World of Suck

I’ve read a number of posts, threads and comments recently with a similar train of thought. Various contexts, but same underlying idea: The US legal system is founded from the 10 Commandments listed in the Bible.

Honestly, the concept annoys me. Not just because I’m not a particularly religious person, but because it’s simply not true.

First off, of the 10 commandments, only 4 found their way into law: Murder, theft, adultery and perjury. Adultery isn’t even illegal across the board, and it’s generally not enforced as felony. Ditto for perjury. The other 6 are disregarded by most of the western world. I mean, if it was the basis, you’d think more than 40% of it would have become standard. Besides, Americans live to Covet. It’s part of the American Dream to want more than you have. Immoral perhaps, but hardly illegal.

Our nation was founded mostly by Christians, it’s true. But the guidelines they used were not religious in nature. Many of our legal structures paralleled laws taken from European law, specifically English Common Law.

The problem with accepting the Commandments as the ultimate source is this: the four applicable Commandments were considered illegal long before Moses got his slabs. The Commandments were given as Divine Law to the Hebrews around 1200-1400 BCE. Hammurabi’s Code, written in 1780 BCE, lists the punishments for murder, theft and adultery. Egyptian Book of the Dead codified similar ideas as the Commandments hundreds of years earlier as well.

Aztecs has laws against adultery, murder and theft. They were totally isolated from changes in the rest of the world. They didn’t get the benefit of Hammurabi’s Code or a Pharaoh’s decree. They came up with these ideas on their own. I suppose you could say the concepts followed them back to the tribal days predating their journey from Asia into N. America. But that still predates most of civilization and the Commandments.

I think that shows that these concepts can’t be narrowed down to a single source document. It seems to me that these ideas are natural ideas required for civilization to advance out of anarchy. Trying to tie them to a single religious point of view and then forcing a nation to accept it as the Source of Law is arrogant and misguided.

I don’t have a problem with people accepting the Commandments and living their life by them. For the most part, they’re not a bad set of guidelines to follow. But I don’t buy into the concept that they are the foundation of the US legal system. Perhaps they are a PORTION of the foundation, but not a keystone or origin. The evidence indicates that civilization has considered them crimes for far longer. And importantly, man considered murder, theft, perjury and adultery as criminal acts without needing to look at the Bible for a reference.

Alright. First off, I love this site. I get to smack down people that deserve it, and I don’t even have to hire a lawyer to get them to drop the charges.

However, I admit. I have one problem with this place. The blacklist. OMG. It kills me. It’s grown to a fairly massive size and it seems to have a handful or really innocuous words in it. I know, it stops spammers, which I like and all. But there really needs to be some way around it for authorized members or something.

I can’t explain how much time I’ve spent trying to fix a comment so that it will post. It would be so bad if it told you why it wasn’t allowing your comment. But instead it just says “Invalid comment”. Which leads to the whole abortion series we had a few posts ago.

I'm just glad I figured out how to do it myself instead of having to cry for help every time. Ditto with removing comment spam from the site en masse.

I dunno. Maybe a CAPTCHA or something similar. Those aren’t entirely effective, but the blacklist in its current state is only slightly better. I’m hoping the new version of b2e will be more reliable. I think it’s in beta now, so I’m crossing my fingers.

Balancing the annoyance of the protections use versus the annoyance of spammers is difficult, I know. And lord knows those little spamming bots can be a real pain in the ass.

I don’t want to sound bitchy, and my heart isn’t really in this for a full scale rant. Mostly it’s just a little venting about the blacklist’s overzealous nature from time to time.

Please don’t kill me u235!!!