A man once got off on a case in which his friend went into a bathroom and raped and killed a young girl because he claimed he had no idea that his friend was committing a crime. Though he did not kill the girl personally, can he still be considered a murderer since he did have the means to stop the crime? If so then cant we all be considered murderers for not actively helping the people of starving countries?
No.
No.
Do you think perhaps the passenger in a vehicle should pay half of the DUI fine for the driver?
Maybe anyone that within a one block radius of a fight should be charged with assault?
what about the neigbors of serial killers? Certainly they deserve the chair?
What a ridiculous question.
I think you are putting it in far worse extremes of situations. You do not have to be negative towards the question. You are assuming that I am advocating one side to the other, what a rediculous response.
Well, if the defense was right, and he really had no idea a crime was going on, then I don’t see how we could say he ‘could have prevented it’. My girlfriend could be out beating some old lady to death in the street right now, theoretically.
As far as your second question, that just seems linguistic to me. If you want to call everyone a murderer because they didn’t help starving people, then that’s fine I suppose- but then you’d probably want a word for people that actually do stuff like shoot, stab, and strangle others. Super Murderer? Murderer X-TREME? I dunno.
Are we culpable for people starving in other lands? I’d have to say no. Culpability implies fault, and it would be hard pressed to prove that it’s our fault they died. I don’t think we are obligated to any particular level of charity or humanitarianism, but that’s not to say it isn’t a good anyways. Not quite all goods are obligations, I suppose.
The whole attitude (that is very prevalent) of blaming everyone and anyone except the person directly responsible for just about anything interpreted as negative really pisses me off. Responsibility to the responsible damnit.
As a side note, people that spell ridiculous with an E piss me off as well