FTL2009-02-05 with Ian, Dale and Mark

(my comments in italics)
***transcription begins***

(7:00 into the show)

Ian: Let's talk to Dawn, lady's first, listening to KBYO in Louisiana

Dawn: Hello. How are you?

Ian: Hey, Dawn, you're on the air. Hey there.

Dawn: Yeah, I wanted to comment about your first caller and his ticket.

Ian: Yeah.

Dawn: I think that's rather disgusting, I think he should have obeyed the laws and not got the ticket.

Ian: Well, now, come on. Are you telling me that you obey...

Mark: Do you come to a full and complete stop in front of those big red octagonal signs, when I say "a full and complete stop" I mean you come to a full stop and then the car rocks back, chk, chk, and then you go?

Dawn: Yes, you stop.

Mark: I understand it's a good idea to stop,...

Dawn: It says stop, you stop. If you go, you go.

(garbled with Mark and Ian both talking)

Dawn: And you know what, let me tell you this though.

Ian: Yeah, tell me.

Dawn: If he had children, he would be talking just like I am now.

Mark: I have a child, and what I say is if you conduct your car in a safe manner, then it doesn't really matter whether you come to a full stop at a stop sign.

Ian: Right, the laws are not the arbiter of safety.

Dawn: OK, yes, that's fine there,

Mark: So now I've given birth and therefore my voice means more.

Dawn: That's fine there, but the thing is, he just beat the system, that's all he's saying.

Mark: Well, yeah, that's what he was saying.

Dale: Can I get more voice if I get a pet or something?

Dawn: Exactly what he was saying, and he was proud of it, and that's just not a good example to set.

Mark: I think you misunderstood him, I think what he was trying to do was make it very clear that the system is entirely corrupt.

Dawn: And I agree that some policemen go to the extreme, but if, I don't know, because I hadn't heard the whole thing on the guy, you did, but if the policeman got out with an attitude, yeah, he was gonna teach the guy a lesson and some of those things need to be thrown out or thrown away.

Mark: Ok.

Dawn: But too, you know, it seems like, he did something wrong to get stopped.

Ian: Well, what's wrong with beating the system?

(pause)

Ian: Is there anything inherently wrong with that?

Dawn: Well, yes, there's a right and a wrong. There are absolutes.

Mark: Is it right or wrong to stop for a stop sign?

Dawn: It's right to stop at a stop sign.

Mark: It might be right to stop at a stop sign, but I don't think it's wrong not to.

Dawn: I do.

Dale: If it's clear as far as the eye can see, then...

Dawn: There are absolutes in this world.

Mark: And one of them is not a stop sign, lady.

Dale: It becomes absolute the moment you write it down on a piece of paper? Someone writes it down on a piece of paper and that becomes absolute? That's like the law of the universe?

Dawn: If it's true. If it's the truth.

Ian: Alright, let me run you through something here Dawn...

Mark: Ok, Here's the truth. Stop signs are made as revenue generation sources for the state. There... you've got some truth.

Dawn: If you could cheat on a test and get away with it, would you do it?

Mark: It depends on what the test is for.

Dawn: Ah, see now, there we go, there we go.

Ian: We're gonna come back with more from Dawn. Dawn, if you'll hang on, I'll bring you back. I'll bring you back in a moment.

(break 9:48. conversation continues 11:40 into the show)

Ian: Now, Dawn, we were talking about stop signs and road obedience and you were,... and if I was understanding you correctly, you were saying that you believe that it was the right thing to do to stop at a stop sign. A full and complete stop at a stop sign. Is that correct? Did I understand you right?

Dawn: Yes.

Ian: Now, here's my question, I've got a few questions for you just to kind of flesh this out here. If you were at an intersection, four way stop intersection, and you can see that there's nothing else going on, let's say, oh, I don't know, it's 9 o'clock at night, nobody else is on the roads, it's clear as you're approaching the four way stop that there's no one else coming from any of the other directions. Is it then right to stop at the stop sign? Or actually, I guess the right question would be, is it wrong to blow through the stop sign?

Dawn: It's wrong to blow through it, and it's right to stop.

Ian: Why?

Dawn: Because it's the law.

(This is not an answer. Ian shouldn't have accepted that answer. The law is not right because it's the law. With that sort of thinking, any law could be right. But instead of pointing this out to Dawn and destroying her argument, Ian asks the following question.)

Ian: So are you saying that whatever is the law is right?

Dawn: No. Because abortion is the law and it's not right.

(Someone should have asked Dawn why abortion is not right here and then confronted her with the inconsistency in her reasons. Some people think abortion is wrong and some thing that abortion is not wrong. Right now, the law says that abortion is not wrong, but you say that it is wrong. Why? Her answer would likely have been that God says it's wrong. So, she's being inconsistent. She has given her reason why abortion is wrong, because God said so, and she has given her reason why blowing through a stop sign is wrong, because it's the law. She isn't being consistent. To be consistent, she would have to say that it's wrong to blow through a stop sign because God said so.)

Mark: Well, then if you get to pick that the law is wrong in the case of abortion, how do you get to pick that the law is right in the case of this stop si... this deserted stopping area?

Dawn: Because you're talking about killing of unborn babies and (garbled)

Mark: I'm sorry, killing unborn babies and what?

Dawn: A ticket.

Mark: Well, so...

Dale: I understand completely why you have issues with a particular law, like with the abortion law, I understand that completely, what I don't understand is why you're so inconsistent when it comes to another law that someone else might disagree with, ie, the stop sign, and to me it seems wrong when someone has harmed no one if they go through a stop sign...

(Dawn and Dale speaking simultaneously)

Dale: There hasn't been any sort of accident, they don't harm anyone. Why, isn't it wrong to give out a ticket?

Dawn: Well, has anybody tried to change the law on the stop signs, they need to change the law about stop signs.

Ian: Whoa, whoa, whoa!

Dale: Let me finish.

Ian: We've got way too much cross talk here.

Dale: Let me finish. Is it not wrong to give someone a ticket, possibly put them in jail if they refuse to pay that ticket when they haven't harmed anyone, there's no one at the stop sign. You obviously disagree with one law and someone else disagrees with another law, so what makes one of them right and one of them wrong?

Dawn: There's consequences for everything you do. You're gonna get paid good or you're gonna get paid bad, you make the choice.

Ian: That wasn't a responsive answer to his question. Did you even hear what his question was or were you talking?

Dale: You haven't explained your inconsistency...

Dawn: Yeah, well, what do you want me to say?

Dale: You haven't explained your inconsistency why one law is bad and the other law is good, you're simply,.. you obviously disagree with one and other people disagree with the other one.

Ian: Wait, I disagree...

Dawn: Well, like I said, I'll do all I can to change the law of abortion. I'll do everything I can to try to change it, you know?

Mark: I'm for that.

Dawn: Through the legal system.

Ian: So, hold on a second, now...

Dawn: What you need to do is,.. no now you won't let me talk.

Ian: Alright, go ahead.

Dawn: What you need to do is go through the legal system and have it changed that a complete stop is no longer required at a stop sign.

Ian: So, Dawn, If the legal... If the law...

Dawn: Have you tried that?

Mark: Is it possible that the legal system itself is wrong? It supports killing babies, right?

Dawn: In some ways it is, yes.

Ian: Ok, so here's my question for you. If the law itself said that you must have an abortion if you get pregnant, would you follow the law?

(pause)

Ian: Or would you work through the system to change it while you were following it? Or what would you do?

(pause)

Dawn: No, I'm gonna take the law of God on that.

(So, if you believed it was wrong to obey the law, you'd disobey it, right? You wouldn't continue obeying the law and try to work through the system to change it if God was telling you it was a bad law that you shouldn't follow, right? You'd break that law because God told you to.)

Ian: Oh, I see. So you have your own set of laws that you'll just decide that overrides man laws, right?

Dawn: But you see, that is not a law, though. That'll never be a law.

Ian: Well, hold on a second, sweetie. What if...

Mark: There've been a lot of crappy laws.

Dawn: You know, under Obama, he could make it a law.

Ian: What if I have my own God's law that says that when I'm approaching an intersection...

Dawn: But there's only one God.

(Dawn's first attempt, conscious or unconscious, at derailing this line of questioning.)

Ian: Well, hold on, sweetie, how do you know that my God doesn't have a law that says that I get to use my judgment.

Dawn: How can you call me "sweetie"? You know, that's sexual harassment.

(Dawn's second attempt to derail this line of questioning ends with success.)

Mark: See, you threw the whole line of questioning off by being nasty.

Ian: You know what, I shouldn't have done that. I'm talking to a nice southern lady, I didn't feel like I was out of line.

Mark: Say you're sorry.

Ian: I'm apologize for that.

Dawn: Now you're calling me a "Southern Lady" that, you know really ditsy.

(Dawn really wants to get away from this line of questioning, it seems.)

Dale: That's not an insult. You know, I'd take that as a compliment. I'm Southern.

Mark: Lady's a good term. I'm from the south.

Dawn: Where are you from?

Ian: I'm from the South, we're all from the South.

Mark: Farther south than you are.

Dale: Even though Florida is further south, it doesn't actually count as the South. I just wanted to point that out. I'm from Georgia. I truly am from the South.

Mark: Now, wait a minute, you've never been in central Florida.

Dawn: You have a Northern accent.

Ian: Who has a Northern accent?

Dawn: The other guy that said he was from Georgia.

Mark: We're trained broadcast professionals, ma'am.

Dale: I have a question though. What if I have a problem with the system, what process should I go through if I have a problem with the system itself?

(Dale's attempt to get back onto the line of questioning.)

Dawn: What process you go through to change things in the system?

Dale: Right. If I have a problem with the system itself, what process do I go through? Obviously I can't go through the system if I have a problem with the system, that's obviously not reliable, so what?

Dawn: that's the problem we have in America right now, isn't it? We're so tied down, we can't fix things.

Mark: Yep, it's all these laws. You'd agree that there's way too many.

Dawn: Yeah, I do, and I know you're just wanting a good conversation and all, but listen, you know that guy was wrong.

Dale: No I don't.

Ian: No, I don't agree.

(Mark continues to talk about how the caller's point was to show that the system was corrupt.)

***end transcription***

The principle reason the world is a mess is because people are incapable of distinguishing between right and wrong...