gustavman

Yeah, things got so quiet here for a few hours. And then the off topic posts on Victorian houses seemed like ignoring the elephant in the room. I couldn't help feel partially responsible. Ydrl coined the name. I can take no credit.

I know nothing of the facts. But when the issue comes should we take someone’s dental license away, we do consider whether they were convicted of groping a patient in the chair or groping someone on a date, whether they committed dental insurance fraud or unrelated tax fraud. The theory is, if he committed a dental crime, he might do another dental crime. The theory is not any crime related to dentistry is worse than one unrelated to dentistry. There is no real principle behind the theory to bar someone who committed a dentistry crime, while letting stay someone who committed a non-dentistry crime that is morally worse. So you say he committed basically a poetry crime. A crime is not worse because it relates to poetry. Poetry is not a sacrosanct religion. A temple was not besmirched. It would be equally evil if his crime involved no poetry. And barring him from poetry doesn’t protect the public any, unless you believe he can use poetry for more child porn.

Since you're curious, I'll give my two minute analysis. If you are going to have equal justice for all, then you have to have a list of crimes that make you unpublishable. Immigration has a ridiculously complicated system for which crimes will get you deported. If murder is the only crime with capital punishment, it has to be assumed to be the worst crime. So if you are banning for child porn crimes, you have to ban for murder. Then you’ll have to look at crime after crime and pick an arbitrary line. All sex crimes, domestic violence, all assaults, drunk driving insider trading. I can see someone saying Bernie Madoff should be unpublishable. There is no great system, other than that people shouldn't do crime, and then everyone will be happy. One answer is to say no prison issue altogether. There is some governor I can’t remember who wants prisoners to be the last ones to get COVID vaccines even if they are most risk. It’s odd because liberals are often pro prisoner rights, while liberals flip with particular crimes like child porn.