Of course we can pick and choose when they don't follow the rules. Of freaking course we can. Reneging on a country that held and keeps taking hostages. Silliness.
Kidding yourself. There are a couple of you who have whittled yourself to that point from me. You'd be leader. I assure you I'm not alone in that here.
Sorry, no, nothing that has been said on this board in these sometimes heated discussions has warranted the type of personal attacks that you have used. I mean, I suppose you are free to say them on a free wheeling discussion board, but, if you're going to call someone the "condescending one" also, then it'd make you the biggest hypocrite on the board.
Choosing how to enforce your own laws is totally unrelated to abiding by the rulings of an independent tribunal.
Oh. How so, particularly in cases where one fails to enforce them, at all? When did you hold more respect for the international court, than American law?
It's really simple. They're your own laws. You can do with them what you wish. On the other hand, when you agree to the authority of a third party you don't get to pick and choose when you behave in accordance to their decisions.
Their laws are more enforceable than our own. Got it. Isn't our government a third party to the People?
I think you've confused "law" with "suggestion". You should no more be allowed to ignore or fail to enforce a law than you could fail to enforce the votes of an election.
So you believe there are no laws that are so morally objectionable as to simply not enforce them? Are there not laws that are so untenable as to be impossible to enforce?
then it comes off the books right? in your world of unenforced laws, who draws the line between the real laws and pretend? is there a line? or is it just all slippery slope to you? But you're arguing that international silliness is somehow binding, even after we've cut off all diplomatic relations with a country? Not sure I understand the disconnect. The word is the word, unless some arbitrary person decides the word doesn't really matter - with the exception being international word, which was conceived on the mountaintop. seems to me the line was drawn when the law was put to paper.
uh, if they're the law of the land, we should enforce them. If they're morally reprehensible, we should remove them. Which laws are impossible to enforce? Impossible to catch is the same as impossible to enforce.
Take drug use. If you busted everyone that used drugs in this country, you would arrest 50% of the population. Impossible to enforce. During prohibition, many local law enforcement told the Feds to shove it, if they wanted to enforce it, send the FBI to their town. Of course, the Feds only set aside a few marshals for prohibition work, and the whole system was impossible. Some laws are morally objectionable, and I could see individual police men not enforcing it. Or the policemen that have given my wife warnings instead of giving her a speeding ticket. I agree, if a law is so objectionable, it needs to be taken off the books. But these things have inertia, and sometimes it takes a revolt to get them removed. I am not an anarchist, I believe very strongly in the rule of law. But sometimes things are just so obviously broken that until they are fixed higher up the chain, you just turn a blind eye to it.
You have to bust the ones you see. You don't have to actively look, but you can't turn a blind eye when you see it.
People, quite conveniently and often, forget that we have a perfectly available and readily accessible means of changing any and all laws - even the very document which supports each. Usually, it's those who know that a majority of their countrymen would never agree to the type of change that they seek, and so, they simply ignore them, instead.