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| An eye for an eye. If you commit murder, you should be executed. Period. | | 6 | | I support it in some cases of 1st degree murder when there's extra violent/malicious extenuating circumstances. | | 8 | | I don't support it. Killing someone because they killed someone makes no sense. | | 5 | | | 5 |
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Udderly ridiculous
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| Copy and Paste and Rabi, if you lock someone up behind bars for 50 years, for example, before he dies... how is that not a capital punishment? You are dragging it out and making the guy live a crappy life for a long time so you can justify in your conscience that you did not have much to do with putting a man to death. Your punishment is robbing that man of any sort of quality life and your 'justice' is satisfied when that eventually man dies. In my opinion, you gave him capital punishment, but you dragged it out and made him suffer-somewhat 1st. How is that a superior moral ground?
I believe that having a death penalty is an way, supporting the idea of life being sacred. The society is saying that if you do any other sort of crime, however violent, you are going to prison. But, if you take someone's life... it is so reprehensible that you cannot be in society anymore and you have violated that which is most sacred to a degree that your society has said you're too extreme to be around and past rehabilitation as you have committed the worst crime you can.
Sometimes using analogies is good and sometimes its too extreme to apply, but I'd like to use one. Animals as pets. Most people with pets consider them almost as an attachment of their family. Pet owners usually use certain things as 'punishment' for their pets, in various formats to encourage potty training or not barking, or scratching the couch, or any number of things. Someone may smack their dog with a rolled up newspaper to scare the dog into obeying, while someone else may spank their pet, and someone else might spray their pet with a watter bottle, or many other ways to 'punish,' including up to things that the rest of society deems is too inhumane for people to do to their pets and that then becomes a crime. I could not beat my dog or starve him as 'punishment' without going to jail or prison. We treat animals as a lesser degrees of humanity, don't we? Even in regards to laws and punishments to those who hurt them. However, if my dog mauls a baby to death, almost everyone in the world would put that dog to death. I can only imagine that Europe and Israel would also fit into this example. There is a mentality that you should love and take care of pets and treat them humanely, so long as they don't do the unforgivable, which means it is time to remove them from our midst after they have done the unforgivable. That does not mean you must HATE the dog and that does not mean you are an angry, unforgiving person to put that dog to death. I'm sure that someone will make the excuse that a dog's life is completely incomparable to a human's life, but I think it does have some valid comparison in that once the unforgivable, most extreme offense is committed, that 'should' result in death and isn't hateful or angry or spiteful to carry it out, though one could be like that, I suppose. There is a middle ground between love and justice.
Regarding my preference to be put to death rather than rot behind bars for life:
allow me to doubt about that point.
you are saying this coldly because you are sitting in front of your computer in your beloved home, on your confortable seat.
Oh no, I am very much convinced that in my mind, at least, that life is so valuable and sacred that being forced to live an awful, horrible life for years and years and years without freedom, without being able to marry if I choose and have kids if I choose, walk in the park if I choose, go to the mall if I choose, go camping, hiking, sit at stare at the moon from my own home if I chose, etc, etc, etc and having to instead live in a tiny cell without much of any interaction and be deprived of the vast majority of freedoms that make life worth living... I consider that to a lesser degree, almost "torture" to face your version of long drawn out death sentence and would much rather face a quick one without the awful stuff forced upon me in between, before my death. I find it much more humane to move on from this life rather than be forced to stay in it in awful conditions for years and years.
As far as quoting statistics for and against death penalties, I remember something my micro-economics professor said regarding statistics. "Statistically speaking, every person has an average of one testicle." Statistics are crap and can be manipulated to say many things. I'd bet we can all go search for other examples on the internet and find other examples for each position. The bottom line is people disagree on every type of punishment and people disagree on rehabilitation of criminals and can probably quote some stat to somehow argue their various points.
By the way, I do enjoy a good, gentlemanly debate. Thank you, guys.  |
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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bow-lines. Sail away from the safe harbour. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain"Don't ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive and then go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." -Harold Thurman Whitman
Edited: 11/4/2007 12:17 PM by Nuclearcow |  |  |
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Radical Centrist
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Grognard fantôme
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| all the countries in the world that abolished death penalty and in which do not have or had a criminality increasing after that.
and to push it forward, i can even say "wich have criminality much lower than in US."
Maybe the generalization you're making is true and maybe it isn't. I don't know. I do know this: Canada's crime problem is no better than the US. Indeed, their juvenile delinquency problem is worse, a comparative state that is associated with a relatively more indulgent and undisciplined social norm with respect to juvenile behavior. Don't get me wrong. I'm NOT arguing for the Death Penalty. I'm also not arguing AGAINST it. It is there in many societies, has been for eons, and it is inherently repugnant, which means it deserves to be understood, not judged based on opinions and speculation. As such my resort to 'cold statistics.' There is a point at which individualism becomes anarchy. Whether elimnation of, or maintenance of capital punishment constitutes a move toward or away from 'anarchy' respectively is a matter social _science_, not strictly humanism. I can agree with you about what should be. For example, prisons SHOULD be social reformation institutions, not socipathogenic institutions (which is what they are). But also, prostate cancers SHOULD be curable. There are a lot of things that should be, but making them happen is not going to be facilitated by wishful thinking or idealizing. Idealizing is fine to orient ourselves in terms of a trajectory, but lets not fall into the hubris that hope is a strategy. |
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Edited: 11/4/2007 3:43 PM by Scipio Africanus | | | |
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Conscript Rabbi
 
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| Nuclearcow (11/4/2007)
Copy and Paste and Rabi, if you lock someone up behind bars for 50 years, for example, before he dies... how is that not a capital punishment? [...]
Yes Nuclear Cow, you are absolutely right. For me the consequence here is that life imprisonment is immoral, maybe even more so. Apart from individuals that are insane and need imprisonment on medical grounds, I would argue, that imprisonment should never be for ever. In addition to having an end term, there should also be room for letting someone free when his health is failing.
In the end the prison system on the whole does more harm than good and it is my opinion we need a revolutionary different approach to criminal law. I am thinking in the direction of compensation - the elated version of an eye for an eye.
But that is utopian. The mainstream opinion in society takes criminal law with its approach detached from victims and punishment by confinement for granted. Hence, piecemeal change means I oppose the harsher versions of punishment. The death penalty to begin with. Next life imprisonment. Next imprisonment for more than twenty years.
Now deeper to the point why 50 years imprisonment is better than death. First of all, in an individual case, maybe even in most individual cases, it is probably worse. It is 50 years of suffering in stead of one moment. However, 50 years (or even 10 years) is an extremely long time. If the prison system is in any way humanely organized there is education and personal development to be get. There is a chance for betterment, there is a chance for meaningful life within the confines of the penal institution.
Take the example of Yigal Amir. He has been allowed to get married, his wife has delivered their child. I cannot say I am particularly happy with all this, seeing the dangers, but where there is life, there is infinite chance for meaning. When there is none, there is none.
We cannot make the chances for another, we cannot take it away.
One must allow oneself to break loose from ones own perception of what is a worthy life and allow a very wide variety. We must restrain to decide for others and then impose death. This is true for the convict as well as cases of euthanasia and abortion. The putting to death of hardened criminals is morally very resemblant to the putting to death of the disabled, the elderly, the sickly and whatever people are deemed a burden to society.
The quality of society lies herein, it is ready to take burdens and give the hampered a rightful place.
Boy do I sound terribly religious today. Hey guys, I am a secular; know that.  |
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Udderly ridiculous
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Good night, and good luck.
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| Scipio Africanus (11/4/2007)
Maybe the generalization you're making is true and maybe it isn't. I don't know.
You are right, let me restrain my example to the countries i know, wich are european countries.
Those do not have a criminality that high, in comparison to US and Canada (on wich i trust you on the fact that it actually have a quite high criminality rate, i didnt think so.).
Excuse me to insist on the absolutely real fact that in those coutries history, the abolishment of death penalty is not remembered like the point where criminality began to raise, but like the date of a social improvement wich people are quite proud of.
Scipio Africanus (11/4/2007)
I can agree with you about what should be. For example, prisons SHOULD be social reformation institutions, not socipathogenic institutions (which is what they are). But also, prostate cancers SHOULD be curable. There are a lot of things that should be, but making them happen is not going to be facilitated by wishful thinking or idealizing. Idealizing is fine to orient ourselves in terms of a trajectory, but lets not fall into the hubris that hope isa strategy.
I agree with you on your definition of idealizing : its |
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