And yet you did. Don’t you ever tire of fawning over yourself? “Gee, Frank, if only you shared my insight, you poor benighted individual”.

Give me a break! From a theoretical, anrthropological standpoint, once we are out of the womb, we will learning / modeling about 99% of the time. That is not the same as saying that witnesses to a crime need role models. What do they need? Some person to do the right thing while they are watching? Of course! Someone who says, “Let’s go… Mind your business” every time therir child sees something untoward, is not a good role model. But there is something else afoot here. I am not condemning an entire community as you and Mike in DC are. Is this Riuchmond area some sort of post-apocalyptic hell? Ever hear of Pruitt-Igoe? Or the Cabrini Projects? Or “Bed-Stuy, Do or Die”?

“These poor kids need role models” is pure social worker BS. They need to understand that people who commit crimes are punished.

Finally, I do not believe we are born with an “innate understanding of moral behavior”: To the contrary, I believe that we are born constantly tempted to do evil, a temptation we must overcome, all through each day of our lives. As William F, Buckley put it so well, “People try earnestly to good, but fail sometimes.”

I know that you believe that we are all born with an innate understanding of moral behavior that satan’s weapon on earth, liberalism, erodes quickly over the course of time so there’s really no point in trying to explain how stupid it is to write something like this:

[i]When you can pass by a crime in progress, poverty and role models have nothing to do with it. The fact that something horrible is happening to somebody, should produce in you a feeling that something should be done. Not acting in a situation like that suggests that no one felt any guilt. The miscreants that committed the crime obviously felt no shame; why should they? No one else cared…[/i]

Frank, whether they’re a witness who did nothing or the actual person committing the crime, no one in this situation had a clear concept for the correct behavior, in other words, the model role to play: either don’t gang rape someone or if you see someone gang raped, report it.

People can be taught to mind their own business, or they can be taught to get involved. Role models are required in either case.

I don’t know. But hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of Iraqi girls and women were raped, many by American servicemen, and so far nobody’s done a darn thing. Obama isn’t bothered about it in the least, and even his female SOS can’t be bothered to investigate it or prosecute anyone. Obama even seems to actually approve of the rape of both men and women of color in American prisons. It’s a huge scandal, very well documented, but of course it’s not something he can be bothered about. That would be paying attention to human rights, and it might cut into the profits of his corporate buddies.

Your Google Fu is weak, while my Bing Fu is strong.

You wouldn’t see something like this happen in a place with more traditional american values where the residents are more likely to have a more conservative viewpoint.

Wouldn’t see. That’s what you wrote. That’s different than “Not that it could never happen …”

You can’t even cite yourself correctly. How stupid is that?

And it’s spelled different. So you’ve got absolutely nothing right. As usual.

The disapproval of others? You mean like a role model?

Moron.

“where you claim this kind of thing could never happen.”

Not that it could never happen but that it is more likely that someone would put a stop to it rather than capture the moment on their phone cam.

Perhaps I misunderstood your reference to group. Gang rape with numerous spectators documenting and perhaps participating vs more than one criminal operating in secret without witnesses.

Mambo,
A bit of a difference between divorce, bastardry, and gang rape don’t you know. In some communities not only is this type of thing extremely rare but members of the community would be much more prone to stop the assault sometimes quite abruptly and with a good chance of violence. While no one can really condone taking the law into one’s own hands it does make for a more peaceful community in cases like this.

fafaroo,
“There you see full group participation, whether it’s beating a gay man to death (Matthew Shepard) or dragging a black man through the streets (James Byrd). Yup.”

you may not have noticed in the Shepard case how they were all alone out in the sticks, nobody was around, it was late at night after the bars had closed. Byrd was also attacked while was alone, they didn’t drag him through rush hour traffic.

Zython,
“Translation: “Those durn negros are takin’ our jerbs!”

The leadership of a community is a choice and a reflection of the community. Richmond is an ex blue collar shipyard town that is now predominately liberal. So liberal that the elected counterparts to the Democrat politicians who are heavily black are not Republicans but belong to the Green party. The skilled craftsman all left town when the yards shutdown. The folks that are left vote strongly for liberals no doubt in spite of the liberal tendency towards socialism and a bigger welfare state.

There was no contradiction, you pusillanimous oaf.

Try the sentences again without the bolding: When you, as a bystander, can pass by a crime in progress, poverty and role models have nothing to do with the simple act of reporting it to someone else.

The OTHER sentence, separate and apart from that one, says that the The miscreants that committed the crime obviously felt no shame (shame meaning the sting of the disaapproval of others); why should they? No one else cared [enough to suggest they stop, call the police, or even say they were going to call the police]

Whoever said you simply wait for me to comment so you can say something negative about it was right. No wonder you have that name — your comments stink like rotting fish.

I noticed Frank Disalle left out three important things in his right leaning litany of causes for crime: consistency, coherence and reason.

Frank, with every comment you seem to be functioning more and more on autopilot. Your post above comes crammed with every conservative bromide beaten into you by the nuns which you now seem unable to keep from regurgitating in a completely random, self-contradictory fashion.

When you can pass by a crime in progress, poverty and role models have nothing to do with it. The fact that something horrible is happening to somebody, should produce in you a feeling that something should be done. Not acting in a situation like that suggests that no one felt any guilt. The miscreants that committed the crime obviously felt no shame; why should they? No one else cared…
As for a sense of right and wrong:
1) a lack of good role models…
2) all of the burdens that growing up in deep poverty lays on a community …
3) a sense of aimlessness, hopelessness and lack of structure for at risk youth …
4) a sense of the government as oppressive and/or unresponsive and a consequent unwillingness to cooperate …

A quiver of excuses ready to fire at the public, the press, and a jury.

And you wonder why there is “apathy and moral indifference, and a diminished sense of empathy.”

I sure don’t.

I’m so fed up with the attitude of conservatives toward the poor and the inner cities. They don’t want a cent of their tax dollars spent on the poor in this country, but they can work themselves into a frenzy at the thought of invading countries full of non-Christian brown people, regardless of the cost.

Translation: “Those durn negros are takin’ our jerbs!”

You wouldn’t see something like this happen in a place with more traditional american values where the residents are more likely to have a more conservative viewpoint.

Well, not if you’re in America’s Rape Belt.

Nicer.

This is coming from a guy who frequently uses ad hominem attacks against me. If you really believe this, maybe you should try leading by example.

First off, saying that “conservatives are smarter politically.” Your link does not support that claim. I would argue that there is a substantial difference between intelligence (i.e., “smartness”) and being informed on basic questions (e.g., knowing that Israel and Iran do not share a border). These were general knowledge questions that did not get to the heart of any sort of ideological or philosophical divide. These questions had nothing to do with intelligence. Except, of course, that your submission of it demonstrates your lack thereof.

Secondly, I didn’t see where they demonstrated that there was a statistically significant difference in how the groups answered the questions. Yes, the raw scores for the questions tended to favor the right; however, the effect sizes are mostly so small as to probably be meaningless. In fact, the article mentions this very point.

Fail, fail, fail. Keep throwing those pies. Maybe spray some seltzer on someone next, that’s always good for a laugh.