Left wing propaganda

A valid issue, which brings up one of the points the show often makes and which frequently winds up being a springboard for discussion around our dinner table.

Victor Kugler and Johannes Kleiman were both arrested, convicted without trial, and placed on “death row” but wound up in a labor prison instead. Miep Gies and Bep Voskuijl escaped arrest, but could have been arrested, convicted, and sentenced to death for the same capital crime.

All four were undeniably guilty of a crime punishable by death by the law that was in effect at the time; there is absolutely no question about their guilt or about the law. What is in question is whether or not their actions should have been a crime.

I served over two decades in the military, and I’m a pretty “rules conscious” individual. I often wonder whether, if they had gone to trial and I had been on their jury, I would have followed the law and convicted them, or followed my conscience and acquitted them because the law was unjust.

Yes, there situation is very different from that of a ghetto youth on trial for assault. But the two examples are not discrete situations; they are simply points at some distance from each other on a continuum – the question is where we draw the line on that continuum to convict the offender or to convict the law. So, whether or not I agree with the points the show makes, I often find those points to be thought-provoking.

And no, I’m not going to make you do a Google search for the foreign names – Kugler, Keiman, Gies, and Voskuijl were the primary members of the group of Dutch citizens who hid Anne Frank and her families from the Nazis in Amsterdam during WWII – a crime against the Reich punishable by death.

Granted, granted. But that's the thing, not everything can be completely pragmatic. A criminal commits a crime like theft, but it is a theft based on the need for survival. The fact is society is screwed up as it stands. Let the record show that I was a former conservative, but the fact is now it's primarily the ultra-right getting the press, getting the power, and they have views I entirely oppose while moderate lefts I can agree with.
I don't support the 'I deserve it, gimme' ideals of the bulk of the OWS groups, but I do support those genuinely screwed by the system, by the government (both Former POTUS Bush and current Obama) and their tax cuts of big businesses and 'trickle down economics' (shown not to work under Reagan) and the government handouts to those businesses that would have (and should have been allowed to) gone under, coupled with the social welfare that's wasted on those with no actual intention to proactively search for a job.
All that said, it's a crime of necessity when you literally cannot afford to support your family within the law, and when laws are unjust, overly restrictive, when there is no way to truly uphold these laws other than imposing stronger laws, it is the people's duty to rebel. I'm no anarchist, I'm no 'bleeding heart liberal', I'm no 'closed-minded conservative' either, I find people on both sides reprehensible. I support government, I disagree with the government as it stands, and I believe that partisans who throw around party titles and refuse to cooperate for the betterment of the citizens they represent, but rather the benefit of their own pocketbooks, need to be thrown out of office because it screws over our nation, it screws over our economy, and it will eventually lead to a meltdown. Remember the deal a few months back, when the debt ceiling needed to be raised, as it has done time and time again, yet it was deadlocked for such a length? This is where partisanship gets us, this is where loyalty to parties, to colors and mascots gets us, this is where non-cooperation because of our hard-drawn party lines gets us, and this is why our first constitutional president warned against a two party system. And permanent alliances like the UN and NATO, but that's another topic.
Look, again, I'm no sympathizer with those in the OWS who could better themselves, but instead want to protest and get handouts, but when businesses that should have failed because of laissez-faire economics get a handout we don't give to our own citizens, when a corporation is treated better than a person, the nation has it's priorities certainly beyond *beep* up.
I'll leave you with this, the government as it stands is a few steps shy of 1770s England, and the men we now call patriots, those who performed the Tea Party, those who drafted the Declaration, they were certainly more rebellious against what they saw as an unfair system than what we have on our hands now.

You call it immature, Chris Hansen calls it "catching a predator", I call it...The Super Troll