So, this is going to be a long post, but I think you'll find an interest in reading it (just as general reading).

I was talking with someone today about slander and libel. I pointed out to this person that, once I thought about it, these ideas are really fucking stupid.

If someone says something, even if it's something about me, that's just that person talking. It doesn't affect me. A person may even believe what they're saying. They could believe in the very wewy bottom of their itty bitty heart that what they are saying is true, but that doesn't make it true. I remember being younger and laughing at the mean-spirited jokes people would say about me. They didn't understand that I was laughing because (besides some of them being clever) they were showing how stupid they were in believing the stuff.

But these other people were telling me that if someone takes an action because of someone else's lie, the person telling the lie bears responsibility.

Before I continue, let me get the caveats out of the way. If there's an emergency situation that requires immediate action, then I could readily agree. I'll even give some leeway to the idea of a person testifying under oath or some other perceived penalty.

But that's as far as I'll go.

If someone lies, and someone else does an action, my question is: what is the sequence of mechanisms that dictates, with specificity, what action the other person is taking? If I say, "That person bad," is that going to determine whether or not a third party is going to now ignore that person? rob that person? kill that person? What part of 'that person bad' determined one of those three.

Oh, the person chose which to do. Well, does the person not also have the same agency of whether or not to believe me?

Or perhaps we should continue with coddling people from having to think for themselves and take responsibility for their own actions.

In summation, if someone lies about me, whatever. If someone decides they're going to believe a lie about me, and then sometime minutes, hours, days, etc later decides they're going to do something, you know who I'm going to blame? The guy that did the thing.

Now, we have laws to prevent people from harming others, that's true, but that's not my point. That guy that took some belief and decided to harm someone else on that belief? Fuck that guy. Fuck that guy REALLY hard. Fuck that guy in the dick with a rusty pitchfork turned sideways. If I had my way, I would make someone who decided they were going to cause harm to someone after both stewing on something they heard as well as not being willing to accept there might be, I dunno, different and, in fact, opposing information out there... I would make such a person suffer the standard penalty ten-fold.

Remember:
Those who ask before breed prudence.
Those who ask after breed regret.
Those who never ask breed sadness, suffering, and destruction.

Let's not confuse this with someone acting under orders, which I don't give much forgiveness too when you consider the word 'lawful' appears twice in article 92 of the UCMJ.

I'm talking about the guy heard someone say a thing and decided, 'Oh, that must be 100% true and I should only ever listen to a single source.'

You wanna know why we got the society we do and why its ripping itself apart, I point to all that as a major prime mover of societal decay.

O judgment, that are fled to brutish beasts and men have lost their reason.

Why even does 'the free world' need a leader? How is blind obedience freedom?

I mean, it's pretty simple to me. If person A lies to person B, then person B attacks person C, the fact of someone lying is strictly between person A and person B. The fact that person B attacked person C is between person B and person C.