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TomL

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Everything posted by TomL

  1. States can and do use other means of jury duty selection. Voter registration is convenient, but technically every citizen is legally required to serve jury duty if called by the court, regardless of voter registration status. Your continued citizenship serves as your agreement to this. To avoid it, you will have to leave the country. I'm not saying that's how it should be, but rather, how it is. As to the first question: no, jury duty is not a service to others. Your jury duty serves to protect your rights too, not just the rights of others. However, it is unlikely in our current court system that any honest Objectivist would ever actually be selected for a jury. The first thing that happens during jury selection of a trial is that your principles are identified and, if they do not align with current legal requirements, you are dismissed. Typically, if you make it past 2 or 3 juries without being selected for trial, your jury duty is over and you go home. I have done just that. In my state, 2 courts can call you for selection, if they both dismiss you, you're done. I was first selected for a DUI trial in which I was asked what I thought of DUI laws (upon my answer, eyes rolled in the court). The second trial was a drug trial, and it went over real big when I looked the judge square in the eye and told him that drugs ought not to be illegal, and basically that the whole trial and its expenses, including his salary, were a waste of my tax dollars. Late in the day, I went home with my $14 check. I think its a bit premature to ask that last question since an Objectivist society is a ways off. Comtemplating something that is not going to happen soon seems to me time better spent on more immediate matters. For example; precipitating the Objectivist society in the first place It's safe to say that courts in a Objectivist society will be far more objective than they are now, such that juries would likely be unnecessary in most cases. Beyond that, I say: there's a lot of steps between here and there, and there's no shortcuts.
  2. If you are concerned with ethics, then the term you want is "immoral", which is a synonym for "wrong" in an ethical context. As a suggestion, you could also try to describe or define what you are thinking rather than lay out a bunch of terms and let us try to guess what you mean.
  3. I would not even go so far as to say that Mother Theresa acted in her own self interest (in her value system), as it was put, since her value system is irrational. One cannot act rationally to attain the irrational. Yes, she would have implicitly thought that her self interest was to deny herself a selfish life. But as I have come to understand, you cannot explain the irrational because it is just that -- so don't even try. If you're going to apply rational concepts, you can't be concerned with what anyone says their motivation is or is not, or what they claim their reward for that action is or not. Only the facts of what they do and what they receive in trade for it are relevant. The problem here is that Mother Theresa has no idea what she is claiming. Her idea of "self interest" is in fact a package deal, so her claim has no basis in reality. If she were to have made this claim, one would have to dismiss it entirely. The fact of her values being irrational is sufficient to ignore any further analysis, including her method of achieving them. So, after the first sentence, you can stop right there and not even proceed to asking the question. Do not pass go, do not collect $200.
  4. If your mom is concerned about sexual content, I don't recommend too much Heinlein. Heinlein was a big fan of sex: lots of it, and wierd stuff (like going back in time and having sex with one's own mother, for example, in Time Enough for Love). I haven't read The Moon is a Harsh Mistress so I am unaware of its sexual content. Most of the Heinlein I've read has been fun, but some parts I just can't grok.
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