6 ms·

I've always argued in defense of Manning's actions, but simultaneously that he did break military law and should we be a nation of laws, he should be treated ac

I've always argued in defense of Manning's actions, but simultaneously that he did break military law and should we be a nation of laws, he should be treated accordingly. I was wrong. The State breaks the law. And it does so daily. For helping to point this out Mr. Manning deserves a prize, not a punishment.

hobs 13y ago
Yep, the rule of law argument is really only valid when the laws are not a shamble, otherwise you just come off as authoritarian as far as I can see.
- argumentum 13y ago
  How do we get more people to evolve to this position?
  - WalterSear 13y ago
    That's the really bad news of the age: I don't think we can. "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck Ideas, just like science, advance one funeral at a time.
    - thesteamboat 13y ago
      I'm not entirely sure that's true. Consider the rapid advances in the mainstream acceptability of LGBT concerns over the past 20 years, and the number of people who have come to `a new understanding'. Similarly, the shift in perspective over the acceptability of racism; James Meredith, the student whose enrollment at Ole Miss sparked riots, is still alive as are many of his schoolmates. I'm reasonably sure that most of them have had their opinions regarding integration changed by public opinion and the subsequent years.
      - WalterSear 13y ago
        All good points.
      - sophacles 13y ago
        It would be interesting to know the amount of background efforts in the years prior to these "sudden groundswells" (which makes me think of the overnight success myth). For example in the civil rights situation, a a t of stuff happened in the background of WWII and immediately after in the army, as well as having lots of academic and popular writing going on. I'm also interested inthe demographics of the social graph of the wave of support. I suspect it starts in the 20somehing crowd realizing that they are allowed to have their own valid opinions and taking up the banner that was conveniently placed there for years prior waiting for them to find it. All those years it was available were formative years for those people and the idea was floating in the background, therefore not foreign.
  - jaekwon 13y ago
    More leaks, more discussions.
  - tjmc 13y ago
    One of the best arguments I came across as an undergrad was Kohlberg's stages of moral development [1]. Of his 3 stages, I've come to the conclusion that most people never evolve past the second stage which is basically "against the law = wrong". The point of questioning whether the law itself is unjust, or could be appropriately ignored under certain circumstances either doesn't occur to people, or bothers them more than any injustice caused. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_m...
    - vehementi 13y ago
      What's worse is the cognitive dissonance in people who in one discussion will lament how some particular law is fucked (usually it is a law pertinent to their lifestyle that they take issue with, e.g. gun control is too restrictive, or marijuana is not legal), and in another discussion will white wash that idea and say what amounts to "you do the crime you do the time" as so many posts here sadly boil down to. So we have in these discussions - everyone individually recognizes that the legal system is fucked, the laws are fucked, the way we make laws is fucked, the judges are corrupt, the prosecutors care only about case volume, the defense attorneys are underpaid and overworked, the jury is stupid and uninformed, the press sensationalizes everything, ... and drilling into any one of these topics will reveal miscarriages of justice and tragedies of procedure, but tl;dr "bradley manning was found guilty".
      - ahomescu1 13y ago
        On the other hand, a lot of people are still upset that Zimmerman was found not guilty.
- mixmastamyk 13y ago
  I believe the word is legitimate to describe laws which people can believe in.
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    Unfortunately people can believe in anything. I mentioned to a friend yesterday about the UK government demanding destruction of The Guardian's hard drives and I was told I was engaging in "conspiracy theories."
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- argumentum 13y ago
  Though it seems overblown I won't discount that some American casualties may have been suffered. Nonetheless, Manning revealed that many other innocent lives were destroyed. There is no action without both positive and negative consequence. In hindsight, Manning's actions seem far more positive than negative.
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]
    - ojbyrne 13y ago
      You can say the exact same thing about drone strikes.
    - jlgreco 13y ago
      Who?
    - jaekwon 13y ago
      You're just repeating propaganda. Get that bug out of your mind.
    - paradoja 13y ago
      Who died? Is there any evidence of that? This article http://www.thenation.com/blog/174622/seven-myths-about-bradley-manning http://www.thenation.com/blog/174622/seven-myths-about-bradl... (in the myth #5) shows some evidence, in fact, of the opposite. Even the military finds no deaths from the leaks: http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/31/59869.htm http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/31/59869.htm
      - tzs 13y ago
        > Who died? Is there any evidence of that? Anyone who tries to seriously answer that question here will get down voted so far that their answer will be pretty much the same color as the background. This is a topic that simply cannot be discussed on HN.
jaekwon 13y ago
Agreed. I hope he gets a pardon as soon as possible.
- masklinn 13y ago
  Sadly, I greatly doubt he'll get one at this point. Neither this administration nor the next one (whether D or R) would be willing to forgive, let alone rollback the programs he fought against. Best case, he'll get parole 8 years from now.
wissler 13y ago
Lex malla, lex nulla.
- argumentum 13y ago
  Just looked that up and learned something. Thanks!
- mindcrime 13y ago
  In a similar vein: "No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law" ~~ Frederick Bastiat[1] [1]: http://www.fluxneo.com/llbarnhart/bastiat.htm http://www.fluxneo.com/llbarnhart/bastiat.htm
  - einhverfr 13y ago
    I agree with this, but only to a certain degree. Very often laws exist in part to create legal fictions, and these laws are effectively broken all the time, but one can pretend that they are followed. These legal fictions can be extremely valuable. For example in Indonesia abortion is illegal. The primary effect of this is that abortion clinics pay off police a small amount generally, and get prosecuted if something bad happens. Paradoxically, this is important to ensuring the quality of care. Everyone gets to pretend that abortions are banned, but in actuality, they are accessible and regulated by a position of being relatively legally vulnerable. The problem is that when the fictions are unsustainable, then there is no semblance of respect that can be left. Once this is gone, though it isn't clear it can be salvaged. This is why this is so big. The government has shown that they have massively betrayed our trust and this means that certain tools of law enforcement just won't work in the future.
rayiner 13y ago
What law-breaking do you think Manning pointed out?
- jussij 13y ago
  The Law of War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_war From the prespecitve of the treatment of POWs Gitmo breaks most of those: http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/powerpoint/Military_Justice_Presentations/law-of-war-2.shtml http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/powerpoint/Military_Ju... From the prepective of civilians in war zones, some of the tactics used in Iraq broke those: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/721819/law-of-war/52931/Civilians http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/721819/law-of-war/...
  - rayiner 13y ago
    Which of these did Manning point out?
    - jussij 13y ago
      He released tens of thousands of secret documents that highlighted the fact the USA knew it was breaking the Law of War. One of the first releases and the one that got him arrested was the video showing a US Apache helicopter gunning down and killing unarmed civilians which is again a breach of the Law of War: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/22/apache-helicopters-kill-iraqi-civilians http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/22/apache-helicopt...
      - simoncion 13y ago
        Would you kindly point out precisely which part of the various directives and agreements the actions depicted in the first three-quarters of the Collateral Murder video violate? (You have seen the uncut video, right? It's forty minutes long. If not, I strongly recommend that you watch it. It gives a slightly different impression of what happened.) Anyway, I understand the need to be angry about heinous acts. However, I've discovered that when one plays the "What laws or regulations does this heinous act violate?" game, one somewhat frequently finds that the act in question does not violate the letter of the relevant laws or regulations. Similarly, when one examines footage that has not been edited for emotional punch, one often reaches a different conclusion about the events pictured.

hobs 13y ago

Yep, the rule of law argument is really only valid when the laws are not a shamble, otherwise you just come off as authoritarian as far as I can see.

argumentum 13y ago
How do we get more people to evolve to this position?
- WalterSear 13y ago
  That's the really bad news of the age: I don't think we can. "A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it." - http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Max_Planck Ideas, just like science, advance one funeral at a time.
  - thesteamboat 13y ago
    I'm not entirely sure that's true. Consider the rapid advances in the mainstream acceptability of LGBT concerns over the past 20 years, and the number of people who have come to `a new understanding'. Similarly, the shift in perspective over the acceptability of racism; James Meredith, the student whose enrollment at Ole Miss sparked riots, is still alive as are many of his schoolmates. I'm reasonably sure that most of them have had their opinions regarding integration changed by public opinion and the subsequent years.
    - WalterSear 13y ago
      All good points.
    - sophacles 13y ago
      It would be interesting to know the amount of background efforts in the years prior to these "sudden groundswells" (which makes me think of the overnight success myth). For example in the civil rights situation, a a t of stuff happened in the background of WWII and immediately after in the army, as well as having lots of academic and popular writing going on. I'm also interested inthe demographics of the social graph of the wave of support. I suspect it starts in the 20somehing crowd realizing that they are allowed to have their own valid opinions and taking up the banner that was conveniently placed there for years prior waiting for them to find it. All those years it was available were formative years for those people and the idea was floating in the background, therefore not foreign.
- jaekwon 13y ago
  More leaks, more discussions.
- tjmc 13y ago
  One of the best arguments I came across as an undergrad was Kohlberg's stages of moral development [1]. Of his 3 stages, I've come to the conclusion that most people never evolve past the second stage which is basically "against the law = wrong". The point of questioning whether the law itself is unjust, or could be appropriately ignored under certain circumstances either doesn't occur to people, or bothers them more than any injustice caused. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg's_stages_of_m...
  - vehementi 13y ago
    What's worse is the cognitive dissonance in people who in one discussion will lament how some particular law is fucked (usually it is a law pertinent to their lifestyle that they take issue with, e.g. gun control is too restrictive, or marijuana is not legal), and in another discussion will white wash that idea and say what amounts to "you do the crime you do the time" as so many posts here sadly boil down to. So we have in these discussions - everyone individually recognizes that the legal system is fucked, the laws are fucked, the way we make laws is fucked, the judges are corrupt, the prosecutors care only about case volume, the defense attorneys are underpaid and overworked, the jury is stupid and uninformed, the press sensationalizes everything, ... and drilling into any one of these topics will reveal miscarriages of justice and tragedies of procedure, but tl;dr "bradley manning was found guilty".
    - ahomescu1 13y ago
      On the other hand, a lot of people are still upset that Zimmerman was found not guilty.
mixmastamyk 13y ago
I believe the word is legitimate to describe laws which people can believe in.
- einhverfr 13y ago
  Unfortunately people can believe in anything. I mentioned to a friend yesterday about the UK government demanding destruction of The Guardian's hard drives and I was told I was engaging in "conspiracy theories."

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]

argumentum 13y ago
Though it seems overblown I won't discount that some American casualties may have been suffered. Nonetheless, Manning revealed that many other innocent lives were destroyed. There is no action without both positive and negative consequence. In hindsight, Manning's actions seem far more positive than negative.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - ojbyrne 13y ago
    You can say the exact same thing about drone strikes.
  - jlgreco 13y ago
    Who?
  - jaekwon 13y ago
    You're just repeating propaganda. Get that bug out of your mind.
  - paradoja 13y ago
    Who died? Is there any evidence of that? This article http://www.thenation.com/blog/174622/seven-myths-about-bradley-manning http://www.thenation.com/blog/174622/seven-myths-about-bradl... (in the myth #5) shows some evidence, in fact, of the opposite. Even the military finds no deaths from the leaks: http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/31/59869.htm http://www.courthousenews.com/2013/07/31/59869.htm
    - tzs 13y ago
      > Who died? Is there any evidence of that? Anyone who tries to seriously answer that question here will get down voted so far that their answer will be pretty much the same color as the background. This is a topic that simply cannot be discussed on HN.

jaekwon 13y ago

Agreed. I hope he gets a pardon as soon as possible.

masklinn 13y ago
Sadly, I greatly doubt he'll get one at this point. Neither this administration nor the next one (whether D or R) would be willing to forgive, let alone rollback the programs he fought against. Best case, he'll get parole 8 years from now.

wissler 13y ago

Lex malla, lex nulla.

argumentum 13y ago
Just looked that up and learned something. Thanks!
mindcrime 13y ago
In a similar vein: "No society can exist unless the laws are respected to a certain degree. The safest way to make laws respected is to make them respectable. When law and morality contradict each other, the citizen has the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense or losing his respect for the law" ~~ Frederick Bastiat[1] [1]: http://www.fluxneo.com/llbarnhart/bastiat.htm http://www.fluxneo.com/llbarnhart/bastiat.htm
- einhverfr 13y ago
  I agree with this, but only to a certain degree. Very often laws exist in part to create legal fictions, and these laws are effectively broken all the time, but one can pretend that they are followed. These legal fictions can be extremely valuable. For example in Indonesia abortion is illegal. The primary effect of this is that abortion clinics pay off police a small amount generally, and get prosecuted if something bad happens. Paradoxically, this is important to ensuring the quality of care. Everyone gets to pretend that abortions are banned, but in actuality, they are accessible and regulated by a position of being relatively legally vulnerable. The problem is that when the fictions are unsustainable, then there is no semblance of respect that can be left. Once this is gone, though it isn't clear it can be salvaged. This is why this is so big. The government has shown that they have massively betrayed our trust and this means that certain tools of law enforcement just won't work in the future.

rayiner 13y ago

What law-breaking do you think Manning pointed out?

jussij 13y ago
The Law of War: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_war http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_of_war From the prespecitve of the treatment of POWs Gitmo breaks most of those: http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/powerpoint/Military_Justice_Presentations/law-of-war-2.shtml http://www.armystudyguide.com/content/powerpoint/Military_Ju... From the prepective of civilians in war zones, some of the tactics used in Iraq broke those: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/721819/law-of-war/52931/Civilians http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/721819/law-of-war/...
- rayiner 13y ago
  Which of these did Manning point out?
  - jussij 13y ago
    He released tens of thousands of secret documents that highlighted the fact the USA knew it was breaking the Law of War. One of the first releases and the one that got him arrested was the video showing a US Apache helicopter gunning down and killing unarmed civilians which is again a breach of the Law of War: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/22/apache-helicopters-kill-iraqi-civilians http://www.theguardian.com/world/2010/oct/22/apache-helicopt...
    - simoncion 13y ago
      Would you kindly point out precisely which part of the various directives and agreements the actions depicted in the first three-quarters of the Collateral Murder video violate? (You have seen the uncut video, right? It's forty minutes long. If not, I strongly recommend that you watch it. It gives a slightly different impression of what happened.) Anyway, I understand the need to be angry about heinous acts. However, I've discovered that when one plays the "What laws or regulations does this heinous act violate?" game, one somewhat frequently finds that the act in question does not violate the letter of the relevant laws or regulations. Similarly, when one examines footage that has not been edited for emotional punch, one often reaches a different conclusion about the events pictured.