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Comment by beej71

1 day ago

This is absolutely true, and I think something that a lot of bleeding heart liberals don't fully understand.

You might be against the death penalty, for example, because you can't bear the thought that the government would put innocent people to death. But some people believe that these are acceptable losses for the gain.

Likewise, you might think that a program that helps prevent violence against a certain minority group would be beneficial. But some people feel that this is a waste of money since it doesn't actually benefit the most people. If you spend money, after all, wouldn't you want to positively affect the most people you could? Everybody else--they are acceptable losses.

If you observed that your argument needs to rest on a false binary choice in an us-vs-others (identity "I am not a liberal") you should take time to step up to meta-thinking. Maybe we have been to long in the culture war?

Some people want us to ridicule compassion. But Why? For Who? For What?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l1NJwz5SCl4

(edited, maybe you personally already understood)

Liberals also support the death penalty but in scenarios where it is less likely to happen. For example if someone doesn’t pay their parking fine it’s possible the situation escalates to a point where an armed government official will kill the person refusing to pay for resisting their lawful commands. This situation might be more unlikely than death penalty for murder or the ‘victim’ might be more responsible for the situation but I think having a hard block against the death penalty because it involves death or is irreversible is hard to defend. I think if you have a sovereign you ultimately have to be comfortable with killing people who oppose the sovereign.