President Obama: Do you really love America?

[DeistPaladin]

Intent is as useful for this discussion as a used toilet paper is to clean your hands.

Sorry you don't agree with something so basic, it's a legal no-brainer.

Premeditated murder is NOT morally equivalent to manslaughter, even in cases where the unintended death happened by the most reckless of negligence.

You obviously feel differently. I think we're at "agree to disagree" time.

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The drunk driver would be if he benefits from killing someone while driving drunk, knows he benefits, and could very plausibly have gotten drunk repeatedly in order to avail himself of that benefit, even if he claims he gets drunk purely out of the joy of mere inebriation.

Agreed and intent is still key in our analysis of the morality of the behavior. My analogy was a bad one, I'll admit.

Let me put it another way. My point is NOT that "hey, it's war" automatically morally absolves anyone. That's why we have a thing called "war crimes."

At the same time, the automatic, "gee whiz, it's all the same: one man's soldier is another man's terrorist and who can really say..." is also something I strongly disagree with.

At best, I find this false equivalency to be sloppy, intellectually lazy and fallacious. At worst, it smacks of moral relativism.

Setting out to deliberately murder civilians is not the same as unintended civilian casualties any more than a serial killer is morally the same as someone who causes a death through negligence.

Besides, are you being oppressed? Use passive resistance. It works better than terrorism anyway.

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To all you atheists and agnostics who have long awaited proof that God exists. A miracle has just happened. I actually agree with DP on this one. Unintentional consequences do not equate to a thought out deliberate act.

I got a chuckle out of that. Thanks.

I'm tempted to make a comment about broken clocks but I'll be nice.