You're rushing to judgment here.

Given your history, you've seen things far worse than a convenience store stabbing and you've seen feats of heroics in a war zone. I respect that.

But you can't expect, or legislate, heroism. That's why heroism is special. It's rare and driven by a combination of wit, ingenuity, compassion and ability. Not everybody has it in every situation.

Why did the convenience store shoppers fail to render aid? You suggest it's because they have no feelings for their fellow humans and you suggest laws should be enacted to punish such apathy.

My libertarian inclinations say that a person's apathy is a person's right. But I don't rely on that to make my argument.

A person's psychology can't be legislated against. What if a person is repulsed and even afraid at the sight of blood? Should the law require they overcome their fears? What if the shoppers were wondering whether or not getting involved could lead to them being drawn into the fight that led to the stabbing? Can we legislate against the impulse to keep one's own self safe? What if they were simply confused and reacted by going about their own business? Can we legislate against not knowing what to do?

We must respect heroism, but we can't expect or require it.
thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

I actually don't think the culture has much to do with this. The other shoppers have been judged here without any information about who they are, or what they think, feel and fear. It's entirely possible that this whole scenario is one that would be better explained by psychology than sociology. There's not enough information here for anyone to tell but the whole scenario might well be better explained if we knew anything about anyone involved.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Heroism? What's heroic about calling 911?

If they were worried about being drawn into a fight, presumably they'd leave the store. Did they just keep shopping?

And if one wants to think of it in terms of "rights", yes, I suppose they have a "right" to be apathetic. But having a "right" to their reaction (or lack thereof) doesn't make their actions (or lack thereof) right. Their lack of action was legal, and perhaps it should stay legal, but it will always be wrong.

Personally, I don't think it's a matter of whether or not legislation should be created to address this issue, I simply don't think think legislation can be created that would directly address it. This is deeper and more complicated than that.

Rather than creating a new law for what are, hopefully, a small number of incidences, why not simply charge the passersby with manslaughter or even second degree murder for depraved indifference to human life?  Just being charged and tried for those levels of offenses would surely have more of an impact that a whole new law that most people will not even be aware of.

I agree with destor23 that we don't have enough information to meaningfully judge, but I wouldn't be surprised if it happened more-or-less as implied.

This isn't exactly a new issue, though -- the infamous Kitty Genovese case was over forty years ago.

Some people naturally react to tragedy by suppressing it and pretending it's not there. It's the equivalent of a child yelling "LA! LA! LA! I CAN'T HEAR YOU!" It's a natural reaction that some people have.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

My feeling would be that we don't legislate by anecdote. Some turn out to be true, and maybe this is. Some turn out to be Reagan's parables of welfare queens, at best the exception that proves the rule, at worst a lie. Some turn out to be true but manipulate emotions in horrible ways, such as accounts of crime that stir thoughts of revenge and blind people to the human costs of a death penalty or a "three strikes" drug law.

It's a familiar problem that responsibility can be diffused, to the point that no one takes responsibility. It's why, say, everyone assumes someone else will pick up the scrap of paper that fell in my apartment building's hallway. It's probably behind the famous Kitty Genovese incident more than the factors then most often cited, which were the pleasure of gawking and callous, self-involved indifference to pain. Still, it's perfectly fine to be outraged. Ethics does go beyond the libertarian model of human nature, and it should.

But the laws didn't change then, and there's no great evidence that masses of victims died and crimes went unpunished. I have no idea what was at stake here or whether it really happened. I've seen many acts of human kindness and unkindness. I just hope for a rational measure of public debate over crime. Can it be that there's a reason Etzioni's story hasn't exactly been at the center of national debate? I hadn't even heard of it.

Well, at least he's not advocating a Bush strike force to take out the passers-by. His posts are no more helpful than usual, but this beats his foreign policy.

John

http://www.haberarts.com/

Just as long as you stay north of the border, Valdron. I'd hate to see you run into Buscemi and Stormare.

Fantastic! A whole new field of law! You will be rewarded by the ABA, I'm sure. The check is in the mail.

Proof that anything can be used to bash Bush.

So did the Kitty Genovese thing show how heartless the Great Society was?

Oh, by the way, it's Wichita, not Witchita.

Yet this happened in a minority community* with, one assumes, relatively few registered Republicans or Milton Friedman fans. So it's probably the culture of dependency created by the welfare state and affirmative action, as long as we're pulling spurious explanations out of our butts to score cheap political points.

* I grew up in Wichita and I can assure you, 25th and Hillside is very much in a black ghetto.

Thanks for looking into this. The story as presented doesn't pass the smell test.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

LaShanda Calloway, July 3, 2007, RIP

Click here to see her.

As you can see, LaShanda was beautiful, and black.

Is there a "larger social breakdown" in the US, as Valdron suggests?

From a recent Zogby poll:
While 67% of respondents claimed to have no preference themselves between a white, black or Arab clerk in a convenience store [because, as Zogby says, people answer about themselves in a way they think is expected] , 71% said, “most Americans [that is, other less socially responsible people] ” would seek out the white clerk. Just 1% said Americans’ first choice would be to approach a black clerk, while less than 0.5% said the same for an Arab clerk. And yet, ironically, 55% of respondents said race relations have improved over the past 10 years.

So the first responders are actually second responders? Who knew.

Professor Etzioni,

With all respect, if you read the comments here, it's been pretty well proven that in this situation people did the proper thing by calling 911 and that aid was only hindered to the victim by a reasonable rule that says that police must declare a crime scene safe before EMTs move in.

Those revelations rather undermine your argument.

I think you should clarify your position on here, admit an error, or explain why what you're trying to say is still illustrated by the story you told, in lieu of the quickly gathered facts.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

In a way, it's beyond that, so far as the site is concerned. Professor Etzioni posts here but doesn't engage the commenters at all. In a lot of cases I could see him saying "well, they just agree or disagree."

This time, he's posted a story that he claims was fact and it's been riddled with holes. Shouldn't he answer those criticisms, given that they're factually substantive rather than disagreements over point of view?

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

I absolutely agree on each point you make, especially the lack of response from Professor Etzioni.

Professor Etzioni uses a single example as a premise to justify his argument that Good Samaritan laws should be legislated. That single example is shot out of the water; therefore, Professor Etzioni's argument in favor of legislated Good Samaritan laws is invalid.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity.

In 1968 I went to a peace ralley held at the Los Angeles Coliseum - I was late (as usual) and I arrived just as the thousands of people were leaving, walking back to their cars.  I thought maybe some of the speakers were still on, so I proceded.  About a hundred meters in front of me, I saw two black women attacking a white woman.  I mean the three were rolling in the grass, and the agressors were beating the victim pretty seriously.  What made the scene absolutely uncanny was that there were hundreds of people close by who simply ignored the attack as if it wasn't even happening.  So I intervened - running over there and breaking up the fight.  There wasn't much to it - I think the simple act of intervention was enough to defuse the terms of the fight in the first place.  The black ladies left, and I helped the victim (although who knows, she may have started the whole thing) to her feet and I walked her over to her car - and low an behold there sat three of her friends that she was with, two young men and a women.  I asked her if they were with her when the fight broke, and she answered "Yes, but they left."

I then returned to area, still thinking there was still something going on at the ralley.  When I got to the area where the fight broke out, I spotted the two black women standing with a group of pretty big black men, pointing to me.  Three of them broke out and approached me.  It was pretty scary - I was thinking "Uh oh", time to pay for my foolishness."  But when they got to me, all three shook my hand, thanking me for intervening and stopping the fight.  It was a great moment.

Years earlier, when I was a 9th grader at Franklyn D. Roosevelt Jr. High in Compton, CA,  I was waiting after school for my girl friend to finish her drill team practice.  The year the very first black child had enrolled in the 7th grade at Roosevelt.  My peers named him "Snowflake" with a great deal of cynicism.  As I waited for my girl friend, the kid came running around a corner of a building towards with a terrified look on his face, and following him about 10 guys shouting racial insults with clenched fists, led by an Italian guy who happened to live just down the street from me, who I had played with ever since the 5th grade.  

I intervened.  I stepped in front of the mob, and told them that they were going to have to go through me first.  It was rediculous - my Italian friend knew I was a lousy fighter and that I didn't stand a chance against the ten boys.  And that is what I was thinking during the pause of confrontation..."oops."  But they backed-off and left the area.  I was amazed.  The black child's parents came to pick him up from school, and they and the Boys vice-principal came out and thanked me for intervening.   

I think in both cases my "power" was the unexpected.  Between these two events I had worked as a bar tender, and my boss taught me a way to break up fights in a bar.  It was to pick up a broom and poke the antagonists with it.  I had occasion to try it out a coupler of times and it worked.  It was such unexpected behavior in the drunk minds of the pugilists, that it just wiped-out whatever mindset that they had that led to exchanging blows.  

But I realize that I was lucky also.  I could have been injured in both cases.   While I'm proud of myelf, I don't see myself as any sort of hero.  Both of those situation were simply unacceptable to me at the time.  Heroism, in my book, would require a conscious decision to put yourself in harm's way  - you know, an assessment of great risk and then taking it.  In my case these were spontaneous acts, not thought out at all until after the act was completed.  Many would call it stupidity, in fact.  That's exactly what a Warrent Officer said from and incident in Vietnam.  He was standing with some others under the belly of a F-111 when a Lambetta drove by and the driver lobed a grenade under the jet fighter.  The Warrent Officer dove on the grenade, protecting the others as well as the airplane, but the grenade turned out to be a dud.  Of course he was cited for his bravery and heroism, but he did not concur.  He said it was a knee-jerk reaction, and as he was laying on the grenade he was thinking how stupid his reaction was.

Neoboho

You seem to have missed my point. I suggested using existing laws rather than creating new ones.   Some deaths resulting from depraved indifference are already prosecuted as manslaughter and second-degree murder.  If the act is heinous enough to be prosecuted, then prosecute it so that it actually might deter others from behaving similarly and doesn't just fatten the coffers of local law enforcement. 

What do you know...

taught at Columbia University, Harvard Business School, University of California at Berkeley, and is the first University Professor at George Washington University, where he is the Director of the Institute for Communitarian Policy Studies.

That helps to explain George W. Bush, I suppose.

I loved this part:

A study by Richard Posner ranked him among the top 100 American intellectuals.

Well, I had no idea that the talent pool down south was so thin.

I remember one of my old law professors reminiscing about a trip to Washington, and discovering that the 'level of play' wasn't particularly more sophisticated, the players not particularly intelligent or cunning.

Instead, he discovered the 'excellents of mediocrity', the fact that circumstance and luck, rather than superhuman skill and virtue, elevated most of these people.

Although I'm just a barely educated ragamuffin inclined to throw clods at my betters, I certainly respect Eric's veneration of titles. It will always puzzle me why Americans threw out aristocracy and monarchy, since they seem obsessed with recreating it in every possible way.

The way I was taught, it was called having good manners and being polite.

I would question then, Valdron, if you say "please" and "thank you", eat with your mouth open, or call your mother by her first name (afterall, the title of Mother is just given by circumstances and luck).

~~~~~~~~~~~
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity.

I'm with you, Eric. I call him "professor" because he is one and because he seems to prefer to be called that. It's enough that I'm questioning him. I'd like him to answer. The way I see it, if my goal is to get him to engage and to answer a factual challenge to his argument, I gain nothing by refusing to address him respectfully. I really disagree with him about just about everything. But I won't disrespect him. If I were in his class I'd call him "Professor Etzioni" and would say to him what I say here. So while I'm here, I will call him "Professor Etzioni." He earned it. I just would like for him to take the time to address what's been said here (and that doesn't mean addressing me as other commenters did the factual work that needs to be dealt with).

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Good point about some heroism being an instantaneous decision that might or might not have been wise or deliberate. Another category is a trained response. I started as a chemistry major, and my department chairman, before letting anyone work as a lab assistant, was absolutely adamant about their training in reacting to fire and toxic chemicals. While it wasn't quite a full firefighting course, there was some instant-response drills, with real chemicals, that probably would have had today's liability attorneys demanding he be dismissed on the spot.

Later in life, however, I've had a couple of occasions where I was first to discover a fire, and, afterwards, I remember that I did all the right things, starting with an alarm, local evacuation, and then control of something that had to be controlled or get much worse, without really thinking about it.

When reading military heroism citations, some of the most impressive are those that weren't for some instant decision such as throwing oneself on a grenade, but that were clearly deliberate. Of Americans that received the Medal of Honor, Richard Antrim, as a Japanese POW, deliberately went out of ranks, confronted the Japanese who were whipping another POW, and volunteered to take the punishment for him. Desmond Doss, a conscientious objector medic, exposed himself for hours, treating wounded.

I've sometimes wondered about the risk in Good Samaritan acts in remote situations. While I'm not certified in certain interventions, I have worked in developing the clinical training for some of them. In a wilderness situation, for example, what kind of courage does it take to try an emergency surgical act when one has minimal but nonzero training, there is clearly no legal authority, and virtual certainty the victim will die without it?

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]

That sounds about right, from everything else I've read as well.

Unless someone is able to find additional information.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity.

It may be observed that "My Right Honourable Friend" is no more that than "The Distinguished Senator from..." is actually considered such. I have referred to "Mr. Smith" when use of a first name might be considered a pleasantry.

--
Howard

*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*

"The pursuit of the inedible by the unspeakable" [Oscar Wilde]

You have a valid point regarding a single individual.

However, statistically speaking, what do you think the odds were that all of the people who ignored this woman bleeding on the floor were suffering some form of social psychosis?

jhaber, I suspect (and hope) you're kidding when you write that you're totally discouraged that you know more than the experts do. That's the basis of democracy!

You've no doubt heard that an 'expert' is one who knows more and more about less and less until he knows practically everything about almost nothing.

And thanks for picking up "Witchita". I completely missed it, and I was a proofreader in my earlier years. It's humbling. Now I'M discouraged (just kidding).

Now that we've established our credentials, as ass and servile respectively, let us put this away and save our knives for real issues.

Courtesy or its lack is but merely sprinklings of different types of sesame seed on the bun of argument. We have yet to even get to the meat.

So don't get cheesed with me, lettuce reason together, for tomato is another day.

Well, why didn't you say so. We'll order up a few gallons and set up an IV drip.

Courtesy or its lack is but merely sprinklings of different types of sesame seed on the bun of argument. We have yet to even get to the meat.

So don't get cheesed with me, lettuce reason together, for tomato is another day.

Egg-celent point.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity.

His point still stands,

the 5 people who stepped over her and didn't call 911 didn't know that 911 had already been called.

And for goodness sake let's belay these ad hominy arguments.

Neoboho

So much argument and so many criticisms and defenses here, all factually based. So where is Professor Etzioni? Does he even care? Because it seems to me that his post has sparked a dicussion that he'd want to join, if only to defend the facts as he laid them out.

thosethingswesay.blogspot.com

Why are we calling him "Professor" Etzioni?

Maybe because he professes all sorts of nonsense on this site on a regular basis? Pontiff might be even better, though.

I'd like to clarify my stance on this argument, because it can seem as if I'm going out of my way to prove Professor Etzioni wrong.

The crux of my own argument is that I don't agree with legislating Good Samaritan activity, other than protections for the Good Samaritan. Not that I wish to personally criticize Professor Etzioni.

The framing of his initial argument about the victim goes like this:

- No one called 911
- The shoppers were callous
- Therefore, the victim died.

However, as the other article link I provided shows, this is simply not the case.

- Rob Thurman called 911 almost immediately after the stabbing (and after already being a Good Samaritan by breaking up the fight in the first place).
- EMS / FD arrived quickly afterwards
- EMS / FD could not approach the scene because policy dictates they wait for the police to clear the scene
- Police did not appear to arrive in a timely fashion
- The victim died in the hospital "later that day".

She did not die at the scene (she died in the hospital "later that day"), nor because there were no Good Samaritans (a Good Samaritan was already helping her), nor because the other shoppers were callous (unless there was a doctor or nurse among the shoppers, in which case they should have their licenses revoked immediately).

Legislating Good Samaritan laws to punish people for not helping would, in most likelihood, not have kept the victim alive.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity.

Sorry, I meant to go further, but hitting "return" on my keyboard seems to have posted only part of what I typed.

To continue:

The case of LaShanda Calloway is the only example Professor Etzioni provides. Since this case has been debunked for the most part, where is the justification of inacting laws that punish people for not doing something?

There are no figures provided showing the seriousness of non-reporting. How many people have died in the US because no one reported a crime or accident? How many people would this type of law have saved last year?

Maybe there are tens of thousands who die because of no compulsory Good Samaritan law. In which case, there's probably some justification for enacting it. However, Professor Etzioni does not provide any other premise for justifying it.

On the other hand, I do see many news reports [see my previous comment] where people try to be Good Samaritans and are thus killed, mugged, raped, or injured. In my opinion, it seems awfully dangerous for someone in the US to be a Good Samaritan, although I personally try to be as often as possible. Some people aren't willing to take that risk, and should we really demonize them? Is Professor Etzioni making a case that citizens should be forced into harm's way? I certainly don't think so, but that could very well end up being an unintended consequence.

Finally, I feel Professor Etzioni is being somewhat disingenuous when he uses loaded language in referring to a boy drowning a pool dying because a passerby didn't want to get his suit wet. There will be extremes and outliers in social interaction. Remember, murder is illegal, too, yet it happens all too frequently.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity.

Professor Etzioni hasn't posted a comment since March of 2006; so I find it highly unlikely he would respond now.

However, I would like to be proven wrong on that.

~~~~~~~~~~~
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur.

Come visit PROJECT: Lucidity.

Yes, it seems that Etzioni's post has been thoroughly discredited. Take even the woman who took the photograph on her cell phone. There's a horrible culture that would reflexively think, "I'm at a real crime scene, and this is so cool." The Onion made fun of it last week, with passengers on a train who were disappointed that the murder didn't resemble a TV show. It's depressing, but it's not at all the same thing as "don't bother me with murder so I can have fun."

And in response to the post that thought I was kidding and called our triumph over this dim-witted "public intellectual" a triumph of democracy, forget it. Bush probably thinks his dismissal of science is a triumph of democracy.

John-

http://www.haberarts.com/

On 911, often people don't call.

Not because of callousness, but because of an effect called diffusion of responsibility, also known as the bystander effect, or tragedy of the commons.

Many people will assume some "authority" such as the store clerk has called.

Some well known examples:

* Kitty Genovese, a New York woman, was stabbed to death near her house. Approximately a dozen of Genovese's neighbors heard her screaming for help for approxiately a half hour, yet no one helped her, each thinking that somebody else eventually would.

* In a firing squad, one random shooter is traditionally given a blank bullet. This allows all members of the firing squad to believe that they only fired a blank.

* In some electric chairs there are many switches, only one of which is connected. The executioners may then choose to believe that they pulled a non-functional switch.

* This phenomenon also applies to much more mundane circumstances, such as cleaning and maintenance of shared space/items or unassigned work in large organizations getting neglected.

The poor woman was ignored to death by self-centered pricks and now she's been used to as a promotion.

There is ample reason to bash Bushit, as concerns Saddam Hussein the fact the his trial was a show trial -- a kangaroo court designed to convict and silence him about the US's role, when he was our ally against Iran, in his possessing and using WMDs against Kurds and Iranians.

And then there's Osama bin Laden: he said of him "Wanted -- Dead or Alive" which is excessive, as it obviously means, "Wanted -- Dead; No Trial Necessary".

Which is the "justice" of the lynch mob.

Shall I add the fact that the war crime of torture -- the laws defining and prohibiting it do so on the basis of their being actions, not labels (if one were to call "waterboarding," which is specificically and expressly prohibited, "involuntary surfing, it would still be illegal -- torture by any other name) -- cannot be made legal, Bushit's efforts to give it the false appearance of legality notwithstanding?

Shall I add that Bushit's authorization anmd facilitation of the war crime of torture lowers our country to thelevel of others of like sensibilities -- Tojo and Hitler, Mao and Stalin, Bushit and Saddam Hussein?

To defend Bushit is to make oneself morally complicit in his intolerable crimes. To criticize Bushit for specific crimes is not "bashing" -- the latter being indiscriminate. Though it will require multiple volumes to catalog all of Buishit's crimes, it is unnecessary to "bash" him, as there are more than sufficient specifics for which to criticize his lawlessness.

Those who are selfish can't care less about others; that is the core -- selfishness -- of the extremist "individuality" urged by the extreme right-wing lunatic fringe, most vocally at present by the "Libertarian" nut-party. That urging has consequences in the real world.