At 07:27 PM 5/31/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Bob Hartwig wrote:
>
> >> Nate wrote:----------
>
> >>Shirley
> >>Jackson's rural community seems like a heartland utopia ... with
>the slight
> >>kink that once a year they sacrifice a member of the community
>because
> >>that's the way it is.
>
> >Just a slight kink there.
> The degree of that kink will be addressed below ... I would argue
>that Shirley Jackson's society is MORE HUMANE than ours ... based on the
>fact that in the story there was no mention of some ethnic groups having
>considerably shorter life spans than others....So I will ASSUME that all
>people in the town had an equal chance of living a decent life ...
>
> >>I contend that Ms. Haugaard's students make moral
> >>judgements based on expediency rather than absolute right and
>wrong. Their
> >>apathy is only important in that Ms. Haugaard might lower their
>grades ...
>
> >No, their apathy is important because it shows that they
>uncritically
> >accept the validity of killing others in the name of superstition.
>It
> >shows that their critical thinking skills have turned to shit. And
>people
> >think the witch hunts couldn't happen today.
>
> Lets see ... inside the U.S:
>
> People don't die in the war on drugs.
> People don't die from welfare reform.
> Waco was pretty reasonable.
> The conservative right's rhetoric has nothing to do with abortion
>clinic bombings.
> Illegal immigrants have it pretty easy once they make it across the
>border.
> Fag bashing is a myth.
> More liberal rhetoric goes here.
>
> The point I made in my original post is that people DIE from state
>sponsored witch hunts all the time. Americans DON'T give a shit, or even
>support the hunts in the name of some kind of bullshit moral stance, making
>your assertion about "critical thinking" moot. What have you done to add
>preserve a human life today?
>
> My second point would be that The Lottery has nothing to do with
>witch hunting. It seems to me that its a lot fairer to randomly pick
>members of society and kill them then it is to shorten whole groups of
>people's lives because of the color of their skin or their nationality. On
>the other hand, from a rational point of view I guess it depends on which
>side of the gun you're standing on ... or are all those statistics
>correlating mortality to income AND race simply anomalies?
>
>
>