It was legal at one time to kill Mormons in Missouri. It was once legal to expel a man from your restaurant because of his skin color. In some places, the law will fail to stop you from abusing gays. You are still a bad person if you take the law up on its offer. I'm not saying any of these are equivalent to the issue at hand or even to each other, but they demonstrate one thing very clearly: Mere legality does not convey morality or even social acceptability. Patent trolling perverts patents for an unintended purpose and usually depends on duping the Patent Office to do so.
Excellent use of preterition -- "I'm not saying these are equivalent," but you do use the imagery associated with horrific events to influence the reader's gut reaction to the original situation.
I happen to agree with your exact point, but I think it would be better served by just stating,
>"Mere legality does not convey morality or even social acceptability. Patent trolling perverts patents for an unintended purpose and usually depends on duping the Patent Office to do so."
I don't agree that it would be better served, and I don't like the poster's equivocation of "I don't think these are equivalent to this issue at hand." His examples are perfectly analogous to the issue at hand, which are instances of an outdated and poorly-considered law allowing people to do clearly unethical things while remaining within the bounds of the law.
I think it's bad to intentionally select hugely emotionally charged examples (e.g., Godwin's Law) in order to emphasize a point.
It's just trying to prime the emotional state of the reader to sway them to your point.
Very effective technique. But it means that someone is intentionally and strongly pushing an agenda, using subconscious techniques that subvert our rational mind.
That was not my intention. I consciously avoided anything similar to the Third Reich. I really didn't think the story of the Mormon pioneers was all that horrific for most people, and I figured segregation was both mild enough (it was terribly unfair, but not gut-wrenchingly brutal) and far enough removed in time that most people would not be unduly influenced by the mere mention of it. If you can think of better examples of things that were legal but still blatantly wrong, I'll make sure to file them away for later use.
But I don't think taking out the logical explanation and turning the comment into a baseless assertion would improve it. Clearly what I was saying is non-obvious to some people (or I wouldn't have had to say it), and without any justifying logic, the only people who would come out agreeing with me are those who went in that way. My intent was to persuade, not preach to the choir.
It's tough to come up with some better examples for me. I see your point. Every example seems to have seriously charged aspects (sexism, racism, violence, etc.) I just react negatively when people use emotionally charged examples in a discussion.
I'm not so sure it was a logical explanation of anything other than your thought process. Just because there were previous examples where things were legal but unethical does not mean it applies here.
Still, I'm glad we worked through this. I've learned from it. Didn't mean to sound as critical as I came off -- if it bothered you, my apologies, that wasn't my intention.
Thanks to both of you guys for the interesting exercise in thought.
