At any rate, once in a great while, I'll get a comment on a post that has nothing at all to do with the comment's subject, but the comment is appropriate to blog topics, and surely to some post somewhere. I don't know why people do this, or if it's an easy mistake to make.
For instance, the following comment is logged on an October 6 post about the drought in California. Assuming no one interested in the topic of Edward Snowden and human rights will find it there, I decided to pull it out and post it here, along with my response. Maybe the original commenter will get back to it here - although I wouldn't bet on it. I doubt if that person is a regular reader of this blog, but who knows? (Apologies for my lack of capitalization in my response. I tend to do that in emails and comments...laziness, I suppose.)
Anonymous said...
To enjoy "rights", humans must display an equal, or greater, amount of personal responsibility. Humans as a species are incapable of that level of thoughtful, longview responsibility. That in itself will eventually cause a collapse of the idea of democracy. E. Snowden is a self-serving, irresponsible freak.
October 24, 2014 at 7:40 AM
m said...
well, you've left your comment on a post that doesn't seem appropriate. however, i finally got to it.
your comments are perhaps sincere, but they are not well thought out.
you begin with a totally illogical - or perhaps just plain incorrect - statement. "rights" exist without connection to responsibility. i would agree with your negative outlook on the moral state of many humans. i do think, however, some of your complaints could be argued to be cultural, and not species dependent. at any rate, "rights" are just that. you might not like it that people have certain rights, but in our country, at least according to our constitution, people are given rights by virtue of their citizenship, not by having earned anything. that's why they're called rights and not conditional states.
i can't see any logical route to a claim that edward snowden is self-serving, unless you are claiming that every action of any individual is self-serving, if only in an indirect way, if we consider a clear conscience gained by a particular action to be self-serving. it could be well argued that everything every person does is self-serving, if only to gain a particular mental state (eg. happiness, contentment, self-respect).
a freak? perhaps, if you define freak as being way off the norm. i can't think of many other people in his category.
irresponsible? to whom or to what? responsible may arguably be the most accurate descriptor of this young man.
November 16, 2014 at 3:07 PM
YWA
Jump in, if you like. In comments to this post, or on the original: http://youwillanyway2.blogspot.com/2014/10/california-drought.html
(I'll try to pay better attention to whether there are any new comments to be moderated. At least until I haven't had any for long enough to forget about them again.)
...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.
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