Starling

The rights violation happens once with the cars- when the government takes them by force. There's no actual way to take an idea, so even if the government says "Hey, go ahead, use Google's intellectual property," while the government has violated its moral obligation to protect rights, no theft takes place until someone uses Google's idea. Eh?

Off-hand I'd say that the White Knight is "the hero [the people of Gotham] need, but not the hero [they] deserve." I think the Two-Face plotline illustrates the problem with tolerating a mix of good and evil. Dent falls because his own people (corrupt cops and those who shield them behind the "blue wall," including Gordon) betray him. The Joker's ingenuity alone did not and could not make this happen. Dent is more susceptible here than Wayne because, by definition, the White Knight lives in full view of the public. Wayne hides behind a triple-life: the caped crusader, the billionaire playboy, and his actual self, which only Alfred, Lucius and Rachel can see. Wayne can retreat, for a time, in the face of tragedy, both psychologically and physically, whereas Dent cannot. Although both lose their "one hope for a normal life," Dent's experience was arguably more tragic (listening to her die, accepting his proposal, living with the burns afterwards, seeing the coin on waking and thinking she was saved only to turn it over and realize the horrible truth), and of course Dent is not as strong as Wayne or it wouldn't be a Batman movie. The Joker survives because Batman doesn't deliberately kill people (even though he doesn't have to save them), even when they want to be killed, as the Joker does ("Come on, come on, I want you to do it!"). Batman is about ending emergency situations so that the law can do its job. Wayne's ultimate goal is to turn Gotham into the city his parents showed him it -could- be, where the police and courts can adequately deal with the little criminal behavior that pops up and people live without fear and without Batman. That end cannot be reached if he circumvents the justice system, because then Batman would be the source and dispenser of justice and Wayne could never live the life he wants.

Thanks! What happened was I failed to realize the difference between intellectual property and physical property. So ironic since I was claiming IP isn't that hard to understand, haha. I was confused because Rand said it was okay to attend a public university, as long as you spoke out against government funding of education, so I thought "Hey, we're not violating any -more- rights by attending a public school, or using public roads, or the post office, or police/fire/military, all of which are currently funded by legalized theft, so how are we violating more rights by viewing stolen art?" I missed the key point that every viewing is in fact -again- stealing the artwork since the image/idea itself is what the artist created and therefore owns, not the physical DVD. So if the government suddenly nationalized all cars and gave one to each citizen, it would be moral to use the car even though you didn't earn it (as long as you oppose the legislation), but if it nationalized Google's algorithm, it would be immoral to use the algorithm in your own work, right?

Actually I was, but I was also totally wrong. I retract that post. Apologies for wasting everyone's time. I let deductive logic lead me astray.

EC, I think the reason you don't feel any emotional response to the thought of watching these DVDs is because it IS NOT WRONG to do so. Any serious introspection you need to do would be on an entirely different moral question. Another thread asked: "Is it morally wrong to drive on the Autobahn because it was built using slave labor by Adolf Hitler?" The answer given, correctly, was no because 1. everyone recognizes and the German people have acknowledged the immorality of the method of the construction of the Autobahn 2. the maintainance of the Autobahn (fixing the wear and tear you create when driving on it) is today moral and 3. destroying it or refusing to use it would not further justice, because it creates no retribution for those responsible. In the case of DVDs, you are clear on point 2: viewing it will not in any way contribute to more immoral behavior on the part of your mother and her boyfriend because there is no wear-and-tear. Watching a DVD (a few times) doesn't wear it out- it is unlikely that any of us will ever wear out a DVD in our entire lifetimes. Neither the action of watching copied DVDs, nor any other action is intrinsically wrong. Where you are not fine is on point 1: leaving your mother with the impression that your only complaint against copied DVDs is the quality. No, you are not obligated to fight with her about it or convince her or even to explain your reasons, but you are morally obligated to clearly state that you consider that behavior immoral. Don't make a big deal about it, but make it clear that you don't condone her actions. Now for the messier issue of retribution and justice, point 3. Two questions here, the morality of doing business with someone who steals, and the morality of keeping quiet about an illegal action. True, you are not buying the DVDs from her, but you are paying her rent with which she is buying stolen goods. In a perfect world, the moral action for you, EC, would be to report your mother and her boyfriend to the police. Yes, you would aboslutely be morally obligated to do this. But we don't live in a perfect world, and the punishments for DVD theft are not just in our current system. People are either grossly over-punished as an example to others or totally ignored. Reporting the theft would not result in justice, and any other action you might take, such as moving out, would not result in retribution for her crime. You are not only not obligated to report it, but it would be immoral to do so. Similarly it would be immoral to report drug possession, hate-speech, or a "two-inches too short" shotgun if your only reason for doing so is because those things are illegal. In sum, as long as you clarify that you morally object to stealing in all forms, you can certainly enjoy those DVDs, although you will have to deal with the frustration of the injustice and your inability to correct it. By the way, there is NOTHING abstract or hard to understand about the immorality of copying movies and music. Simply say: "It's stealing." Everyone can see that, they just think it's only a little bit stealing, or that this kind of stealing is okay because the victim is far removed and wealthy. One of my favorite Rand quotes applies perfectly here: "What is the moral status of a man who only steals occassionally?"

Then my comment obviously could not refer to you as it was directed towards those who let such things interfere with their ability to enjoy movies and to judge The Dark Knight and other films as art. As I said, they actually fell at the same time, but it was a long movie, you only saw it once, you can hardly be expected to have it memorized from one viewing, and when you recalled it this way your brain probably said: "The Dark Knight is an action movie. In one scene, Batman catches Rachel in mid-air. In many action movies, some objects fall faster than others in unrealistic ways. This probably happens in The Dark Knight. Batman is generally supposed to adhere to the laws of physics. Whaddup wit dat?" So, like you said, watch it again, make sure you're in focus, and let me know if -I- need to see it again (I also intend to, for the third time). "That said, some aspects of adhering to reality (within the context of a given works 'universe') are necessary, even in works of art." ~RationalBiker #123 If I understand you correctly, you are saying that a work of art needs to be internally consistent, and its purpose needs to relate back to reality in a coherant way. In the case of Batman, you are absolutely correct, gravity is essential due to his real-man-ness. That is why I took the time to explain what happened during each of the falls and why neither violated any physical law. However, to be perfectly clear, NO facet of reality, including physics, is essential to ALL art without exception. The Dark Knight certainly moves away from reality- consider Two-Face, for example. How and when Nolan chooses to diverge from reality is what's important, though. Note, for example, that Two-Face doesn't last very long, is totally crazy, and is indifferent to life/death, as a person who'd lost the pleasure/pain mechanism would be. The unrealisticness of his mobility serves a specific artistic purpose: it makes his "actuarially fair" chance-based view of existence concrete by tying it to his physical form. In certain respects, movies are the most difficult art form because they (can) integrate and subsume all others. You have to address all of the elements of story-telling and two-dimensional visual art (color, space, light, etc.) as well as movement (as in dance or theater) and music, PLUS evaluate the integration of these elements. It is impossible to adequately do all of this from movie theater experiences, no matter how many times you go. That's as absurd as claiming to have mastered Atlas Shrugged in one reading. Well, maybe not THAT absurd, but close. Only a handful of people in the world are in a position to fully evaluate The Dark Knight right now. To do so would require at minimum a recording of the film that one could slow down and pause, the director's commentary, and a copy of the script and musical score. Once you have the resources, the trick is to do it well. One thing that everyone can decide from first viewing is whether or not the film speaks to your sense of life, if you are in focus, that is. The "I like" or "I didn't like" is entirely yours, as is the meaning of your reaction. However, the "I like/didn't like" of another (which is mostly what this thread consists of, and rightly so) is not (or rather, should not be) relevant to yours. What this thread is really asking is "show me the color of your soul." The most depraved answer one can give comes from those who see only a failure to recreate reality exactly. That answer is: a soul entirely without color, the lens of a camera that only copies what it sees, that cannot select the good or the beautiful or even the villainous, that can only reproduce what the world is, that is indifferent to what the world can and ought to be. P.S. To make such a claim about anyone based on the few posts here would be a wonderful example of psychologizing. I'm really just trying to illustrate the ultimate end of fixating on the realistic before asking whether that aspect of reality should apply in that particular work of art. If you leave that fixation unchecked, this is the end you will reach.

The situation on the boats is not a prisoner's dilemma. The point of the prisoner's dilemma is that the Nash equilibrium is Pareto-suboptimal. In layman's terms, the key point is that harming the other prisoner is not to your benefit (the consequence is worse for you if you do), but you do it anyway. In the boat situation, the Nash equilibrium is Pareto-optimal, that is, the best choice (survival is assumed preferable to death in economics) is to blow the other boat, and you cannot make the other boat better-off (allow them to survive) without making yourself worse-off (being blown up either by them or the Joker). Any easy mistake, but please remember that terms, especially technical terms for use in a specialized field, have exact meanings. Many others have said this earlier in the thread, so sorry to single you out, Nyronus.

Good question. The Joker (and every terrorist) attempts to gain power or influence by forcing people into emergency situations, however he can only do this temporarily. In order to have lasting effects, i.e. to create the permanent chaos his nihilistic nature desires, the Joker needs people to view the emergency situation and its corresponding ethics as permanent. When in an emergency situation, the goal is to get out of that situation and back to a normal state of things. That requires a long-term view. You want to preserve your life, but only because you expect to gain value by living. Moving constantly from one emergency to another is not compatible with life. Your goal has to be to get out of the emergency permanently. The correct way to consider the situation on the boats is this: what action can I take to regain what I value? The question asked of the Gotham people in this scene is: do you value your life as an absolute good without context, or are you strong enough to fight (as Batman does) against the forces of chaos by rejecting the view of life as a series of emergencies? The Joker will not stop his attacks until he is either captured or his attacks become unecessary because Gotham's people have given up on peace and sustain the chaos by their own actions. It is unreasonable to think he will soon be captured, especially since the police are busy getting people out of the city and Batman himself is under attack by the Joker. If the people on one boat push the button, they will be temporarily out of the emergency situation, but when they land again they will be immersed in chaos. What the button-pushers will have actually done is publically and dramatically accepted the Joker's nihilistic view of the world. The rest of Gotham will follow. Refusing to destroy the other boat is not a sacrifice, it is a statement of value. The Gotham people have declared: "We have walked in this darkness for too long. We will not live in this world without reason, without purpose, without the ability to pursue our values. You who created this world, live in it. We will not." We've all seen a similar "fantastic premise" before: the mind on strike. The Fountainhead is a man's story, Atlas Shrugged is the world's. Batman Begins is completely Bruce Wayne's story. The Dark Knight tells the story of Gotham. The story is not all bad and, importantly, it is not over.

So it would seem! I hope it's not a problem that I didn't use the quote function. I wrote this elsewhere and pasted it in. Quoting DavidOdden: "If you perform a wrongful act and cause harm, you are responsible for that harm, regardless of the nature of the harm." You use this term "wrongful act" many times. Are you using that term to mean initiation of force (or force/fraud)? If so, you should use the term initiation of force. Wrongful act means an act that is wrong universally, that is, morally wrong. If you mean to say an illegal act, then I agree that the nature of the harm caused is not relevant to your responsibility, only to how much you have to pay. If you in fact mean that the law should hold you responsible for harm caused by -any- immoral action, then I strongly disagree. Can you clarify, please, which is your position? I'm sure you don't want to hear me argue against something you aren't meaning to say! However, the rest of your comments are more consistent with the latter view. Quoting DavidOdden: "Legally speaking, I think the primary issue should be "when are you responsible for harm"" Agreed. My answer is that one should be legally responsible when the action that caused the harm was 1. provably yours and 2. illegal (initiation of force). Quoting DavidOdden: "Yes, and there are those criminal acts involving initiation of force which violate rights." I don't understand this statement. ONLY initiation of force CAN violate rights. The ONLY purpose of the law, criminal and civil, is to protect rights. Therefore ALL illegal actions must not merely involve but actually BE initiation of force. Perhaps you are treating criminal law as an instrument of rights-protection and civil law as a way to enforce broader morality? That is not consistent with Rand's idea of the purpose of government. Quoting DavidOdden: "Not every wrongful act is an initiation of force, and to attempt to declare all wrongs as being "initiation of force" trivializes and subjectivizes the concept of initiation of force. As does the suggestion that even consensual sex is the initiation of force. You have to examine your understanding of "initiation of force", so that you avoid the absurd consequence that no man may rightfully interact with another man for fear of "initiating force without permission"." Again, what do you mean by wrongful act? Of course not every immoral action (or most, even) involve initiation of force, but ALL illegal actions MUST. As for sex, here is what I actually said: Quoting myself: "Dropping 30,000 feet would almost definitely cause physical damage, as does all rape (even consensual sex results in "wear and tear")." I was disputing your claim that Quoting DavidOdden: "Physical harm can but need not result from rape." by pointing out that all sex causes physical damage. The concept harm does not entail lack-of-consent, so it does not follow that I was claiming all sex is the initiation of force. So: all sex causes physical harm, but only rape can (and all rape must) involve the initiation of physical force. Additionally, I intended to dispute that Quoting DavidOdden: "Assault (as distinct from battery) is fundamentally about psychological harm." It is in fact about the initiation of force and the resulting rights-violation. Treatment for any resulting psychological harm should be mandated, but the fundamental reason why assault should be illegal and therefore open to criminal punishment and civil suit is that it is a type of initiation of force. Harm is equally irrelevant to the questions "should X be illegal" and "should X be open for civil suit." Quoting DavidOdden: "The general idea behind civil law is that actions have consequences and that actors are responsible for those consequences." No, the general idea is that when ILLEGAL actions cause harm (damage) to a victim (innocent), the perpetrator of the illegal act must repair the damage as part of justice. Quoting DavidOdden: "However, because crap happens, sometimes you just have to say "it was an accident", thus absolute liability should be severely limited." "Crap happens" does not refer to human actions. There can be no liability in such cases. Quoting DavidOdden: " The purpose of civil law is to provide material compensation for wrongful acts by another person, " Again, wrongful acts? Only illegal acts qualify. Quoting DavidOdden: " ...which includes errors of knowledge. This will include the mistaken belief that such and such tree is perfectly safe and sound and does not endanger another man's property, the mistaken belief that a contract clause requires delivery of a crate of widgets by noon on July 12, not July 10, and so on." Again, if the tree falls in a storm, there is no initiation of force and no fault, but if the tree falls on a perfectly normal day, intent or not, one man's property hit another man's property with no cause beyond gravity and that IS initiation of force. It may not be something for criminal court, but that does not mean it was not initiation of force. As for the widget question, if you can't read a contract, you shouldn't make it. Quoting DavidOdden: "Most decidedly, violating of a term of a contract is not initiation of force, and only becomes so when the person in breach has been ordered by the court which determines that there is a breach to provide a certain remedy, yet refuses." Contract violation is blatantly initiation of force, however not necessarily something you should be locked up for. I can't imagine a contract where the delivery date is ambiguous. Promising X at a certain time if I give you Y, and then not providing X at the agreed upon time is initiating force. It's stealing. You took something under condition, then violated the condition. You therefore no longer possess the other person's property legitimately and are keeping it by force. A proper court can't force you to do anything unless you have initiated force. If you dispute the terms of the contract, fine, get it determined by the court. If they rule against you, you don't go to jail, you just do what they say. But the contract meaning doesn't magically change when the court rules. The meaning was ALWAYS that, and you violated those terms which IS initiation of force. Don't forget that contracts in our "perfect Objectivist legal system" will have objective meaning, will use language objectively, and will be determined objectively. Any holes, or places where I mistook your meaning?

Mr. Moivas, you just elegantly summarized my views! To check my understanding, here is my bullet-point summary: -All legal matters, criminal or civil, must stem from an initiation of force. -In criminal law, the specific nature of the act is relevant to determine the proper punishment. Note: I am undecided as to the relevance of intent, but perhaps on another thread... -In civil law, the force-initiator must pay the damage caused to the victim, objectively determined by the court, including costs of treatment for psychological harm because that harm resulted from an illegal action (initiation of force). -Any kind of harm resulting from non-force-initiating action should not be a illegal issue, neither criminal nor civil. -And obviously, actions that are immoral but not illegal should have non-force-based consequences like social isolation, but without any government/legal involvement in the matter. Mr. Odden, I will respond shortly, however our disagreement seems to stem from a fundamental disagreement about the moral basis for law, so we might not get very far. I will at least attempt to clarify my earlier comments and perhaps to convince you that your moral basis for the law is not the same as Ayn Rand's. Either that, or I will discover that I'm wrong!

I'll answer the particular debate first, but we'll just be playing whack-a-mole until everyone understands what art is. Long post, so if you only read part of it, choose the blue paragraph. Watch the movie again: he didn't catch up to her in the fall. She was hanging onto the roof, he jumped out to help her, they both fell at the same time. In the book Angels and Demons (which I don't recommend), they say that a square-foot of fabric can slow a human's fall by 40% or something like that. I'll try to find out if this is true. Assuming it is, Batman's cape was out, and it was much bigger than a square-foot. Get over it and try to actually enjoy the movie. Different people notice different things. I was bothered by Batman tracing a fingerprint on a bullet. This makes no sense because a bullet is almost entirely inside its casing when put in the clip. Unless the shooter loaded his own ammunition, there couldn't have been a fingerprint like that. My boyfriend was annoyed that the supposedly made-in-China gun Dent takes from the wiseguy in court was obviously a Gloch. We can do this all day with any movie, or book, or poem, or painting, etc. Art is a -selective- recreation of reality. The Dark Knight is romantic, not naturalistic. This reminds me of something I heard at the Cordair gallery (www.cordair.com): an Objectivist complained that in Brian Larsen's "How Far We've Come" the woman's hair would be messier in zero-gravity. Such a painting would be naturalistic, not romantic, and not in-line with Rand's Aesthetics. In a live-action movie, the artwork consists of a series of pictures of (mostly) actual objects. Each object corresponds to something in reality, but in a symbolic, not literalistic, way. Chris Nolan used the particular gun in the courtroom because it is universally recognizable as a semi-automatic pistol. In the real world, yes, it is and must be a Gloch, but in the Chris Nolan universe it is whatever he (or his character, Harvey Dent) says it is. That doesn't mean he can call it a chicken, but the brand or manufacturing country is up for grabs. Batman always uses technology and cleverness to catch villains, and tracing the fingerprint showed that, even though as an investigation technique in the real world it would be virtually useless. Saving Rachel was a typical show of his strength, consistent with his other actions. Batman -does- have strength (morally, physically, and psychologically) beyond that of any other man in Chris Nolan's universe, so yes, of course, his actions often go beyond what you would expect to see in reality. That's what makes him the hero, and a superhero besides. But reality is the basis for Batman, moreso than any other superhero, in fact. Batman's armor has its limits. Even in the first movie, Lucius Fox tells him that it can stop "anything but a straight-shot." In The Dark Knight, Batman weakens his armor to the point where it won't even stop knives in some places. When Two-Face shoots him, Batman goes down. He summons enough strength to knock Two-Face over to save Gordon, catches Gordon's son, lifts the kid up to his father, then runs out of strength and loses his grip and falls. On the way down, he hits several beams, which both slow his fall to prevent his death and weaken him more. When he hits the ground, he doesn't move for a bit. Perhaps he is unconscious, perhaps he's just crippled by pain. Perhaps he was unconscious before the fall, afterall, he was shot and still performed several enormous feats of strength, never mind everything else he had been doing that day (bitten by dogs and beaten with a crowbar to name two). Being unconscious actually makes it more likely to survive, as does wearing bodyarmor, which Two-Face was not. Further, Two-Face did not hit anything on the way down to slow his fall, he was thrown too far from the structure (you can tell by his location on the ground relative to Batman and the building). He was also already severely injured by his burns, and he also clearly didn't care if he (or anyone else) lived or died. Never ignore the importance of the will to live in surviving an accident. Nitpicking plot points is -not- thinking about art. Better to ask: what standards does the artist have for his universe? what do those standards tell you about his view of reality (metaphysical value-judgments)? Example: The artist identifies one man as strong and another as weak. Both fall 20ft. The weak man survives. What is the artist saying? Only the context can tell you. He could be saying that life is all chance and ability doesn't matter. It could be that the weak man did something clever to protect himself, in which case the metaphysical value-judgment is that reason is more valuable to man than physical strength, even in physical situations. It could be that the weak man was a priest and God saved him, or a wizard using magic, or the strong man had wronged the weak man and "cosmic justice" decided who lived and who died, or any number of things. In proper art, however, the meaning will -not- be that the artist was a physicist who calculated angles and weights and velocities to determine the outcome. No insult to those honestly trying to evaluate this work of art, but manufacturing irrelevancies like the "unrealisticness" of the falls is purely destructive. If you find yourself fixated on such things, check your premises: it smells a lot like cynicism.

Thanks! I did a search, I promise, but for some reason "children's rights" didn't show up in the first 25 or so hits. Then again, I'm notoriously bad at searches. Apologies. I agree with your suggestion for approach. Here's what I have arrived at so far (sorry for the lack of elegance): Man's rights are derived from man's nature, specifically that reason is his only tool of survival. He therefore cannot survive when his reason is made impotent. Man can't survive against animals and nature with physical strength alone- he must use reason. Similarly, man can't sustain his life (long-term) through use physical force against other men to attain what they have created through reason because once the reasoning men are destroyed it will be man-versus-nature again and he will have to use reason or perish. Animals and forces of nature have no volition, but man does, therefore morality applies to man. When men live together (as they virtually always do), it is therefore a right of every man to be free from physical force, that is to say, he must be free to use his reason (physical force being the only thing that man can do to make reason impotent). Man's existence must be his own, or in other words, he has a right to his own life, and the fundamental basis for this right is man's dependence on (his own) reason to survive. My next thought was this: Young children, in contrast, have absolutely no tools for survival, however if kept healthy, meaning if they are kept physically safe and can interact with the world, they will develop reason and will be able to survive on their own. This is not a potential, like a fetus is "potentially" a human. This is a physical fact of the human brain. However I now think I was way off base. My new line of reasoning is as follows: Children experience the same pain/pleasure sensations that form the basis of man's life as a value, but they have no means to preserve it. While this by itself does not impose an obligation on any given person to care for a child, the person who gives birth to the child cannot do so accidentally, especially today. Man has known for his entire history how procreation works, else he would not be here (not having any instincts, he had to choose to learn sex). Having a child is, and always has been, a choice (except rape before pregnancy termination procedures, so in those cases infanticide was perhaps moral). Therefore parents are obligated to provide a child with everything necessary and sufficient to develop the ability to care for themselves. Any holes? I'd like to establish this before I move on to particulars.

Harm should not be the basis of any criminal law. The rights violation is based on initiation of force, not harm. Whether or not the force results in significant physical damage is irrelevant on the criminal side. Your example of the pilot is a crime: dropping the plane threatens the passengers with physical force. Dropping 30,000 feet would almost definitely cause physical damage, as does all rape (even consensual sex results in "wear and tear"). Similarly, an obviously dangerous tree overhanging your property is a threat. When it falls, that is physical force. However a tree that is perfectly safe under ordinary circumstances falls onto your neighbor's property during a hurricane is no threat and no liability. Your neighbor's rights weren't violated by you nor was he harmed by you. You were both harmed by the hurricane, but a hurricane has no volition and can't be blamed. The purpose of civil law is to provide material retribution for a violation of rights. That means physical force must have been initiated. Criminal punishment (incarceration, etc.) need not be involved, as in a dispute over contract violation. However violating a contract IS initiation of force. The act of rape (or any other criminal act) is no more a rights violation and no worse when committed against a psychologically weak person who experiences more mental harm versus an exceptionally psychologically strong person who experiences no (or less) mental harm. Economically, if you punish the same crime differently for different victims, i.e. if the rapist has to pay for lost work time due to psychological distress, you are creating an incentive to target certain victims, such as poor or psychologically strong people. Are such concerns relevant in questions of law? The law is not meant as a deterrent. It is supposed to dispense justice. I'll have to think more about justice in order to answer this.

Khaight, that was such an elegant answer, especially while "between tasks!" Bravo!

Harm is not the basis for our rights, however it often plays a role in legal matters. Everyone's favorite tort, "intentional infliction of emotional distress," is but one example of psychological harm under the law. In an Objectivist theory of law, would psychological harm play any role? Can psychological harm be objectively defined for the purposes of the law? Is psychological harm even a valid concept? It seems unlikely that one could inflict objective psychological harm without also initiating physical force, such as locking someone up in a white room for weeks. However, would the addition of psychological harm warrant additional punishment? What about something really bizarre, that isn't forced on you but is utterly unexpected, for example you show up to work and your boss has filled the office with wax sculptures of concentration camp victims? Suppose further you were such a victim and your boss knew that and deliberately attempted to drive you to a psychological break? Do you have any recourse under the law? Is your boss's intent relevant? Further complications arise in the case of children. Should the state interfere with parenting on the basis of psychological harm? We might start with prosecuting parents who sleep naked with their children and end with outlawing the teaching of different political affiliations or philosophies. Could we avoid ending up with Plato's republic?