... You're probably thinking of Crispin Sartwell's recent post at Eye of the Storm: -C

... Yes, Old English had something you could definitely call a nominative case. Modern English does not (although, of course, it has its own ways of indicating

... Not coincidentally, of course: "du" is a direct cognate of "thou," and "dich"/"dir" of "thee," under standard phonetic rules. Originally, "ye" was the

... Well, when you say "Billy and me went to the store." If this doesn't "make sense," I'd like to know what you find confusing or odd in it. ... No, and in

... My suspicion -- completely unresearched at this point, so salt it to taste -- is that people tend to multiply negatives in spontaneous speech, even when

... It's low for the tiny handful of doddering incumbents who have held onto their rent-controlled apartment since 1957. It's extremely high for everyone else,

... "Bowling for Columbine" is a rather weird movie, in part because September 11th happened in the middle of producing it, and as a result (as Moore has said

... The person the quote is most commonly attributed to (as "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of

‎@Anok: “if you read what he wrote you would understand that he uses the word “crime” for immoral behavior”

Well, no he doesn’t, not that I can see. If you see a place where he does make this identification, feel free to point it out, but he…re is what I found him saying about criminality and morality:

(1) “If there are, then you merely disagree with my particular view of what is criminal and what isn’t. You say it’s a crime to abuse someone, I say not. … Now the reasoning on my part is quite clear: there’s no physical violence involved. Crime allows for force to be used. I think the abuse is a bad thing, but cannot be countered with force.” (2) “I do not like the word morality, because it is very tainted with prejudice from older times, and also, it spreads the idea that there’s a way that people have to think. I only try to think about what people can and cannot do.” (3) “Actually, to me, as abuse is not a crime, any use of force is necessary disproportional and unjustified. I think social pressure is more adapted to this scenario.”

(1) states the view that an act is criminal only if “physical violence [is] involved,” and further that there are some bad things — in particular, abuse is “a bad thing” — which are not criminal (thus, not answerable with force). (2) states the view that he’d rather not use “morality” as the term to describe what people can and cannot do. (3) restates the view that abuse, though bad (hence, answerable with “social pressure”) is not criminal (hence, not answerable with physical force), and further that to use force against someone who is not guilty of a crime is “unjustified.

As far as I can tell, this pretty clearly suggests that he is using the term “crime” to describe a SUBSET of “bad things.” (I’d be happy say immoral actions, but I don’t agree with Marcel about (2), so.) He says, or at least strongly sugges…ts, above that all crimes are wrong (immoral, if you please), but not that everything wrong (or immoral) is a crime. But the conditional “If abuse is not a crime, then it is not an immoral behavior” would only be true if you made a claim he hasn’t made — and in fact has specifically rejected (that all immoral actions are crimes).

‎@Anok: “He further states that self defense against abuse is wrong because abuse is not a ‘crime’.”

Sure; the claim is that you shouldn’t use force against people unless they are guilty of crimes. I don’t think that’s a particularly nutty v…iew. I happen to think that he’s right about that. (I don’t know if I would agree with his reasons for it; my reason, anyway, is that I’m against all forms of hierarchy and domination. And I consider controlling people through aggressive violence to be both hierarchical and dominating. Even if those people really are terrible assholes.)

@Anok: “And regardless of how he uses the word abuse is considered both a legal crime and a moral crime by the majority of non nutter societies.”

Well, I don’t much care what the majority of societies, nutter or non-nutter, think about it. Do you? If I were basing my moral convictions on opinion polls as to what the majority of societies think, I certainly wouldn’t be an Anarchist.

@Anok: ‘Eh, anyone who uses “crime”, which is a social contract regarding law in place of the word “morality” which is a pretty universal term that applies to human behavior …”

You seem to have some pretty strong views about the meaning of the word “crime,” even though Marcel (among others) is clearly using the word in a way different from the way that you are using it. One way to deal with a situation like that is to say something like, “O.K., well, the important thing here isn’t spelling; it’s clear communication. So let’s distinguish some terms for the sake of communication — ‘moral crime,’ say, to mean what you mean, and ‘legal crime’ to mean what I mean.” Or, I guess, you could just assert that “crime” means what you’re using it to mean, and insist that the way other folks are using it is wrong, and the way you’re using it is right — which is what you seem to be doing here. But if the latter, where are you getting your intuitions about what the term “crime” obviously means? From dictionaries? From common usage? (But, in case of the latter, the fact that a lot of people use it in a different way makes it clear that the common usage is ambiguous…) Somewhere else?

@Anok: “You support abuse.”

I don’t think that’s a reasonable reading of what Marcel said at all.

He didn’t say that abuse is basically O.K.; he said it is a bad thing, but not criminal. Saying that it’s not CRIMINAL is not the same thing as saying that it’s not WRONG — there are lots of things that are vices, but not crimes. (For example, winning chess matches by cheating when your opponent’s back is turned; talking during movies at the theater; plagiarizing a college paper; cheating on your partner; refusing to visit a dying friend for no good reason; etc.) The claim isn’t that these things are O.K., or that they aren’t seriously wrong. Some vices are minor — talking at the movies, say. But some crimes — stealing a grape, say, or maliciously stomping on someone’s foot — are minor too. And some vices — dishonesty, cruelty, faithlessness, etc. — are grave. Cruelty or dishonesty are far more serious wrongs than some things that are crimes, but they are wrong in different ways, and for different reasons, from the crimes. And that that difference may make a difference for the appropriate response.