Since, as a doctor, you are well aware of the carnage that Drunk Driving causes our nation, with over 30,000 fatalities and well over 100,000 injuries a year to American citizens.  While Terrorism has ONCE caused 3000 American fatalities, along only a few hundred injuries in a given year, and more typically the toll is perhaps 50-100 Americans annually, worldwide.

Yet you had not the slightest difficulty in dismissing my contention that Drunk Driving is more detrimental to our society than is Terrorism, as a being simply an unthinking, biased, viewpoint specifically taken to demonize our present President.  Yet I noticed that you ignored my follow-on post where I questioned your assumptions and asked you to explain this position.

I'd really like to hear your explanation of WHY the prevention of Drunk Driving ought not be higher on our national priority list than terrorism.  Especially since it's really a quite simple matter to equip cars with starter locks that require an unimpaired driver to overcome them.

Perhaps Joercny, you could weigh in here as well, since you also dodged this question in the lower thread

And, my question specifically relates to ACTUAL HARM to the society, not the morality or degree of immorality of the people causing the harm.

-- Modified on 8/10/2004 9:05:32 AM

I will take a stab at giving an answer.    
    The two simply do not belong on the same moral plane.  No drunk driver starts his/her day intending to kill human beings, although that is the ultimate result of their selfishness, foolishness and carelessness.  A terrorist on the other hand, not only starts the day of their actions knowing that they intend to kill human beings, but they have in most instances have done surveillance to insure that their actions will kill the maximum number of people.  So in short, I think that your correlation of drunken driving to terrorism is a sizeable stretch.
    I do agree with the point that you made concerning preventing drunken drivers from starting a car.

your point is that drunk driving and terrorism are morally equivalent, then your point is wrong, IMHO.  A terrorist intentionally sets out to commit murder, i.e. this is a pre-meditated homicide ("murder one").  A drunk driver who kills someone (and George W. never did this anyway) has committed manslaughter.  He did not intend to kill someone, and he had no premeditation.  While both are deplorable in their own ways, they are different crimes.
 Finally, I think your post was mainly to pick at George W.  We all agree that his DUI was wrong, but he didn't kill anyone while intoxicated and he has subsequently sobered up.

And, quite frankly, most of the harm which derives to us from terrorism derives from the elevated level of fear and response which we give it, rather than from the damage performed by the actual acts themselves.  3000 Americans were killed ONE TIME by Terrorism.  That's bad, of course, but it's a drop in the bucket compared to any number of sources of mortality in our world today.  No other act of terrorism, for example, has EVER caused as much death as occurs with one crash of a jumbo jet.  Yet, do we stop flying?  

My point is, we really ought to re-examine our priorities and the unthinking assumptions we make concerning this issue.  We ought to do whatever we can to be diligent about MAJOR terrorist acts, like poisoning the water supply of a major city, or a nuclear dirty bomb, or similar types of acts.  But the constant panic is counterproductive to our well being as a civilization.  And why no similar outrage and mobilization to action against drunk driving, which causes at least an order of magnitude more havoc to our society than terrorism EVER has.

When killing is done via planning and with the express purpose of killing, then there is no moral equivalence to killing through recklessness, unless the reckless killing is a repeat situation.
    How a person's life is taken does matter.  All through civilized history, laws, justice and punishment has been done in proportion to the intent of the person who took a life or took lives.  So I repeat, the correlation that is being made between a drunken driver killing through recklessness and a terrorist killing through malice, intent and planning is not a valid one.

And Drunk Drivers are often repeat offenders, even if they do not intend to be.  Suicide bombers are invariably NOT repeat offenders, unless they are incompetent.

And, as I said, I don't dispute the relative morality of the offenders - I simply don't see how that is relevant to the question I originally asked - which was about HARM to the society itself.  Which, I believe, can only be measured in terms of casualties and property damage, and in the effect that the act has on the society itself, the last point being a largely self inflicted injury which the society imposes on itself after a terrorist act.

And as for Mr. Bribite and HIS logical leap to idiocy below, I would never ascribe blame to the tool which is negligently used.  I would ascribe blame and sanction to the negligent user of the tool, and seek ways to prevent negligent users such as drunk drivers from being able to drive cars.  It's quite straightforward to equip cars with ignition interlocks that only an unimpaired driver can overcome, either through a simple reflex & memory test or a field breathalyzer .

-- Modified on 8/11/2004 10:06:45 AM

And, I never implied anything about Bush's morality or lack thereof as a former Drunkard.  I was simply asking, could we as a nation be safe with a reformed Drunk at the nuclear button.

You try to win the argument by changing the subject.

There is outrage and mobilization against drunk driving and the situation with that problem on a per capital basis is much better than it has ever been.
    You are correct that close to 3000 people died on 9/11/2001 as a consequence of direct action. But do you have an estimate of the number of people who committed suicide because of what happened on 9/11/2001?  I am sure that some people who are close to those who are killed by drunken drivers commit suicide and I honestly cannot and will not try to estimate that number.  So unless you are certain that only(?) 3000 people died because of what happened on 9/11/2001, then there is no way that you can say that drunken driving has done more harm than that act of terrorism.

What udder nonsense you continue to come up with!

I will say this, you most certainly are a democrat!

Overall, there are roughly 30,000 suicides per year in the U.S., and that number was slightly greater in 2001 and 2002 than in earlier years (I couldn't find any data available for 2003 yet)

But that overall number of any statistically observable bump in suicides from 9/11/01 on out, is on the order of perhaps between a few hundred to several hundred people.  So, it probably IS true that there have been some suicides that are directly attributable to 9/11.  But it's certainly a number that's somewhere in the hundreds of people nationally.  And I am certain that there are also ancillary suicides related to the 30,000 drunk driving deaths and 100,000 significant drunk driving-caused injuries per year, and those ancillary suicides due to the carnage of drunk driving would probably exceed that few hundred person suicide bump due to 9/11.

In any case, even if you include all of those ancillary suicide deaths in the 9/11 toll, you are still well under 4000 total fatalities due to that act, which is still dwarfed by the casualties caused each year by drunk driving.

So, I suggest that you respect his sobriety in a position that doesn't put the entire nation at risk.  A position such as retired ex-president rancher.

I'd rather have a prez who is sober now than one who actively drinks, uses drugs, etc...
P.S. I don't drink (never really have) but maybe I'll open a bottle of champagne when George W. gets reelected.

The only substantial difference is the punishment we choose to exact due to the intention.  How rational is that, though?  Is the will to get drunk and the entailed stupidity of driving drunk really a better intention than the terrorists?  Who basically 1) to go to heaven for an eternity, 2) getting rights to get friends and family to heaven also, 3) make a political point about the injustice they feel?

There is one other difference I notice: the drunk driver might not kill somebody as a necessary result of their goals.  It means we can concede to them the excuse of just not thinking clearly about it.  But is that always true of the drunk?  There are many ways of hating your fellow humans.  

/Zin

never injured anybody while intoxicated behind the wheel.