum of a person. I applaud the kindness and compassion that fills your heart for centering this key insight. > We are making a choice to punish people for their illnesses. We are making a choice to punish people for their behavior. Their behavior may be due to their illnesses, but the two shouldn't be reflexively equated. Not unless you genuinely desire society to actively seek to punish illness instead of concerning itself with behavior. It's perhaps worth remembering that the American public did not turn against institutionalization for no reason. Those places were visions of Hell that would have turned Danté's stomach. These visions were conjured into reality by our Progressive desires to help the less fortunate meeting an inability to do so reliably and humanely at scale. Good intentions, kindness and compassion and a genuine desire to help, were not enough. I won't fault anyone for being skeptical about that being fundamentally different now.