raydawg wrote on 08/24/14 at 10:59:44:oldNslow wrote on 08/24/14 at 08:12:09: Quote:Would you report to authorities an illegal act by a loved one or close acquaintance?
It depends entirely on what the "act" was. A lot of the things that are illegal are not in and of themselves wrong, just because there is a law against them. There are in fact laws that are immoral themselves. Because I make such judgments based on my own moral compass, what exactly does that make me complicit in ?
Not trying to be a turdball here, it comes naturally to me
BUT......
If you steal from me a million dollars, is it the same violation on my person hood if you took a buck? Yes. Stealing is stealing; the amount has nothing to do with whether or not it is wrong.
But you didn't say anything about right and wrong, you said " illegal." Not at all the same thing.
A couple of - I admit - trivial examples:
Where I live fourth -of July fireworks are illegal. So would I call the police on my neighbor if I saw his kids running around their yard with sparklers, or if he himself was lighting fireworks off on his own property? No I would not. He's breaking the law but as long as he is causing no harm he isn't doing anything wrong.
It is likewise illegal in my state to alter the factory exhaust system on a motorcycle. A huge percentage of the motorcycles on the road, including my own, have non factory exhaust, or factory exhausts that have been altered in some fashion. Whenever I take mine for it's annual inspection should I call the cops on the guy who issues me the sticker? He's in fact breaking the law , just as I am.
Just because something has been deemed to be illegal by some government entity does not make it actually wrong or potentially, or actually, harmful or immoral. However most of the laws on the books deal with just such things.
Everything that Hitler did was legal. He and his cronies created the laws that made it so.
Legality and morality are not the same thing. I think most people are able to recognize the difference, which is why a lot of laws are pretty universally ignored until the powers that be decide to pick on someone, often for reasons that have nothing to do with the particular law those powers use to do the picking-on with.