Yup, it was a hypothetical example to illustrate my opinion of these pirates. That is why that sentence started with "I would bet..." and the next sentence ended with "...in my opinion."
But you also said "It makes me thing...", which led me to believe that you were judging them based on a hypothetical. That said, I suspect from what you just said that you were referring to an earlier sentence, which I don't really disagree with.
Morality does trump legality, until you're in court for your moral actions. There are plenty of moral actions through out history that are horrible acts against humanity. (just helping illustrate your point about moral decisions/actions being subjective)
I'd argue that many of those actions (one that's in my head atm is bombing civilians in wartime - moral evil, or immoral and therefore wrong, I guess?) can probably be judged by certain 'rules' of morality. I think the difficulty comes in when you try and determine what those 'rules' are: personally, I try and think about things from a starting point of certain ideas/values which
I would consider to be absolute (i.e. killing is justified when done in self-defense [which can be extended to defense of a society, or defense of another person, or defense of another society - but unless done in direct self-defense should probably be examined
extremely carefully, if only because of the immense cost of making a mistake - e.g. in declaring war], and that
everyone has certain unalienable rights [unalienable because I think the consequences are too 'messy' when you start saying "you have these innate rights, however you will no longer have these rights if you commit act X, however if you commit act X in way Y, then you may still be allowed to retain these rights" which I don't think is simple enough to considered the basis for any basic rules of morality and also I see no reason why a person/group of people/government should be able to deny someone else these rights, and also unalienable because I see no reason why committing an action should allow you to lose these rights]). However, not everyone will consider those things to be truths - a minority of those people might say 'everyone is evil and deserves to die' - I'd call them psychopaths, some might say 'people can lose these rights if they kill someone' - fair point, but I've never worked out
precisely why murder means you lose the right to life (i.e. I can't think of any logical path from murder==>death penalty) (and in this case, I've heard people say 'it protects others', and 'they deserve to die' - but for the former, I'd say that's debatable, and there are more desirable alternatives, and in the latter I'd ask why). And then, some people come up with different views on morality which haven't ever occurred to me, and which often lead to interesting debates. And in case anyone thinks I'm overusing morality and logic here, and that I should just get on with my life: the latter's probably correct, but logic is well...logical, and if something isn't logical, it's probably wrong.
(just realised this has turned into a wall of text with overuse of brackets and probably weird phrasing - apologies!
)
"Valid point about posing a danger to the people, but just because some peoples' livelihoods come off the whaling doesn't mean they should not be accountable for their actions."
Does this mean that you think coal miners should be looked down upon or suffer some kind of punishment for what they do because some people believe the burning of fossil fuels is destroying the environment? Or that loggers should be held accountable for the impact their jobs have on the world?
I think that there are several things to consider here - first is whether coal mining or logging is actually immoral. I think two arguments need to be made, one being 'coal mining (and the by-products of coal use) harms the world/environment, and the other that coal plays a vital role in producing electricity, and sustaining society. From that, I'd say that provided the coal-mining/use doesn't go out of control, the latter argument is more important, and that the current advantages of coal-mining outweigh the disadvantages (however, some would disagree), and so they're ultimately helping people overall. However, by the nature of how companies work, if there were no need for coal, they probably wouldn't be mining it.
Please keep in mind here guys that I am not trying to pick a fight or make anybody look stupid. I am just really enjoying a decent debate with people who have a different point of view than mine and can make valid and respectful counter points. Keep it up Yoss, I'm having fun here. 
Will do - I'm having fun too
