Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 6179519" data-attributes="member: 19675">Not really fine parsing at all: ethics are externally imposed, but may be internalized.  Morals are internal guides that may be externalized.To illustrate, let's look at bribery and the business ethics systems of the USA, Russia and Finland.Most people would take the moral stance that bribery is wrong.  However, the business ethics of those 3 countries differ on it.  In the USA, the position is congruent, and a company caught engaging in bribery at the personal, institutional or governmental level can get fined and will face a backlash, possibly even fines or other criminal penalties.  Any bribery will be secret,In Russia, bribery has been normalized.  It is a cost of doing business.  It isn't publicly discussed, even though it may be openly practiced.  Backlash over bribery is infrequent and minimal.Finland, however, walks a pragmatic line.  It is considered wrong, and is punishable.  But if a Finnish company must do business in a country where bribery is the norm, they can and will.  They just have to report it to the government and to their shareholders on their annual reports.A person who believes bribery to be morally wrong and who would never bribe or accept a bribe working for an American company may do just fine...but the same person working for a Russian company could plateau quickly, and in a Finnish company may not get to do certain jobs in certain countries,As to all of that...I think you're missing my point if you can't see the moral element of my assertions.Free speech- verbally, literarily, symbolically or economically- is a fundamental human right, whether it is exercised individually or in the aggregate.  The last- voting with your feet/ the power of the purse- is every bit as valid as the others.A person or group of persons is acting morally when they exercise that right to express displeasure & disagreement over the speech or actions of another.*  IOW, a person, group of persons or companies/institutes are well within their moral rights to:1) say they dislike your speech2) write that they dislike your speech3) demonstrate that they dislike your speech via something like a sit in protest or boycott4) cause you economic harm by refusing to do business and/or pursuade others to do likewise via any of the above.(And, of course, It is usually NOT moral to use violence to express that same disagreement.)When you ask whether a particular form of exercising that fundamental right should be used or not is a different question.  That isn't a question of morality, it is a question of whether or not the response is proportionate to the initiating event.To which I say, proportionality is a non-issue.If today the KKK demonstrated on the streetcorner by my Dad's new office (like they did by his old one in '82), and only got 20 ralliiers to show up, am I limited to having only about that number of counter-protesters?  Am I forbidden from choosing not to patronize the businesses of those Klansmen who demonstrated unmasked?  Or from publicizing that they are Klansmen?  (By doing so, I'm clearly expecting to cause them to lose business.)Of course not.In fact, the more conter-protesters who show and the more economic harm the Klansmen suffer for publically espousing their view, the more it demonstrates the breadth and depth of society's displeasure and intolerance of their divisive rhetoric.  In fact, that's part of the story how Edwin Edwards beat David Duke in Lousiana's governor's race in the late 1980s.All that said, how the PA guys exercised their fundamental right to free speech CLEARLY wasn't to the level of KKK rhetoric.But that does not change the moral right of those who strongly disagreed with them and what they said & did as the situation evolved to use their same fundamental rights to the fullest.It may not seem civil, and it may even escalate the issue, but it is not immoral.They told a joke, some thought it insensitive.  Think what you may about it, their reaction to that critique was initially awkward then followed with something deliberately provocative.  Well, they got an overwhelming response.(If you want, you can PM me about the similarietes & differences between this and the cartoons that riled radical Islamists a while back, but that would be too political for the boards themselves.)* that applies to speech we like and don't like.  That is why ACLU Lawyers will defend the KKK in court, even if they are Jeeish or black or what have you.</blockquote>

Verification