Right wing conservatives are evil? Well, I have evidence that they are.

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Humans are designed to be male with female, isn't it obvious?

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You are confusing the abstract with the actual. That is clearly the probabalistic outcome, but that does not mean the ideal of universal heterosexuality is ever actual.You must address the actual, not the ideal. In actuality, homsexuality happens, and is as "natural" as anything else that happens.

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While I can see the blatant hypocrisy in the current administration, are we labeling ALL right wingers as the same? Is the ideology of "Right Wing" synonomous with the blatant disregard for people with no money?

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Pretty much.The caveat is that its necessarily a broad term and so you do encounter "socially liberal conservatives" and so forth. But if someone is identified as right wing, or self-identifies, its a pretty certain bet that they will back the captains of industry against the mere masses.

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If you make a few simple assumptions and do some quick math, you'll find it likely that a couple dozen people are wrongly executed each year (especially in places like Texas, where Bush did not institute the moratorium). A couple innocent people a month is not a "rarity".

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I understand that Bush signed over 120 death warrants. Given what we now know about his loose relationship to evidence, and propensity for seeing what he wants to see in the material, it seems a screaming certainty tbat some of those people were innocent, or perhaps should have had the penalty commuted.

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Many that are for the death penalty, still see the threat posed by the individual and do not want to bind themselves to arbitrary rules of having to catch them in another act, before being able to actually deal with the threat.

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Well, to use an appropriate metaphor, they can go hang. This position merely validates the witch-hunt, dumping evidence and due process in favour of instant reaction and thus probably prejudice. This remains anticipatory punishment prior to the commission of an offence, and I am perfectly entitled to reject it.

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Because it costs too darn much to keep these people in prison for 70+ years! Society has enough expenses without spending it on lifetime incarceration(free public housing) It costs $100.00 a day minimum...times 365=$36,500.00 a year times seventy= two and a half million dollars not including medical care! Just zap em! a few cents worth of juice and less headache.

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Are we not the richest society that ever lived? Do we not produce more food every year than our species can consume? Do we not waste vast quantitites of wealth and productive power on mere entertinament, mere travel, mere toys? What price human life for the richest human beings who have ever walked the earth? You need to get your moral priorities right.This message has been edited by AdminPhat, 04-11-2005 05:55 AM

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If we had unlimited funds, I would agree that there may be useful alternatives to the death penalty. But as Phatboy "eloquently" hints at, we have limited funds. If you use the money to imprison people for life, you simply pull those funds away from somewhere else.

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Sorry, its still nonsense. With huge billion-upon-billion turnover in advertising alone, it is absurd to say "we cannot afford it". Of course you could afford it, if you wanted to. You have to decide whether you value human life or not.

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To spend so much money to save the life of a single person being killed for a crime he/she did not commit is absurd when so many people die "innocently" from disease, malnutrition, etc. (or even from "innocently" contracting diseases; use the money for education and research).

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Except, that this is the state acting on our behalf, and therefore we have a much greater duty of care to those against whom we pass judgement. Better that 10 innocent men go free than 1 innocent man be imprisoned, they used to say. Also, most of these are straw men: the state is unlikely to spend on malnutrition of it is worried about the "moral hazard" of capitalist charity. Similarly, health-care reserach: if that is to be driven by private investment, then that is also not an appropriate spending option for the governmental costs incurred by inarceration.

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My conclusion would be that a criminal justice system is flawed, whether it comes to conviction or failure to do so. There is no system where every innocent person is protected 100%; convicting and killing innocent people, as well as letting the guilty go free, and subsequently kill, are both real issues. Thus, demanding a system to avoid the death of innocent people is simply one that cannot be met.

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Fine, but when using a rock as heavy and dangerous as the state, more than due, but perhaps zealous, oversight should be warranted. Just because it is not 100% does not mean we must abandon our efforts.Furthermore, appealing to the prospect that we might release someone who is guilty who "goes on to kill again" is blackmail. That too is governed by due process - if for example they were released on a technicality, then thats too bad. To incarcerate, or worse, kill, a person without a technically delimited and strictly administered process is to essentially punish on the basis of hearsay.And incidentally, this relates directly to those held without evidence, trial or charge in US and UK detention centres. In Belmarsh, there are prisoners that cannot be tried based on the formal burden of proof. Then, I say, they should not be held, should they? The state is admitting that it has NOT got proof that these people are as dangerous as they claim.

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No it does not. I am not talking about mere suspicion that a person might kill. It is that the person has killed, without reason, and is prone to kill again given their psych makeup.

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So, suspicion and hearsay after all.If the person is clinically dirsordered, and a danger to the public, then they can be sectioned under the Mental Health Act (in the UK). There is no need to execute.

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A person is caught in the process of murdering, or just having murdered, someone and is acting violent... is it okay to kill this person at this time?

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The term "OK" calls for a moral judgement I think is innapropriate. It is understandable, and predictable, that killings will occur under such circumstances.

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why is it not justified to kill them outside the time when they are actively violent and killing?

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Simple - its not justified because murder is wrong. Especially, as in this case, avoidable judicial murder.

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In one case Jessica Lunsford was raped and killed by a convicted sex offender. Her body was found when the killer told the police where he had buried it. Does anyone here have a problem with a death sentence for this individual.

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Yes of course. Your very expectation that people would NOT object indicates prcesiley the vengeance-driven mob mentality I think is dangerous.

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Do these people deserve to live or should they die?

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They deserve to live. Just think, the whole incident would have been avoidable if not for your property rights legislation.

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I personally don't see anything wrong with the state executing these individuals. I can understand in cases where the evidence is not very clear cut, that one might not want to enact the death penalty, but in some cases there is no doubt about who did it.

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Thats only partially relevant - if knowing who did it was important, then we would be free to execute jaywalkers. The question is whether we support the killing of citizens by the state. Thats is all.

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Then use the money to reduce the budget deficit, or cut taxes, or in education. I agree that having the state do things is "heavy-handed," but I think the "heavy hand" is already there. As far as I know, there's a budget for education, for foreign affairs, for domestic welfare, government funding for research (e.g. NIH). So re-allocating funds doesn't seem like much extra "heavy-handed-ness."

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I didn't have much to say about the alleged "heavy-handedness" of the state - the state is no more heavy-handed than any large, tiered organisation, such as corporations. The point is that especially the US state is unlikely to use any such savings on actual human welfare, so it is a false dichotomy.

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Thus, it's possible to INCORRECTLY release guilty people, becasue due to new information / evidence, those who judge wrongly come to believe that the encarcerated person is innocent.

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That goes without saying - that has always been the case in any formal judicial process. But that is the price you pay for justice, rather than revenge.Please bear in mind that police forces and universal public justice are a new phenomenon; the very first formal police agencies only began to appear in the mid-18th Century. In all history prior to that, justice was either private or in the direct judgement of the highest fora of the state. And since then, it has been concerned about potential excesses of the state, and hence the precuationary principle of only applying judicial sanction where a case is determined 'beyond reasonable doubt' developed.

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The a priori belief that killing of any kind is murder and so bad is not something in contention. You may believe that. I do not. And there is no way of disproving either.

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Except, as you well know, I do not hold that position. Please address the points I raise, not straw men.

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Okay, the a priori belief that "Simple - its not justified because murder is wrong. Especially, as in this case, avoidable judicial murder." is not in contention. You may believe that. I do not (both that it is murder and that it is not justified). And there is no way of disproving either opinion.

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Whoop do doo, more sophistry. You asked for a reason, you got one, not an essay. Furthermore, I can point to the fact that murder is illogical in a social organism, is dangerous in principle to a social organism, and is inherently traumatic and psychologically disturbing in humans.Make your case or don't; assumptions do not help your argument.

It was and remains sophistry.

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Murder is illogical? Do you mean the first one to kill, or the one defending himself? I see quite a bit of logic in killing in defense or to protect onesself from a credible threat.

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Irrelevant. Its still not logical to do so - your breeding opportunities and the variation of the species is thereby constrained.It is illogical in principle for a social organism to legitimise the killing of its members within its own society, certainly for a cooperative species such as ours.And of course, killing is observably psychologically traumatic, indicating that it is a learned behaviour and one in which we generally do not indulge by choice.

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I find all of this contradictory given your support for people killing others in Israel and the US. You have said that their actions are logical and necessary.

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Thats because you purposefully blur the specific and the general case.

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What is the difference between killing those that have killed, so have already shown they are willing and able and have diminished breeding opportunities as well as variation, and allowing people that have proven they will so to continue living?

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One scenario has one more dead body than the other.You are appealing to moralism. You should know by know I don't consider that compelling as an argument. If our population used to be X, and is now X-1, how does it help to go to X-2?

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Wholesale? Yes. Restricted to proven killers? No.
You are trying to ride a slippery slope.

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I don't need to, because your position is an absolute. All I need is a contradiction.What you fail to consider, is that a person who arrogates to themselves the right to kill the proven killers thereby becomes a proven killer.

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I do not believe this is true at all, but can agree for sake of argument. What difference does it make when you have killers killing? That is when you are forced to take action, just like when you have a wild animal which has killed and is likely to kill again.

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Perhaps. But why do I have killers killing? Once again you imply a ridiculous scenario, as if I oppose people fighting in their own defence. That is not at all the same issue as establishing in principle the legitimacy of homicide as a tool of public policy; that must necessarily produce killers.

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By all means clear my vision. How do you get from condemning the ordered killing of those who have killed members of your population (in general), to lauding the killing of those who are related to those who have killed members of your population (in specific)?

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You are falsely transposing answers given in the abstract to local specifics that have their own criterion. I'm not sure what "my population" has to do with anything either. I consider it arrant fantasy to demand passivity from people under oppression. But merely because violence happens does not mean I have to enshrine it in a social order and call it good.This message has been edited by contracycle, 04-12-2005 09:12 AM

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I'm trying to figure out what planet you are from.

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Earth. You?

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What the heck does this mean? People won't rape and kill if they don't have property rights?

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Correct in 3 senses. First, property rights are the alienation of a commodity from common to exclusive ownership and is thus theft. Second, property rights do cause conflicts both directly and indrectly. Third, property rights underly the treatment of people as things, and thus produces rape.For humans to be free, private property must be abolished.

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Where did this come from? I mentioned only murder cases, which are a far cry from a misdemeanor jaywalking. I've heard slippery slope arguements before but this is just ludicrous!

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Nonsense; its a reductio ad absurdam. The identification of guilt is not the deciding factort in the death penalty. Even if Holmes was able to devise a 100% perfect system that never produced a miscarriage of justice, the death penalty would STILL be judicial murder.

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You seem to advocate some sort of communism, which has never worked as it goes against human nature.

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Specifically, I am a communist, and you are quite wrong: communism worked with relentless success for almost all of human history. Its the very recent development of heirarchical, property-owning societies that is contrary to human nature. As such, it is only a temporary aberration, and a communist mode of production will return.

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The only people on the planet without property are primitive hunter/gather tribes and not even all of them are without property/possessions.

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Sure. But personal posessions are most sertainly NOT equivalent to private property at all. Private property is a specific system of absentee ownership.

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Yes, and as so it is ignored because that is not a valid argument. So I win that point.

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Er no, I deconstructed your argument and thus I win the point.

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Not murder by the standard definition, just by yours.

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Its the deliberate killing of another, by someone who has power over them, and who is not themselves in danger. It's murder, plain and simple.