Distruction of the 10 Commandments and the importance of civil disobedience with a thought experiment FTW

Disclaimer: I realize the man who did this suffers from mental illness. This rant is much more about conversations stimulated by the event, and not commenting on the man who did it.

Friend on facebook: "Why do so many of you think this is okay? Just because it's associated with God?? The 10 commandments are a solid foundation for what's right and wrong. If it were a satanist statue everyone would be calling for freedom of religion and bashing the person for destroying it, smh."

This country was literally founded upon principles of civil disobedience and destruction of property. The Boston Tea Partiers (one of which is a direct forefather of mine, Ebeneezer Cheney) have always been considered heroes, and without them, this country's revolution may have never coalesced into an actual movement. Those in power don't listen to petitions, but they sure as fuck do when you hit their pocket book.

This might seem tangential, but i promise i'll wrap it back around. What would you do in the classic ethics thought experiment of the Trolley? You stand at a lever on the tracks of a train. 5 people are going to die if you do nothing. If you pull the lever, the train is diverted and the 5 are saved, but you condemn one person to die. Do you pull the lever?

Would you pull the lever? I sure as hell would. Wanna know why? because the ends justify the means. Kill one, to save many. Would i have a perfectly smooth and calm concience? of course not, i would have just killed a person, but i would be sure of my decision to pull it. Because the ends ALWAYS Justifies the means. So it is with the destruction of property. With the Boston Tea Party, the ends were an escape from tryannical taxation and British Crown Rule. The means of destroying a private company's inventory of Tea were more than worth the ends. In Furguson MO a couple years ago, the means were destroying shops and cars, for the ends of having Police not shoot innocent Black people in the streets. Here, it's ramming into a statue to take down an unconstitutional symbol of hate and inequality.

The 10 commandments aren't even that good of a basis to live your life. The first 5 (Half of the entire document) have absolutely nothing to do with morality at all, and everything with saying that YOUR religion is clearly wrong because mine is true. In the second half... okay murder is wrong, yeah, don't commit adultery (yeah,cause that isn't fun for anyone involved) don't bear false witness (Yeah lying is bad mmkay) and then the last 3 are all about just dont be jelous. So really one 3 points out of 10 have anything to do with a solid moral code to live by. Glareingly obvious, is the omission of don't rape, which was left out because the god of the old testament was all about a good ol raping, and lays out rules of about how all you have to do is marry the girl and then everything is cool. 0% trust someone who feels that the 10 commandments are the end all and be all of moral codes