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Unamused Cat

Veteran Member
This is just cold.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,335648,00.html



SARASOTA, Fla. — A woman was charged with leaving her mother to die languishing on the floor for two weeks after she suffered a debilitating fall.

Helen Frizzell, 94, died hours after she was found by authorities in November. According to police, her 65-year-old daughter brought her food, cleaned her and used bug spray to keep away swarming insects.

Carole Mae Frizzell told police she could not lift her mother, who insisted that she not call 911.

Authorities did not arrest Carole Frizzell for more than three months because they were awaiting an arrest warrant and were unsure how to charge her.

Records show she was arrested Tuesday afternoon and charged with felony neglect of an elderly person. She was released after posting $50,000 bail. Records do not indicate whether she has an attorney, and she did not have a listed home phone number.

Helen Frizzell was found after her daughter tried to buy a car for $15,000 in cash and aroused the suspicion of salesman Steve Forshaw. He went to pick up Carole Frizzell at her home to finish the transaction and she told him her mother was dying.

Forshaw called 911 and said he was escorted into a back room where the elder Frizzell had fallen.

"She was lying on the floor collapsed over," Forshaw said. "She looked like a mannequin in the corner. I said 'Is she OK, is she alive?' She poked her and yelled 'Mom' and she groaned."

Neighbors said the Frizzells kept to themselves and rarely had visitors.
 
Wow.....
Well, at least she kept the poor old woman from getting eaten alive by bugs. :rolleyes:

That's why I'm extra nice to my kiddos.....they are gonna be the ones taking care of me when I'm old and feeble. ;)
 
Sorry, but this is insanity. Neglect of an elderly? Unless you are the caregiver being paid to take care of them, a person has no fucking obligation to help them, or anybody other than their own young children, ever. Sure, helping other people may be nice, and in this case exceptionally reasonable, but that doesn't mean it ought to be the law. What worries me is less the details of this tyrannical abuse of legal authority, but more the precident that it will inevitably help to set. Will I then be arrested if I don't walk an old lady across the street? Or if I see a homeless guy sleeping outside, do I have to invite him into my house to avoid jail time? When shit like this happens, the line gets pushed, and there is no telling where it will end.
 
Sorry, but this is insanity. Neglect of an elderly? Unless you are the caregiver being paid to take care of them, a person has no fucking obligation to help them, or anybody other than their own young children, ever. Sure, helping other people may be nice, and in this case exceptionally reasonable, but that doesn't mean it ought to be the law. What worries me is less the details of this tyrannical abuse of legal authority, but more the precident that it will inevitably help to set. Will I then be arrested if I don't walk an old lady across the street? Or if I see a homeless guy sleeping outside, do I have to invite him into my house to avoid jail time? When shit like this happens, the line gets pushed, and there is no telling where it will end.


I guess you think child neglect is a dumb law as well?
 
The victim was the woman's mother, gprime. If you want to leave your mother lying on the floor until she dies, then I think you should go to jail for it. Because if you're that kind of person, it's a pretty short leap to causing physical harm rather than allowing it, because leaving a person on the floor will cause skin breakdown, infection, and eventual death. From neglecting someone to death, the next step is to decide you want to cause physical harm via active abuse rather than passive abuse. From there it escalates to harming more than one person. Reason doesn't matter - maybe you don't like their skin color, or their religion. Pretty soon you're Hitler, exterminating millions of people, because you think it's okay to do so and no law should tell you to not do that. It's a slippery slope.
 
I guess you think child neglect is a dumb law as well?

Hey, it is THEIR child. They should be able to have sex with the damn things until the kid is at least 16, and is old enough to request the ass-raping to halt.

Remember, Morbid, there is no "real" right or wrong. Everyone can do whatever they like, and it is equally valid. Something you really need to learn about Libertarian ethics: You can be guilty of harm through action, but you can never be guilty of harm through INACTION. Here's how that works:

If you are out on the lake in your boat, and you push your friend overboard, and leave them to drown, you are immoral.

However, if you are out on your boat, and you come across a family treading water, with their boat sinking, you can putter up to them, chat for awhile, and just drive away, leaving them to drown, and THIS is moral! The difference is - you can't have society "forcing" Libertarians to do anything. Nothing can be asked or expected of them. That would be imposing upon their liberties.

For this reason, if you are driving along, and someone falls into the street in front of your car, just take your foot off the accelerator. Now you are innocent!
 
Helen Frizzell was found after her daughter tried to buy a car for $15,000 in cash and aroused the suspicion of salesman Steve Forshaw.

I'm guessing Steve doesn't make a ton of money selling cars. The dealerships here don't blink an eye when an 18 year old drops 50Gs, in powdered $20 bills, on an Escalade or a Benz-o.

The victim was the woman's mother, gprime. If you want to leave your mother lying on the floor until she dies, then I think you should go to jail for it. Because if you're that kind of person, it's a pretty short leap to causing physical harm rather than allowing it, because leaving a person on the floor will cause skin breakdown, infection, and eventual death. From neglecting someone to death, the next step is to decide you want to cause physical harm via active abuse rather than passive abuse. From there it escalates to harming more than one person. Reason doesn't matter - maybe you don't like their skin color, or their religion. Pretty soon you're Hitler, exterminating millions of people, because you think it's okay to do so and no law should tell you to not do that. It's a slippery slope.

Hahaha ROFLMAO, this is a great one. Follow your mom's request to not call 911 and you're the next Hitler. Slippery slope indeed.

Seriously though, if you want your kids to love you when you're 94, you need to invest something long before then. If you raised a kid that can sit and watch you die, for weeks mind you, then you are reaping what you've sown.
 
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I guess you think child neglect is a dumb law as well?

Please, go back and read what I said. I said "or anybody other than their own young children." And I define child as anybody not yet a legal adult. I believe a parent is obligated to provide for their minor children because they chose to have them. In an era where abortion is legal, a person who does not want to be a parent has no excuse. Therefore, by becoming a parent, there are certain automatic expectations. I fail to see the way in which this matches up to the scenario here.
 
The victim was the woman's mother, gprime. If you want to leave your mother lying on the floor until she dies, then I think you should go to jail for it. Because if you're that kind of person, it's a pretty short leap to causing physical harm rather than allowing it, because leaving a person on the floor will cause skin breakdown, infection, and eventual death. From neglecting someone to death, the next step is to decide you want to cause physical harm via active abuse rather than passive abuse. From there it escalates to harming more than one person. Reason doesn't matter - maybe you don't like their skin color, or their religion. Pretty soon you're Hitler, exterminating millions of people, because you think it's okay to do so and no law should tell you to not do that. It's a slippery slope.

Not punishing somebody for failing to help another human being puts you on a Nazi-like slippery slope? Cut the insane melodrama. Hilter actively ordered the genocide of millions. There is an epic difference between active and passive. Active means you are taking action, and therefore assuming responsibility. Passivity merely means you do not care to involve yourself. And there ought be no legal obligation to be the former. Otherwise, we could end up throwing people in jail for not attacking muggers who stole another person's purse. Is that what you want? Because that is the only sort of slippery slope this creates.

I think the daughter is a horrible person, and deserves a miserable life. But that doesn't mean I'm about to advocate jailing her simply because I, and most people, would have acted differently.
 
Not punishing somebody for failing to help another human being puts you on a Nazi-like slippery slope? Cut the insane melodrama. Hilter actively ordered the genocide of millions. There is an epic difference between active and passive. Active means you are taking action, and therefore assuming responsibility. Passivity merely means you do not care to involve yourself. And there ought be no legal obligation to be the former. Otherwise, we could end up throwing people in jail for not attacking muggers who stole another person's purse. Is that what you want? Because that is the only sort of slippery slope this creates.

I think the daughter is a horrible person, and deserves a miserable life. But that doesn't mean I'm about to advocate jailing her simply because I, and most people, would have acted differently.

I don't know. Stalin's starving the Ukraine is often equated with Hitler's "Final Solution". One was inaction and the other was action. I guess if you really think you can morally leave a drowning family in the lake, and not skip a beat, it allows you to see a difference, but most people give very little lee-way to evil through inaction.
 
Hey, it is THEIR child. They should be able to have sex with the damn things until the kid is at least 16, and is old enough to request the ass-raping to halt.

I am quite certain that nobody here ever said it. Frankly, if anything, the reverse would be the case. Until a person is old enough to consent, sex is off the table. Once they can consent, their partner is their business, regardless of any family relations, so long as everybody is willing and of age.

Remember, Morbid, there is no "real" right or wrong. Everyone can do whatever they like, and it is equally valid.

Not everything is equally right or wrong, since we all have our biases. For example, I have a soft spot for letting my fellow Westerners live, as otherwise, I would be an Islamist. So each person makes their own judgement, and naturally assumes their beliefs to be superior. But since that cannot be empirically proven typically, we then do not make the same type of absurd "I'm objective" claims that you do.

Something you really need to learn about Libertarian ethics:

I must point out yet again: I AM NOT A LIBERTARIAN! I am a neo-Objectivist. The two are similar, but highly distinct.

You can be guilty of harm through action, but you can never be guilty of harm through INACTION. Here's how that works

As I've outlined above, child neglect would render a person guilty through inaction, thus disproving your half-baked claim.

If you are out on the lake in your boat, and you push your friend overboard, and leave them to drown, you are immoral.

However, if you are out on your boat, and you come across a family treading water, with their boat sinking, you can putter up to them, chat for awhile, and just drive away, leaving them to drown, and THIS is moral!

The question is not of morality, but of legal obligation. I personally would think the latter individual was scum. But I fail to see, where in the course of his actions, he did anything that merits legal retribution.

The difference is - you can't have society "forcing" Libertarians to do anything. Nothing can be asked or expected of them. That would be imposing upon their liberties.!

Untrue. Paying towards the common defense, in other words, limited taxation to cover security expenses, is reasonable. Expecting people to uphold the civil liberties of their fellow man is also valid. But anything beyond that is not. It is NICE to help your fellow man or contribute to humanity, but it ought not be required.

For this reason, if you are driving along, and someone falls into the street in front of your car, just take your foot off the accelerator. Now you are innocent!

No. If you hit the person and could have prevented it by breaking, you would still be guilty of murder, your hyperbolic fanatic.
 
I don't know. Stalin's starving the Ukraine is often equated with Hitler's "Final Solution". One was inaction and the other was action. I guess if you really think you can morally leave a drowning family in the lake, and not skip a beat, it allows you to see a difference, but most people give very little lee-way to evil through inaction.

There is a problem with that scenario. By virtue of abusing his power to create a planned economy, he infringed upon the rights of every person in the nation. But more importantly, by not letting the free market operate, he assumed responsibility for it. Thus, he is guilty of any shortcomings his system inspired. Conversely, the lake scenario at no point involves the assumption of burden by the boat owner. What a person should do and has to do are very different.
 
The question is not of morality, but of legal obligation. I personally would think the latter individual was scum. But I fail to see, where in the course of his actions, he did anything that merits legal retribution.


So, what is "right" is determined by the current laws? If so, then why would laws ever change?

And you make the mistake of saying that I know "what" the objective moral truth is. I never claim to know this, and explicitly say that we can only hope to approximate it. What I know is that there IS an objective moral truth. And through reason and debate, we learn more and more about it, and how to approach it, asymptotically.

The proof is pretty easy to see: Human laws ratchet in one direction, overall. They do not randomly flit about, but move more and more towards a system that seems built on the Golden Rule. And evolutionary psychology and game theory have found, in just the last dozen years, that our sense of ethics is innate, genetic even. This is not debatable. We see the same codes of ethics in other animals, who do not have "culture". Your position is untenable. It is based on old data that has been disproved. The Margaret Meades of the world were making shit up based on their own bias, and subsequent anthropologists have discredited their every word.


And this is starting to become a thread that needs to be in "Three Things". :D
 
What a person should do and has to do are very different.

Oh, cool. So we agree. The person in this story was an immoral fuck.


I guess where we differ is on what our system of laws should be based on. I vote for a system of ethics. I assume you prefer them to be randomly assigned?
 
Not punishing somebody for failing to help another human being puts you on a Nazi-like slippery slope? Cut the insane melodrama. Hilter actively ordered the genocide of millions. There is an epic difference between active and passive. Active means you are taking action, and therefore assuming responsibility. Passivity merely means you do not care to involve yourself. And there ought be no legal obligation to be the former. Otherwise, we could end up throwing people in jail for not attacking muggers who stole another person's purse. Is that what you want? Because that is the only sort of slippery slope this creates.

I think the daughter is a horrible person, and deserves a miserable life. But that doesn't mean I'm about to advocate jailing her simply because I, and most people, would have acted differently.

Hey, all I did was use the exact same logic you did, in reverse order. When you do it, it makes perfect sense to you but looks pretty weird to other people. When I do it, it looks a little overdramatic to me, but at least I have the good sense to know it, and posted it that way specifically to see your response. Which was precisely what I expected it to be.

You're a bright boy, gprime, but you're not always the stablest of guys. You assume that laws which have been in place for many years will become more and more oppressive until you are in prison for standing around, but you are totally unable to use the same style of thinking in the other direction? Kind of one-sided of you, isn't it?
 
So, what is "right" is determined by the current laws? If so, then why would laws ever change?

And you make the mistake of saying that I know "what" the objective moral truth is. I never claim to know this, and explicitly say that we can only hope to approximate it. What I know is that there IS an objective moral truth. And through reason and debate, we learn more and more about it, and how to approach it, asymptotically.

The proof is pretty easy to see: Human laws ratchet in one direction, overall. They do not randomly flit about, but move more and more towards a system that seems built on the Golden Rule. And evolutionary psychology and game theory have found, in just the last dozen years, that our sense of ethics is innate, genetic even. This is not debatable. We see the same codes of ethics in other animals, who do not have "culture". Your position is untenable. It is based on old data that has been disproved. The Margaret Meades of the world were making shit up based on their own bias, and subsequent anthropologists have discredited their every word.


And this is starting to become a thread that needs to be in "Three Things". :D

No, I do not determine what is right by what is the law. I do not feel that morality and law should be linked at all. It is my belief that law ought to be based on rights, the most basic of which is property. In that regard, anything from murder and rape, to theft and physical abuse, would still remain illegal. But, it would allow for people to make their own decisions regarding their person, meaning they could smoke dope or not wear a seatbelt if they so elected. That isn't to say they should do either, especially the latter, but it would afford them that basic right.

As for an objective moral truth, I disagree that there is one. Even if ethnics are genetically influenced, that does not mean that the same ethical code is universally accepted as true. Otherwise, there would have been no 9/11 attacks. As I've said, it is natural to assume the superiority of one's moral code, as I myself do, but it is foolish to assume it based on something more objectively true and unshakable than anybody else's.
 
Hey, all I did was use the exact same logic you did, in reverse order. When you do it, it makes perfect sense to you but looks pretty weird to other people. When I do it, it looks a little overdramatic to me, but at least I have the good sense to know it, and posted it that way specifically to see your response. Which was precisely what I expected it to be.

You're a bright boy, gprime, but you're not always the stablest of guys. You assume that laws which have been in place for many years will become more and more oppressive until you are in prison for standing around, but you are totally unable to use the same style of thinking in the other direction? Kind of one-sided of you, isn't it?

I think the differences speak for themselves. It is reasonable to assume that if I am expected to help an old person off the floor, that I might similarly be expected to help them cross the street if they cannot on their own. That isn't a major jump in logic. To compare being an ass and not helping one person to orchestrating massive genocide is. And I think any person who compares the two scenarios ought to see the clear difference.

Further, given the continued loss of liberty, I feel that my assumptions were well grounded. I'm not inclined to take it to the extreme you claim I am, but I do realize that in a nation where liberty loses ground every day to government, it is reasonable to worry about legal precident. Look at Lincoln, and how he set the precident of going to war without a congressional declaration, and see how many times since then it has been done, compared to before his time. Like it or not, once something has been done by a person of legal authority, they make the idea acceptable.
 
As for an objective moral truth, I disagree that there is one. Even if ethnics are genetically influenced, that does not mean that the same ethical code is universally accepted as true. Otherwise, there would have been no 9/11 attacks. As I've said, it is natural to assume the superiority of one's moral code, as I myself do, but it is foolish to assume it based on something more objectively true and unshakable than anybody else's.

The idea that morality is subjective is an objective statement. It needs to be proven just as rigorously as any claims made for an objective moral truth. The problem with moral subjectivity is just that, it uses objectivity to get started, and then immediately discards it.

If morality varies across cultures more than it is similar, this will be an objective truth that we could discover and debate. What we find is the opposite. Cultures are almost identical. The few places that they do differ, we are shocked, amused, and entertained. Because everything else is the same.

Your example of the 911 hijackers is not a good one. In order for you to prove that their idea of morality is different than our own, you would have to show me that the hijackers would approve of planes flown into their own homes. These men were criminals, and they knew they were criminals. A man who rapes does not wish to be raped himself. He understands the objective moral truth, but chooses to act in his own interests.

We are hardly products of our culture. Almost everything we do is genetically determined. Most of our habits are found in primate cultures. Every human group laughs and cries for the same reasons. Most of our differences (the few that we have) are found to be forced on ourselves in order to differentiate ourselves from neighboring groups. This outgrouping and ingrouping has only been fully comprehended in the last generation.

I understand that you spend a lot of time reading about economics and politics, and I have enormous respect for that, and the knowledge you have amassed. But that data is worthless if you don't understand psychology. You will always come to the wrong conclusion. I cannot stress enough the need to read Pinker and Harris and Dawkins and Gladwell. Otherwise, you will urge political and economic solutions which are inviable. You know how you and I look at central planners and shake our heads? Because the faults are glaringly obvious? I have the same reaction when you guys make simple mistakes due to an ignorance of human psychology.

I'm not trying to beat you down, I'm trying to show you how to build yourself up.
 
Your example of the 911 hijackers is not a good one. In order for you to prove that their idea of morality is different than our own, you would have to show me that the hijackers would approve of planes flown into their own homes. These men were criminals, and they knew they were criminals. A man who rapes does not wish to be raped himself. He understands the objective moral truth, but chooses to act in his own interests.

This is the claim in your post I take biggest issue with. The 9/11 hijackers didn't see themselves as criminals or terrorists, but as soldiers of Allah, on a righteous mission of jihad against infidels. They would object to the same treatment not because they don't want their homes destroyed, but because they feel they had a just reason that would not apply to attacks against them. In other words, if they were good Muslims, they would see there being no grounds for which to hold them accountable.
 

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