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Please attempt to distinguish between extremists and non extremists to avoid starting the inevitable waste of time that is "can Islam be judged by its believers?" - KwarK |
Shiori:
Just because the US has been on the right side of international wars doesn't mean that their domestic policies are perfect by any means.
Irrelevant response. The issue is not the perfectness or lack thereof of domestic policies, it's the implication that my country is not civilized, i.e. is barbaric (as is every other country that has the death penalty). An insult that no patriot would or should take sitting down if directed at their country.
Please don't be so obtuse.
Nachtwind:So by your logic a war = daily judical system?.. 
Not at all, I'm at a loss to explain how you managed to come up with that.
I just think that Britain would not want help from barbarians. So don't ask us for it next time the way they did last time, I don't think they'd want to sully themselves by doing that. Or at least not that guy. Thankfully most Britons are a little more discerning.
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On May 26 2013 03:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +Shiori:
Just because the US has been on the right side of international wars doesn't mean that their domestic policies are perfect by any means. Irrelevant response. The issue is not the perfectness or lack thereof of domestic policies, it's the implication that my country is not civilized, i.e. is barbaric (as is every other country that has the death penalty). An insult that no patriot would or should take sitting down if directed at their country. Please don't be so obtuse. Not at all, I'm at a loss to explain how you managed to come up with that. I just think that Britain would not want help from barbarians. So don't ask us for it next time the way they did last time, I don't think they'd want to sully themselves by doing that. Or at least not that guy. Thankfully most Britons are a little more discerning.
I think you're confusing patriotism with blind nationalism.
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On May 26 2013 03:39 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 03:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:Shiori:
Just because the US has been on the right side of international wars doesn't mean that their domestic policies are perfect by any means. Irrelevant response. The issue is not the perfectness or lack thereof of domestic policies, it's the implication that my country is not civilized, i.e. is barbaric (as is every other country that has the death penalty). An insult that no patriot would or should take sitting down if directed at their country. Please don't be so obtuse. Nachtwind:So by your logic a war = daily judical system?.. Not at all, I'm at a loss to explain how you managed to come up with that. I just think that Britain would not want help from barbarians. So don't ask us for it next time the way they did last time, I don't think they'd want to sully themselves by doing that. Or at least not that guy. Thankfully most Britons are a little more discerning. I think you're confusing patriotism with blind nationalism.
Are you suggesting that support of the death penalty amounts to blind nationalism?
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On May 26 2013 03:33 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 03:26 AimForTheBushes wrote:On May 26 2013 02:03 KwarK wrote:
The reason I just put it as others disagree with you is because this area comes down to beliefs and arguments rather than an objective truth. I believe that people aren't born criminals and that even the worst criminals are, in part, victims of their circumstances. If they cannot be fixed then indefinite confinement is fine, I believe that's how it generally works with life sentences anyway, they try and work out if the guy is going to reoffend and if they are then they don't release him. I don't believe there is anything intrinsic or special within me that makes me not a criminal, I believe that the people I grew up with, the influence of my parents and so forth are responsible for that. Had I been switched with another infant in the hospital I could have ended up in a very different place and if that were the case I would want society to try and help me back on track.
I'm not saying that we should be soft and allow people who are going to reoffend to reoffend or that the people shouldn't be protected, rather that criminals, especially once they've been caught, are often the biggest victims of their crimes and the way we structure our society should be for the good of the people. If you were told that you would be reborn as a random child born tomorrow would you keep the rules of society the same? I got lucky last time I was born but luck is a poor foundation for a moral society. I'm pretty sure that "victim of circumstance" doesn't hold much weight when trying to explain why you just beheaded a random person in the street... It certainly would define the person who got beheaded, though. Do you honestly think these individual's parents influenced them to behead strangers? Saying that criminals (especially violent, murderous ones) are often the biggest victims of their crimes is horribly naive and insensitive. That's like saying that a virus or parasite is the real victim because it can no longer live once the host body dies. I'd say the real argument at hand here is if lifetime incarceration at the cost of public taxpayers is worth the "moral cost" of the death penalty. Your view of circumstance is incredibly narrow and shortsighted. While I definitely think this sort of thinking does not deny the assignment of culpability, I think you are really shortchanging the effects of environment, upbringing, and experience insofar as "circumstance" is concerned. While parental influence is definitely a large factor, so are encounters with other people, religious experiences, financial difficulties, socioeconomic background, and, in a basic sense, who one spends time with. In many situations in which radical Islam is implicated, there are almost always accompanying factors that feed into the fruition of violent ideology.
Unfortunately nearly all those accompanying environmental factors including but not limited to those listed are shaped by Islamic beliefs in a fundamentalist interpretation of the faith. These distinctions you make do not exist or barely exist in a fundamentalist Muslim environment.
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On May 26 2013 03:39 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 03:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:Shiori:
Just because the US has been on the right side of international wars doesn't mean that their domestic policies are perfect by any means. Irrelevant response. The issue is not the perfectness or lack thereof of domestic policies, it's the implication that my country is not civilized, i.e. is barbaric (as is every other country that has the death penalty). An insult that no patriot would or should take sitting down if directed at their country. Please don't be so obtuse. Nachtwind:So by your logic a war = daily judical system?.. Not at all, I'm at a loss to explain how you managed to come up with that. I just think that Britain would not want help from barbarians. So don't ask us for it next time the way they did last time, I don't think they'd want to sully themselves by doing that. Or at least not that guy. Thankfully most Britons are a little more discerning. I think you're confusing patriotism with blind nationalism.
I think you confuse everything concerning national identity and pride with blind nationalism, in your breathtakingly unfair bitter cynicism.
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On May 26 2013 03:41 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 03:33 farvacola wrote:On May 26 2013 03:26 AimForTheBushes wrote:On May 26 2013 02:03 KwarK wrote:
The reason I just put it as others disagree with you is because this area comes down to beliefs and arguments rather than an objective truth. I believe that people aren't born criminals and that even the worst criminals are, in part, victims of their circumstances. If they cannot be fixed then indefinite confinement is fine, I believe that's how it generally works with life sentences anyway, they try and work out if the guy is going to reoffend and if they are then they don't release him. I don't believe there is anything intrinsic or special within me that makes me not a criminal, I believe that the people I grew up with, the influence of my parents and so forth are responsible for that. Had I been switched with another infant in the hospital I could have ended up in a very different place and if that were the case I would want society to try and help me back on track.
I'm not saying that we should be soft and allow people who are going to reoffend to reoffend or that the people shouldn't be protected, rather that criminals, especially once they've been caught, are often the biggest victims of their crimes and the way we structure our society should be for the good of the people. If you were told that you would be reborn as a random child born tomorrow would you keep the rules of society the same? I got lucky last time I was born but luck is a poor foundation for a moral society. I'm pretty sure that "victim of circumstance" doesn't hold much weight when trying to explain why you just beheaded a random person in the street... It certainly would define the person who got beheaded, though. Do you honestly think these individual's parents influenced them to behead strangers? Saying that criminals (especially violent, murderous ones) are often the biggest victims of their crimes is horribly naive and insensitive. That's like saying that a virus or parasite is the real victim because it can no longer live once the host body dies. I'd say the real argument at hand here is if lifetime incarceration at the cost of public taxpayers is worth the "moral cost" of the death penalty. Your view of circumstance is incredibly narrow and shortsighted. While I definitely think this sort of thinking does not deny the assignment of culpability, I think you are really shortchanging the effects of environment, upbringing, and experience insofar as "circumstance" is concerned. While parental influence is definitely a large factor, so are encounters with other people, religious experiences, financial difficulties, socioeconomic background, and, in a basic sense, who one spends time with. In many situations in which radical Islam is implicated, there are almost always accompanying factors that feed into the fruition of violent ideology. Unfortunately nearly all those accompanying environmental factors including but not limited to those listed are shaped by Islamic beliefs in a fundamentalist interpretation of the faith. These distinctions you make do not exist or barely exist in a fundamentalist Muslim environment.
There are very few if any purely fundamentalist Islamic environments, as many of the most violent sects coexist with more moderate forms of Islam. The only times that a "pure" fundamentalist environment comes about is likely in regards to terror training camps in which youth are effectively isolated from all outside influence, both Islamic and non. The conflict between radical and moderate Islam is to be found in every Islamic nation otherwise.
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On May 26 2013 03:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +Shiori:
Just because the US has been on the right side of international wars doesn't mean that their domestic policies are perfect by any means. Irrelevant response. The issue is not the perfectness or lack thereof of domestic policies, it's the implication that my country is not civilized, i.e. is barbaric (as is every other country that has the death penalty). An insult that no patriot would or should take sitting down if directed at their country. Please don't be so obtuse. Not at all, I'm at a loss to explain how you managed to come up with that. I just think that Britain would not want help from barbarians. So don't ask us for it next time the way they did last time, I don't think they'd want to sully themselves by doing that. Or at least not that guy. Thankfully most Britons are a little more discerning.
Barbarism is a matter of degree. On the whole, the US is not a barbaric nation. In fact, it's generally the opposite. That isn't inconsistent with holding that capital punishment is barbaric. The poster in question said that one of the indicators of a truly civilized society is no capital punishment. He didn't say that it was the sole qualifier, or that having capital punishment is sufficient grounds to assert that a nation is, on the whole, barbaric. I guess I read it differently than you. I'm sure there are senses in which most countries could be said to be uncivilized, to be honest. Doesn't mean that the whole country is worthless or uncivilized in every respect. You can have a brilliant constitution/political system while simultaneously having, say, absurdly outdated legal practices. The later would be an uncivilized aspect of this hypothetical nation, the former would be a civilized aspect.
Also, I didn't mean to offend your national pride, or whatever. I simply think capital punishment is immoral. I don't think your entire nation is damned by that one particular practice. And, frankly, I welcome criticism directed at my own nation. I don't see any reason to get offended by it; my sense of pride in my nation can withstand the assertion that my nation is imperfect, because it is.
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On May 26 2013 03:40 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 03:39 Jormundr wrote:On May 26 2013 03:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:Shiori:
Just because the US has been on the right side of international wars doesn't mean that their domestic policies are perfect by any means. Irrelevant response. The issue is not the perfectness or lack thereof of domestic policies, it's the implication that my country is not civilized, i.e. is barbaric (as is every other country that has the death penalty). An insult that no patriot would or should take sitting down if directed at their country. Please don't be so obtuse. Nachtwind:So by your logic a war = daily judical system?.. Not at all, I'm at a loss to explain how you managed to come up with that. I just think that Britain would not want help from barbarians. So don't ask us for it next time the way they did last time, I don't think they'd want to sully themselves by doing that. Or at least not that guy. Thankfully most Britons are a little more discerning. I think you're confusing patriotism with blind nationalism. Are you suggesting that support of the death penalty amounts to blind nationalism?
No, I'm suggesting that you have to be a blind nationalist to take a (realistic) insult towards the death penalty personally.
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On May 26 2013 03:37 DeepElemBlues wrote:Show nested quote +Shiori:
Just because the US has been on the right side of international wars doesn't mean that their domestic policies are perfect by any means. Irrelevant response. The issue is not the perfectness or lack thereof of domestic policies, it's the implication that my country is not civilized, i.e. is barbaric (as is every other country that has the death penalty). An insult that no patriot would or should take sitting down if directed at their country. Please don't be so obtuse. Not at all, I'm at a loss to explain how you managed to come up with that. I just think that Britain would not want help from barbarians. So don't ask us for it next time the way they did last time, I don't think they'd want to sully themselves by doing that. Or at least not that guy. Thankfully most Britons are a little more discerning.
Oh that was just a question.
I followed this conversation
On May 25 2013 23:58 Nachtwind wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2013 23:17 DeepElemBlues wrote:On May 25 2013 03:31 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:52 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:51 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:47 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:45 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:33 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:21 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:15 NoxiousNoodles wrote:
[quote]
I fear with you at the helm of a country the population may drastically decrease. To punish many crimes such as stealing would be totally disproportionate to the crime they have committed. Furthermore, people can change and whilst stealing, raping and even murdering are terrible acts to perform, it does not preclude them from changing their ways and being a positive influence on society once they have finished their incarceration. The population wouldn't drastically decrease, you need to give a little more credit to your fellow man and his ability to learn. Have you ever jumped off a cliff? Neither have I. Have you ever jumped off a wall? Me too. You see, standing on the edge of the cliff we both weighed our options and their relative consequences, and we both arrived at the same conclusion: I'm not going to jump off because I will probably die and I don't want to die. Standing on the edge of the wall.... we weighed the risks and decided from past experience that we were capable of jumping from that height safely, and lived to tell the tale. This is how the human mind works. I don't care if the punishment is disproportionate, are you saying serial rapists should only be serially raped and not put to death? Of course not, they deserve to die. The punishment doesn't need to fit the crime. Crime is not acceptable. Zero tolerance wherever possible imo. I'm not interested in people changing their ways and being a positive influence on society after being proven guilty of committing a crime against another person with full knowledge and intent, there are plenty people who do not commit such acts and these law abiding individuals deserve not to be tainted by criminal scum being given a second chance they don't deserve. Again, I have committed many criminal acts in my life and fall into the category of "criminal scum" for the purposes of this argument. I would however never have committed any of these acts if the punishment was appropriately severe, and if it was I think we'd live in a much safer and happier world. So say where someone is alleged to have stolen a bar of chocolate from a shop. You would put him to death? Imagine if you do (or any other criminal), what if mistakes were made and he is actually innocent, which has happened. You can release an innocent person from prison, you cannot resurrect an innocent person put to death. You wouldn't put someone to death over wild allegations. If he was proven to have stolen the chocolate bar and he wasn't a kleptomaniac or having a psychotic episode or whatever then yes I would put him to death. The point is it would never happen because who would risk death for a chocolate bar? Crime rates would be so ridiculously low that the number of people wrongfully convicted of crime would be even more so, people die all the time I'm not really worried about 1 in 1,000,000 people being sentenced to death for no reason if the country as a whole is infinitely safer... which would probably result in many many more lives being saved anyway aside from all the other benefits of an almost crime free society. Except the populace would revolt because the government is a bunch of murderers which kills people for stealing fucking chocolate bars. lol who the fuck would be stealing chocolate bars if the penalty was death? get a grip seriously It doesn't matter. Who the fuck would want to support a government which thinks killing people is an acceptable response to petty theft? That's grossly immoral in the minds of virtually everyone, evidenced by the near-universal disdain for your proposal. Like this literally would make the government worse than the actual criminals. Exactly. One of the indicators of a truly civilised country is the lack of a death penalty. Society has moved beyond the barbaric attitude of 'An eye for an eye'. Next time the Germans or Russians get all country-grabby I guess we'll let you deal with it entirely on your own, wouldn't want to infect you with our barbarism. So by your logic a war = daily judical system?..
and you´re starting about second world war in a conversation that was explicit to death penalty in a society. So yes i was kinda confused about you. =)
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On May 26 2013 00:14 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On May 25 2013 18:54 sc4k wrote:On May 25 2013 03:31 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:52 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:51 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:47 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:45 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:33 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:21 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:15 NoxiousNoodles wrote:
[quote]
I fear with you at the helm of a country the population may drastically decrease. To punish many crimes such as stealing would be totally disproportionate to the crime they have committed. Furthermore, people can change and whilst stealing, raping and even murdering are terrible acts to perform, it does not preclude them from changing their ways and being a positive influence on society once they have finished their incarceration. The population wouldn't drastically decrease, you need to give a little more credit to your fellow man and his ability to learn. Have you ever jumped off a cliff? Neither have I. Have you ever jumped off a wall? Me too. You see, standing on the edge of the cliff we both weighed our options and their relative consequences, and we both arrived at the same conclusion: I'm not going to jump off because I will probably die and I don't want to die. Standing on the edge of the wall.... we weighed the risks and decided from past experience that we were capable of jumping from that height safely, and lived to tell the tale. This is how the human mind works. I don't care if the punishment is disproportionate, are you saying serial rapists should only be serially raped and not put to death? Of course not, they deserve to die. The punishment doesn't need to fit the crime. Crime is not acceptable. Zero tolerance wherever possible imo. I'm not interested in people changing their ways and being a positive influence on society after being proven guilty of committing a crime against another person with full knowledge and intent, there are plenty people who do not commit such acts and these law abiding individuals deserve not to be tainted by criminal scum being given a second chance they don't deserve. Again, I have committed many criminal acts in my life and fall into the category of "criminal scum" for the purposes of this argument. I would however never have committed any of these acts if the punishment was appropriately severe, and if it was I think we'd live in a much safer and happier world. So say where someone is alleged to have stolen a bar of chocolate from a shop. You would put him to death? Imagine if you do (or any other criminal), what if mistakes were made and he is actually innocent, which has happened. You can release an innocent person from prison, you cannot resurrect an innocent person put to death. You wouldn't put someone to death over wild allegations. If he was proven to have stolen the chocolate bar and he wasn't a kleptomaniac or having a psychotic episode or whatever then yes I would put him to death. The point is it would never happen because who would risk death for a chocolate bar? Crime rates would be so ridiculously low that the number of people wrongfully convicted of crime would be even more so, people die all the time I'm not really worried about 1 in 1,000,000 people being sentenced to death for no reason if the country as a whole is infinitely safer... which would probably result in many many more lives being saved anyway aside from all the other benefits of an almost crime free society. Except the populace would revolt because the government is a bunch of murderers which kills people for stealing fucking chocolate bars. lol who the fuck would be stealing chocolate bars if the penalty was death? get a grip seriously It doesn't matter. Who the fuck would want to support a government which thinks killing people is an acceptable response to petty theft? That's grossly immoral in the minds of virtually everyone, evidenced by the near-universal disdain for your proposal. Like this literally would make the government worse than the actual criminals. Exactly. One of the indicators of a truly civilised country is the lack of a death penalty. Society has moved beyond the barbaric attitude of 'An eye for an eye'. I still can't get my head around this. Every time I revisit the phrase on TL and and IRL etc, I can't see what precisely is wrong with taking an eye for an eye. It is the very embodiment of justice. It only goes wrong when people take more for an eye, and then the original wrongdoers believe the justice exerted was disproportionate, so retaliate and so on. If everyone did actually take an eye for an eye, there probably wouldn't be any trouble. It gets complicated when the crime committed is less simple than murder, for example rape or blackmail...in which case a certain amount of prison time serves as the only reasonable proxy. The people who cared about this beheaded guy have been wronged. The mother and father have seen their baby boy who they raised and loved murdered brutally...with no evidential uncertainty as to who actually did the act. I'm not saying they do, but if the parents DID want the murderers to be executed, I (currently) believe they should have the right to pursue that eventuality through the legal system. The only exceptions I see as valid to the death penalty are evidential uncertainty and cost (and they are very big - unless the murderers are caught standing around the body clearly indicating ownership of the actions, carrying meat cleavers with their hands bloodied). The egregiousness of the method of killing, the lack of retaliatory motivation in the perpetrators and the utter disrespect for the man's dignity should also feature as factors when deciding to allow the wronged people to pursue that penalty. [NB: I am not talking about petty theft, what the fuck is that about lol] You talk about it not being disproportionate. That's dumb as fuck. An eye for an eye doesn't make much sense when somebody is already blind. The point here is that eye for an eye rarely results in a truly equal trade. Hence why, historically, it never created a crime free society. As long as a person is willing to accept/ignore the consequence of an action, they generally come out on top because their 'eye' is worth less than what they expect to gain. Also your comment about the parents being allowed to make the choice is hilarious. Why cant they just be the judges? Why stop at execution? Shouldn't all forms of torture be on the board? Eye for an eye is child justice; nothing more than gut reaction.
Well, you are right that eye for an eye doesn't result in an equal trade for most crimes, which is why prison is used as a proxy. But it does for murder. You kill, you get executed. Simple. And I don't believe that it's society's place to punish criminals. I believe it's entirely its place to prevent harm. However I do believe in the right of innocent people to achieve justice, and I believe that justice is done for a family of people whose relative has been murdered by allowing them the right to have the perpetrator executed. I believe he has forfeit his right to life by taking the life of another unlawfully.
This is all, of course, with the proviso that I don't believe it is justified for 99% of murders because the level of evidence required is basically lots of corroborating video evidence from different sources. Not confessions or even a high quality of DNA evidence. The Dnepropetrovsk maniacs come to mind. They were completely sane and murdered multiple people, recording the murders in high quality. No evidential uncertainty.
On May 26 2013 02:03 KwarK wrote:
The reason I just put it as others disagree with you is because this area comes down to beliefs and arguments rather than an objective truth. I believe that people aren't born criminals and that even the worst criminals are, in part, victims of their circumstances. If they cannot be fixed then indefinite confinement is fine, I believe that's how it generally works with life sentences anyway, they try and work out if the guy is going to reoffend and if they are then they don't release him. I don't believe there is anything intrinsic or special within me that makes me not a criminal, I believe that the people I grew up with, the influence of my parents and so forth are responsible for that. Had I been switched with another infant in the hospital I could have ended up in a very different place and if that were the case I would want society to try and help me back on track.
I'm not saying that we should be soft and allow people who are going to reoffend to reoffend or that the people shouldn't be protected, rather that criminals, especially once they've been caught, are often the biggest victims of their crimes and the way we structure our society should be for the good of the people. If you were told that you would be reborn as a random child born tomorrow would you keep the rules of society the same? I got lucky last time I was born but luck is a poor foundation for a moral society.
I have considered this fact for a while (few years) and I appreciate your summation. However, the circumstances of a person's life are reasons for their actions, not excuses. Even if someone has been abused as a child, as is quite often the case with for example psychopathic serial killers (born with the 'warrior gene'), that does not give them any sort of moral protection in my mind - if they go on to murder someone completely unrelated to that abuse they are killing in cold blood, full stop. If that person kills the person who abused them, then they have a degree of justification for their action and the law would take that into account even in our country.
I should add that I am still in favour of a ban on the death penalty because I don't trust it to be used correctly. But theoretically I am not convinced despite the reasonableness of some of the points made against it.
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On May 26 2013 04:30 sc4k wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 00:14 Jormundr wrote:On May 25 2013 18:54 sc4k wrote:On May 25 2013 03:31 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:52 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:51 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:47 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:45 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:33 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:21 Reason wrote:
[quote]
The population wouldn't drastically decrease, you need to give a little more credit to your fellow man and his ability to learn.
Have you ever jumped off a cliff? Neither have I.
Have you ever jumped off a wall? Me too.
You see, standing on the edge of the cliff we both weighed our options and their relative consequences, and we both arrived at the same conclusion: I'm not going to jump off because I will probably die and I don't want to die.
Standing on the edge of the wall.... we weighed the risks and decided from past experience that we were capable of jumping from that height safely, and lived to tell the tale.
This is how the human mind works. I don't care if the punishment is disproportionate, are you saying serial rapists should only be serially raped and not put to death? Of course not, they deserve to die. The punishment doesn't need to fit the crime. Crime is not acceptable. Zero tolerance wherever possible imo.
I'm not interested in people changing their ways and being a positive influence on society after being proven guilty of committing a crime against another person with full knowledge and intent, there are plenty people who do not commit such acts and these law abiding individuals deserve not to be tainted by criminal scum being given a second chance they don't deserve.
Again, I have committed many criminal acts in my life and fall into the category of "criminal scum" for the purposes of this argument. I would however never have committed any of these acts if the punishment was appropriately severe, and if it was I think we'd live in a much safer and happier world. So say where someone is alleged to have stolen a bar of chocolate from a shop. You would put him to death? Imagine if you do (or any other criminal), what if mistakes were made and he is actually innocent, which has happened. You can release an innocent person from prison, you cannot resurrect an innocent person put to death. You wouldn't put someone to death over wild allegations. If he was proven to have stolen the chocolate bar and he wasn't a kleptomaniac or having a psychotic episode or whatever then yes I would put him to death. The point is it would never happen because who would risk death for a chocolate bar? Crime rates would be so ridiculously low that the number of people wrongfully convicted of crime would be even more so, people die all the time I'm not really worried about 1 in 1,000,000 people being sentenced to death for no reason if the country as a whole is infinitely safer... which would probably result in many many more lives being saved anyway aside from all the other benefits of an almost crime free society. Except the populace would revolt because the government is a bunch of murderers which kills people for stealing fucking chocolate bars. lol who the fuck would be stealing chocolate bars if the penalty was death? get a grip seriously It doesn't matter. Who the fuck would want to support a government which thinks killing people is an acceptable response to petty theft? That's grossly immoral in the minds of virtually everyone, evidenced by the near-universal disdain for your proposal. Like this literally would make the government worse than the actual criminals. Exactly. One of the indicators of a truly civilised country is the lack of a death penalty. Society has moved beyond the barbaric attitude of 'An eye for an eye'. I still can't get my head around this. Every time I revisit the phrase on TL and and IRL etc, I can't see what precisely is wrong with taking an eye for an eye. It is the very embodiment of justice. It only goes wrong when people take more for an eye, and then the original wrongdoers believe the justice exerted was disproportionate, so retaliate and so on. If everyone did actually take an eye for an eye, there probably wouldn't be any trouble. It gets complicated when the crime committed is less simple than murder, for example rape or blackmail...in which case a certain amount of prison time serves as the only reasonable proxy. The people who cared about this beheaded guy have been wronged. The mother and father have seen their baby boy who they raised and loved murdered brutally...with no evidential uncertainty as to who actually did the act. I'm not saying they do, but if the parents DID want the murderers to be executed, I (currently) believe they should have the right to pursue that eventuality through the legal system. The only exceptions I see as valid to the death penalty are evidential uncertainty and cost (and they are very big - unless the murderers are caught standing around the body clearly indicating ownership of the actions, carrying meat cleavers with their hands bloodied). The egregiousness of the method of killing, the lack of retaliatory motivation in the perpetrators and the utter disrespect for the man's dignity should also feature as factors when deciding to allow the wronged people to pursue that penalty. [NB: I am not talking about petty theft, what the fuck is that about lol] You talk about it not being disproportionate. That's dumb as fuck. An eye for an eye doesn't make much sense when somebody is already blind. The point here is that eye for an eye rarely results in a truly equal trade. Hence why, historically, it never created a crime free society. As long as a person is willing to accept/ignore the consequence of an action, they generally come out on top because their 'eye' is worth less than what they expect to gain. Also your comment about the parents being allowed to make the choice is hilarious. Why cant they just be the judges? Why stop at execution? Shouldn't all forms of torture be on the board? Eye for an eye is child justice; nothing more than gut reaction. Well, you are right that eye for an eye doesn't result in an equal trade for most crimes, which is why prison is used as a proxy. But it does for murder. You kill, you get executed. Simple. And I don't believe that it's society's place to punish criminals. I believe it's entirely its place to prevent harm. However I do believe in the right of innocent people to achieve justice, and I believe that justice is done for a family of people whose relative has been murdered by allowing them the right to have the perpetrator executed. I believe he has forfeit his right to life by taking the life of another unlawfully. This is all, of course, with the proviso that I don't believe it is justified for 99% of murders because the level of evidence required is basically lots of corroborating video evidence from different sources. Not confessions or even a high quality of DNA evidence. The Dnepropetrovsk maniacs come to mind. They were completely sane and murdered multiple people, recording the murders in high quality. No evidential uncertainty.
Funny. Then why is it that many victim familes in the us denyed that their justicefeelings are satisfied with the death penalty. And that there also victim families that even doesn´t wanted the death penalty and now it comes... they sticking together with the offender families to treat their sorrows. Wow.
edit: you all mixing personal feelings with pure justice and punishing a crime in the society and healing process of the victims.
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On May 26 2013 03:25 DeepElemBlues wrote:The perpetrator might be a right-wing radical angry at the legalization of gay marriage in France and deciding to do a copycat attack, emotions in the French far-right are running very high over that right now. Or he could be a Muslim. But I'd be willing to bet a lot that this is ideologically driven no matter what the ideology, I think the "it's crazies" argument needs to be put to rest. It seems like it's never people who are actually mentally ill.
Well, it is probably a matter of definition. I am in no way involved with mental health studies, so what i think is obviously no official definition, but i'd think that "beheading random people on the streets" is seen as a crazy action by a lot of people. In fact, i can't really come up with any reason for it that wouldn't lead to me believing that the guy doing it is crazy. Probably not necessarily legally or medically insane, but very much crazy by the popular view.
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On May 26 2013 04:45 Simberto wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 03:25 DeepElemBlues wrote:The perpetrator might be a right-wing radical angry at the legalization of gay marriage in France and deciding to do a copycat attack, emotions in the French far-right are running very high over that right now. Or he could be a Muslim. But I'd be willing to bet a lot that this is ideologically driven no matter what the ideology, I think the "it's crazies" argument needs to be put to rest. It seems like it's never people who are actually mentally ill. Well, it is probably a matter of definition. I am in no way involved with mental health studies, so what i think is obviously no official definition, but i'd think that "beheading random people on the streets" is seen as a crazy action by a lot of people. In fact, i can't really come up with any reason for it that wouldn't lead to me believing that the guy doing it is crazy. Probably not necessarily legally or medically insane, but very much crazy by the popular view.
A small point, but there is no suggestion that this attack was random. It was targeted, and at least planned in some way, as i understand it.
This means that logical, rational thought had gone into the planning of it (the planning, not the attack itself), so there is a level of sanity there.
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On May 26 2013 04:37 Nachtwind wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 04:30 sc4k wrote:On May 26 2013 00:14 Jormundr wrote:On May 25 2013 18:54 sc4k wrote:On May 25 2013 03:31 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:52 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:51 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:47 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:45 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:33 NoxiousNoodles wrote:
[quote]
So say where someone is alleged to have stolen a bar of chocolate from a shop. You would put him to death? Imagine if you do (or any other criminal), what if mistakes were made and he is actually innocent, which has happened. You can release an innocent person from prison, you cannot resurrect an innocent person put to death.
You wouldn't put someone to death over wild allegations. If he was proven to have stolen the chocolate bar and he wasn't a kleptomaniac or having a psychotic episode or whatever then yes I would put him to death. The point is it would never happen because who would risk death for a chocolate bar? Crime rates would be so ridiculously low that the number of people wrongfully convicted of crime would be even more so, people die all the time I'm not really worried about 1 in 1,000,000 people being sentenced to death for no reason if the country as a whole is infinitely safer... which would probably result in many many more lives being saved anyway aside from all the other benefits of an almost crime free society. Except the populace would revolt because the government is a bunch of murderers which kills people for stealing fucking chocolate bars. lol who the fuck would be stealing chocolate bars if the penalty was death? get a grip seriously It doesn't matter. Who the fuck would want to support a government which thinks killing people is an acceptable response to petty theft? That's grossly immoral in the minds of virtually everyone, evidenced by the near-universal disdain for your proposal. Like this literally would make the government worse than the actual criminals. Exactly. One of the indicators of a truly civilised country is the lack of a death penalty. Society has moved beyond the barbaric attitude of 'An eye for an eye'. I still can't get my head around this. Every time I revisit the phrase on TL and and IRL etc, I can't see what precisely is wrong with taking an eye for an eye. It is the very embodiment of justice. It only goes wrong when people take more for an eye, and then the original wrongdoers believe the justice exerted was disproportionate, so retaliate and so on. If everyone did actually take an eye for an eye, there probably wouldn't be any trouble. It gets complicated when the crime committed is less simple than murder, for example rape or blackmail...in which case a certain amount of prison time serves as the only reasonable proxy. The people who cared about this beheaded guy have been wronged. The mother and father have seen their baby boy who they raised and loved murdered brutally...with no evidential uncertainty as to who actually did the act. I'm not saying they do, but if the parents DID want the murderers to be executed, I (currently) believe they should have the right to pursue that eventuality through the legal system. The only exceptions I see as valid to the death penalty are evidential uncertainty and cost (and they are very big - unless the murderers are caught standing around the body clearly indicating ownership of the actions, carrying meat cleavers with their hands bloodied). The egregiousness of the method of killing, the lack of retaliatory motivation in the perpetrators and the utter disrespect for the man's dignity should also feature as factors when deciding to allow the wronged people to pursue that penalty. [NB: I am not talking about petty theft, what the fuck is that about lol] You talk about it not being disproportionate. That's dumb as fuck. An eye for an eye doesn't make much sense when somebody is already blind. The point here is that eye for an eye rarely results in a truly equal trade. Hence why, historically, it never created a crime free society. As long as a person is willing to accept/ignore the consequence of an action, they generally come out on top because their 'eye' is worth less than what they expect to gain. Also your comment about the parents being allowed to make the choice is hilarious. Why cant they just be the judges? Why stop at execution? Shouldn't all forms of torture be on the board? Eye for an eye is child justice; nothing more than gut reaction. Well, you are right that eye for an eye doesn't result in an equal trade for most crimes, which is why prison is used as a proxy. But it does for murder. You kill, you get executed. Simple. And I don't believe that it's society's place to punish criminals. I believe it's entirely its place to prevent harm. However I do believe in the right of innocent people to achieve justice, and I believe that justice is done for a family of people whose relative has been murdered by allowing them the right to have the perpetrator executed. I believe he has forfeit his right to life by taking the life of another unlawfully. This is all, of course, with the proviso that I don't believe it is justified for 99% of murders because the level of evidence required is basically lots of corroborating video evidence from different sources. Not confessions or even a high quality of DNA evidence. The Dnepropetrovsk maniacs come to mind. They were completely sane and murdered multiple people, recording the murders in high quality. No evidential uncertainty. Funny. Then why is it that many victim familes in the us denyed that their justicefeelings are satisfied with the death penalty. And that there also victim families that even doesn´t wanted the death penalty and now it comes... they sticking together with the offender families to treat their sorrows. Wow.
Well if the relatives of the victim want to grant clemency to the offender I see no reason why it should be witheld on the dogmatic grounds that there must be blood spilled in order for justice to be achieved. If the victim's relatives unanimously want the perp spared, so be it. I agree that executing the person who murdered your loved one will do nothing to bring them back, and I probably would not select that option if one of my loved ones were murdered...but you never know what it feels like I guess.
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On May 26 2013 04:30 sc4k wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 00:14 Jormundr wrote:On May 25 2013 18:54 sc4k wrote:On May 25 2013 03:31 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:52 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:51 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:47 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:45 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:33 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:21 Reason wrote:
[quote]
The population wouldn't drastically decrease, you need to give a little more credit to your fellow man and his ability to learn.
Have you ever jumped off a cliff? Neither have I.
Have you ever jumped off a wall? Me too.
You see, standing on the edge of the cliff we both weighed our options and their relative consequences, and we both arrived at the same conclusion: I'm not going to jump off because I will probably die and I don't want to die.
Standing on the edge of the wall.... we weighed the risks and decided from past experience that we were capable of jumping from that height safely, and lived to tell the tale.
This is how the human mind works. I don't care if the punishment is disproportionate, are you saying serial rapists should only be serially raped and not put to death? Of course not, they deserve to die. The punishment doesn't need to fit the crime. Crime is not acceptable. Zero tolerance wherever possible imo.
I'm not interested in people changing their ways and being a positive influence on society after being proven guilty of committing a crime against another person with full knowledge and intent, there are plenty people who do not commit such acts and these law abiding individuals deserve not to be tainted by criminal scum being given a second chance they don't deserve.
Again, I have committed many criminal acts in my life and fall into the category of "criminal scum" for the purposes of this argument. I would however never have committed any of these acts if the punishment was appropriately severe, and if it was I think we'd live in a much safer and happier world. So say where someone is alleged to have stolen a bar of chocolate from a shop. You would put him to death? Imagine if you do (or any other criminal), what if mistakes were made and he is actually innocent, which has happened. You can release an innocent person from prison, you cannot resurrect an innocent person put to death. You wouldn't put someone to death over wild allegations. If he was proven to have stolen the chocolate bar and he wasn't a kleptomaniac or having a psychotic episode or whatever then yes I would put him to death. The point is it would never happen because who would risk death for a chocolate bar? Crime rates would be so ridiculously low that the number of people wrongfully convicted of crime would be even more so, people die all the time I'm not really worried about 1 in 1,000,000 people being sentenced to death for no reason if the country as a whole is infinitely safer... which would probably result in many many more lives being saved anyway aside from all the other benefits of an almost crime free society. Except the populace would revolt because the government is a bunch of murderers which kills people for stealing fucking chocolate bars. lol who the fuck would be stealing chocolate bars if the penalty was death? get a grip seriously It doesn't matter. Who the fuck would want to support a government which thinks killing people is an acceptable response to petty theft? That's grossly immoral in the minds of virtually everyone, evidenced by the near-universal disdain for your proposal. Like this literally would make the government worse than the actual criminals. Exactly. One of the indicators of a truly civilised country is the lack of a death penalty. Society has moved beyond the barbaric attitude of 'An eye for an eye'. I still can't get my head around this. Every time I revisit the phrase on TL and and IRL etc, I can't see what precisely is wrong with taking an eye for an eye. It is the very embodiment of justice. It only goes wrong when people take more for an eye, and then the original wrongdoers believe the justice exerted was disproportionate, so retaliate and so on. If everyone did actually take an eye for an eye, there probably wouldn't be any trouble. It gets complicated when the crime committed is less simple than murder, for example rape or blackmail...in which case a certain amount of prison time serves as the only reasonable proxy. The people who cared about this beheaded guy have been wronged. The mother and father have seen their baby boy who they raised and loved murdered brutally...with no evidential uncertainty as to who actually did the act. I'm not saying they do, but if the parents DID want the murderers to be executed, I (currently) believe they should have the right to pursue that eventuality through the legal system. The only exceptions I see as valid to the death penalty are evidential uncertainty and cost (and they are very big - unless the murderers are caught standing around the body clearly indicating ownership of the actions, carrying meat cleavers with their hands bloodied). The egregiousness of the method of killing, the lack of retaliatory motivation in the perpetrators and the utter disrespect for the man's dignity should also feature as factors when deciding to allow the wronged people to pursue that penalty. [NB: I am not talking about petty theft, what the fuck is that about lol] You talk about it not being disproportionate. That's dumb as fuck. An eye for an eye doesn't make much sense when somebody is already blind. The point here is that eye for an eye rarely results in a truly equal trade. Hence why, historically, it never created a crime free society. As long as a person is willing to accept/ignore the consequence of an action, they generally come out on top because their 'eye' is worth less than what they expect to gain. Also your comment about the parents being allowed to make the choice is hilarious. Why cant they just be the judges? Why stop at execution? Shouldn't all forms of torture be on the board? Eye for an eye is child justice; nothing more than gut reaction. Well, you are right that eye for an eye doesn't result in an equal trade for most crimes, which is why prison is used as a proxy. But it does for murder. You kill, you get executed. Simple. And I don't believe that it's society's place to punish criminals. I believe it's entirely its place to prevent harm. However I do believe in the right of innocent people to achieve justice, and I believe that justice is done for a family of people whose relative has been murdered by allowing them the right to have the perpetrator executed. I believe he has forfeit his right to life by taking the life of another unlawfully. This is all, of course, with the proviso that I don't believe it is justified for 99% of murders because the level of evidence required is basically lots of corroborating video evidence from different sources. Not confessions or even a high quality of DNA evidence. The Dnepropetrovsk maniacs come to mind. They were completely sane and murdered multiple people, recording the murders in high quality. No evidential uncertainty.
Again, you're wrong. You assume that one person's life is equal to another. Unless you're going to simplify down to eternal souls or something equally ridiculous, you have no accurate way to quantify their value.
Furthermore, you conflate justice, vengeance, and retribution. What you propose is vengeance. Vengeance does not achieve justice (and often perpetuates a cycle of violence).
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On May 26 2013 04:49 sc4k wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 04:37 Nachtwind wrote:On May 26 2013 04:30 sc4k wrote:On May 26 2013 00:14 Jormundr wrote:On May 25 2013 18:54 sc4k wrote:On May 25 2013 03:31 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:52 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:51 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:47 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:45 Reason wrote:
[quote]
You wouldn't put someone to death over wild allegations. If he was proven to have stolen the chocolate bar and he wasn't a kleptomaniac or having a psychotic episode or whatever then yes I would put him to death.
The point is it would never happen because who would risk death for a chocolate bar?
Crime rates would be so ridiculously low that the number of people wrongfully convicted of crime would be even more so, people die all the time I'm not really worried about 1 in 1,000,000 people being sentenced to death for no reason if the country as a whole is infinitely safer... which would probably result in many many more lives being saved anyway aside from all the other benefits of an almost crime free society. Except the populace would revolt because the government is a bunch of murderers which kills people for stealing fucking chocolate bars. lol who the fuck would be stealing chocolate bars if the penalty was death? get a grip seriously It doesn't matter. Who the fuck would want to support a government which thinks killing people is an acceptable response to petty theft? That's grossly immoral in the minds of virtually everyone, evidenced by the near-universal disdain for your proposal. Like this literally would make the government worse than the actual criminals. Exactly. One of the indicators of a truly civilised country is the lack of a death penalty. Society has moved beyond the barbaric attitude of 'An eye for an eye'. I still can't get my head around this. Every time I revisit the phrase on TL and and IRL etc, I can't see what precisely is wrong with taking an eye for an eye. It is the very embodiment of justice. It only goes wrong when people take more for an eye, and then the original wrongdoers believe the justice exerted was disproportionate, so retaliate and so on. If everyone did actually take an eye for an eye, there probably wouldn't be any trouble. It gets complicated when the crime committed is less simple than murder, for example rape or blackmail...in which case a certain amount of prison time serves as the only reasonable proxy. The people who cared about this beheaded guy have been wronged. The mother and father have seen their baby boy who they raised and loved murdered brutally...with no evidential uncertainty as to who actually did the act. I'm not saying they do, but if the parents DID want the murderers to be executed, I (currently) believe they should have the right to pursue that eventuality through the legal system. The only exceptions I see as valid to the death penalty are evidential uncertainty and cost (and they are very big - unless the murderers are caught standing around the body clearly indicating ownership of the actions, carrying meat cleavers with their hands bloodied). The egregiousness of the method of killing, the lack of retaliatory motivation in the perpetrators and the utter disrespect for the man's dignity should also feature as factors when deciding to allow the wronged people to pursue that penalty. [NB: I am not talking about petty theft, what the fuck is that about lol] You talk about it not being disproportionate. That's dumb as fuck. An eye for an eye doesn't make much sense when somebody is already blind. The point here is that eye for an eye rarely results in a truly equal trade. Hence why, historically, it never created a crime free society. As long as a person is willing to accept/ignore the consequence of an action, they generally come out on top because their 'eye' is worth less than what they expect to gain. Also your comment about the parents being allowed to make the choice is hilarious. Why cant they just be the judges? Why stop at execution? Shouldn't all forms of torture be on the board? Eye for an eye is child justice; nothing more than gut reaction. Well, you are right that eye for an eye doesn't result in an equal trade for most crimes, which is why prison is used as a proxy. But it does for murder. You kill, you get executed. Simple. And I don't believe that it's society's place to punish criminals. I believe it's entirely its place to prevent harm. However I do believe in the right of innocent people to achieve justice, and I believe that justice is done for a family of people whose relative has been murdered by allowing them the right to have the perpetrator executed. I believe he has forfeit his right to life by taking the life of another unlawfully. This is all, of course, with the proviso that I don't believe it is justified for 99% of murders because the level of evidence required is basically lots of corroborating video evidence from different sources. Not confessions or even a high quality of DNA evidence. The Dnepropetrovsk maniacs come to mind. They were completely sane and murdered multiple people, recording the murders in high quality. No evidential uncertainty. Funny. Then why is it that many victim familes in the us denyed that their justicefeelings are satisfied with the death penalty. And that there also victim families that even doesn´t wanted the death penalty and now it comes... they sticking together with the offender families to treat their sorrows. Wow. Well if the relatives of the victim want to grant clemency to the offender I see no reason why it should be witheld on the dogmatic grounds that there must be blood spilled in order for justice to be achieved. If the victim's relatives unanimously want the perp spared, so be it. I agree that executing the person who murdered your loved one will do nothing to bring them back, and I probably would not select that option if one of my loved ones were murdered...but you never know what it feels like I guess.
That´s not how our judical systems work. Victims don´t adjudicate. The judical system does. Living and coexists are the highest values of our judicals systems. Therefore the representives of our judical system must not sentence a criminal to death because they would place themselves on the same level as the ones that violate the highest values.
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On May 26 2013 04:49 sc4k wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 04:37 Nachtwind wrote:On May 26 2013 04:30 sc4k wrote:On May 26 2013 00:14 Jormundr wrote:On May 25 2013 18:54 sc4k wrote:On May 25 2013 03:31 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:52 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:51 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:47 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:45 Reason wrote:
[quote]
You wouldn't put someone to death over wild allegations. If he was proven to have stolen the chocolate bar and he wasn't a kleptomaniac or having a psychotic episode or whatever then yes I would put him to death.
The point is it would never happen because who would risk death for a chocolate bar?
Crime rates would be so ridiculously low that the number of people wrongfully convicted of crime would be even more so, people die all the time I'm not really worried about 1 in 1,000,000 people being sentenced to death for no reason if the country as a whole is infinitely safer... which would probably result in many many more lives being saved anyway aside from all the other benefits of an almost crime free society. Except the populace would revolt because the government is a bunch of murderers which kills people for stealing fucking chocolate bars. lol who the fuck would be stealing chocolate bars if the penalty was death? get a grip seriously It doesn't matter. Who the fuck would want to support a government which thinks killing people is an acceptable response to petty theft? That's grossly immoral in the minds of virtually everyone, evidenced by the near-universal disdain for your proposal. Like this literally would make the government worse than the actual criminals. Exactly. One of the indicators of a truly civilised country is the lack of a death penalty. Society has moved beyond the barbaric attitude of 'An eye for an eye'. I still can't get my head around this. Every time I revisit the phrase on TL and and IRL etc, I can't see what precisely is wrong with taking an eye for an eye. It is the very embodiment of justice. It only goes wrong when people take more for an eye, and then the original wrongdoers believe the justice exerted was disproportionate, so retaliate and so on. If everyone did actually take an eye for an eye, there probably wouldn't be any trouble. It gets complicated when the crime committed is less simple than murder, for example rape or blackmail...in which case a certain amount of prison time serves as the only reasonable proxy. The people who cared about this beheaded guy have been wronged. The mother and father have seen their baby boy who they raised and loved murdered brutally...with no evidential uncertainty as to who actually did the act. I'm not saying they do, but if the parents DID want the murderers to be executed, I (currently) believe they should have the right to pursue that eventuality through the legal system. The only exceptions I see as valid to the death penalty are evidential uncertainty and cost (and they are very big - unless the murderers are caught standing around the body clearly indicating ownership of the actions, carrying meat cleavers with their hands bloodied). The egregiousness of the method of killing, the lack of retaliatory motivation in the perpetrators and the utter disrespect for the man's dignity should also feature as factors when deciding to allow the wronged people to pursue that penalty. [NB: I am not talking about petty theft, what the fuck is that about lol] You talk about it not being disproportionate. That's dumb as fuck. An eye for an eye doesn't make much sense when somebody is already blind. The point here is that eye for an eye rarely results in a truly equal trade. Hence why, historically, it never created a crime free society. As long as a person is willing to accept/ignore the consequence of an action, they generally come out on top because their 'eye' is worth less than what they expect to gain. Also your comment about the parents being allowed to make the choice is hilarious. Why cant they just be the judges? Why stop at execution? Shouldn't all forms of torture be on the board? Eye for an eye is child justice; nothing more than gut reaction. Well, you are right that eye for an eye doesn't result in an equal trade for most crimes, which is why prison is used as a proxy. But it does for murder. You kill, you get executed. Simple. And I don't believe that it's society's place to punish criminals. I believe it's entirely its place to prevent harm. However I do believe in the right of innocent people to achieve justice, and I believe that justice is done for a family of people whose relative has been murdered by allowing them the right to have the perpetrator executed. I believe he has forfeit his right to life by taking the life of another unlawfully. This is all, of course, with the proviso that I don't believe it is justified for 99% of murders because the level of evidence required is basically lots of corroborating video evidence from different sources. Not confessions or even a high quality of DNA evidence. The Dnepropetrovsk maniacs come to mind. They were completely sane and murdered multiple people, recording the murders in high quality. No evidential uncertainty. Funny. Then why is it that many victim familes in the us denyed that their justicefeelings are satisfied with the death penalty. And that there also victim families that even doesn´t wanted the death penalty and now it comes... they sticking together with the offender families to treat their sorrows. Wow. Well if the relatives of the victim want to grant clemency to the offender I see no reason why it should be witheld on the dogmatic grounds that there must be blood spilled in order for justice to be achieved. If the victim's relatives unanimously want the perp spared, so be it. I agree that executing the person who murdered your loved one will do nothing to bring them back, and I probably would not select that option if one of my loved ones were murdered...but you never know what it feels like I guess.
What magic dust are you smoking which makes it seem logical to have the accuser be the judge? Why should an accuser ever get to decide the sentence? That's childish, emotion based reasoning, and nothing more. It goes against impartiality (you know, a core part of modern legal systems) and rejects morality in favor of mob justice.
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On May 26 2013 03:45 farvacola wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 03:41 DeepElemBlues wrote:On May 26 2013 03:33 farvacola wrote:On May 26 2013 03:26 AimForTheBushes wrote:On May 26 2013 02:03 KwarK wrote:
The reason I just put it as others disagree with you is because this area comes down to beliefs and arguments rather than an objective truth. I believe that people aren't born criminals and that even the worst criminals are, in part, victims of their circumstances. If they cannot be fixed then indefinite confinement is fine, I believe that's how it generally works with life sentences anyway, they try and work out if the guy is going to reoffend and if they are then they don't release him. I don't believe there is anything intrinsic or special within me that makes me not a criminal, I believe that the people I grew up with, the influence of my parents and so forth are responsible for that. Had I been switched with another infant in the hospital I could have ended up in a very different place and if that were the case I would want society to try and help me back on track.
I'm not saying that we should be soft and allow people who are going to reoffend to reoffend or that the people shouldn't be protected, rather that criminals, especially once they've been caught, are often the biggest victims of their crimes and the way we structure our society should be for the good of the people. If you were told that you would be reborn as a random child born tomorrow would you keep the rules of society the same? I got lucky last time I was born but luck is a poor foundation for a moral society. I'm pretty sure that "victim of circumstance" doesn't hold much weight when trying to explain why you just beheaded a random person in the street... It certainly would define the person who got beheaded, though. Do you honestly think these individual's parents influenced them to behead strangers? Saying that criminals (especially violent, murderous ones) are often the biggest victims of their crimes is horribly naive and insensitive. That's like saying that a virus or parasite is the real victim because it can no longer live once the host body dies. I'd say the real argument at hand here is if lifetime incarceration at the cost of public taxpayers is worth the "moral cost" of the death penalty. Your view of circumstance is incredibly narrow and shortsighted. While I definitely think this sort of thinking does not deny the assignment of culpability, I think you are really shortchanging the effects of environment, upbringing, and experience insofar as "circumstance" is concerned. While parental influence is definitely a large factor, so are encounters with other people, religious experiences, financial difficulties, socioeconomic background, and, in a basic sense, who one spends time with. In many situations in which radical Islam is implicated, there are almost always accompanying factors that feed into the fruition of violent ideology. Unfortunately nearly all those accompanying environmental factors including but not limited to those listed are shaped by Islamic beliefs in a fundamentalist interpretation of the faith. These distinctions you make do not exist or barely exist in a fundamentalist Muslim environment. There are very few if any purely fundamentalist Islamic environments, as many of the most violent sects coexist with more moderate forms of Islam. The only times that a "pure" fundamentalist environment comes about is likely in regards to terror training camps in which youth are effectively isolated from all outside influence, both Islamic and non. The conflict between radical and moderate Islam is to be found in every Islamic nation otherwise.
Too simplistic farv. I'm sure you're aware that subcultures can become all-encompassing for youth, and that there are many examples of older men and women taking advantage of that to manipulate youth. Not just religious or cult examples either.
It hardly matters if there are non-radical options if a youth finds himself or herself engrossed in a radical subculture. "Impressionable youth" and all that. And radical subcultures, as we have seen, can easily exist and thrive side-by-side with the dominant culture and other, less dangerous subcultures.
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On May 26 2013 04:55 Jormundr wrote:Show nested quote +On May 26 2013 04:30 sc4k wrote:On May 26 2013 00:14 Jormundr wrote:On May 25 2013 18:54 sc4k wrote:On May 25 2013 03:31 NoxiousNoodles wrote:On May 25 2013 02:52 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:51 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:47 Shiori wrote:On May 25 2013 02:45 Reason wrote:On May 25 2013 02:33 NoxiousNoodles wrote:
[quote]
So say where someone is alleged to have stolen a bar of chocolate from a shop. You would put him to death? Imagine if you do (or any other criminal), what if mistakes were made and he is actually innocent, which has happened. You can release an innocent person from prison, you cannot resurrect an innocent person put to death.
You wouldn't put someone to death over wild allegations. If he was proven to have stolen the chocolate bar and he wasn't a kleptomaniac or having a psychotic episode or whatever then yes I would put him to death. The point is it would never happen because who would risk death for a chocolate bar? Crime rates would be so ridiculously low that the number of people wrongfully convicted of crime would be even more so, people die all the time I'm not really worried about 1 in 1,000,000 people being sentenced to death for no reason if the country as a whole is infinitely safer... which would probably result in many many more lives being saved anyway aside from all the other benefits of an almost crime free society. Except the populace would revolt because the government is a bunch of murderers which kills people for stealing fucking chocolate bars. lol who the fuck would be stealing chocolate bars if the penalty was death? get a grip seriously It doesn't matter. Who the fuck would want to support a government which thinks killing people is an acceptable response to petty theft? That's grossly immoral in the minds of virtually everyone, evidenced by the near-universal disdain for your proposal. Like this literally would make the government worse than the actual criminals. Exactly. One of the indicators of a truly civilised country is the lack of a death penalty. Society has moved beyond the barbaric attitude of 'An eye for an eye'. I still can't get my head around this. Every time I revisit the phrase on TL and and IRL etc, I can't see what precisely is wrong with taking an eye for an eye. It is the very embodiment of justice. It only goes wrong when people take more for an eye, and then the original wrongdoers believe the justice exerted was disproportionate, so retaliate and so on. If everyone did actually take an eye for an eye, there probably wouldn't be any trouble. It gets complicated when the crime committed is less simple than murder, for example rape or blackmail...in which case a certain amount of prison time serves as the only reasonable proxy. The people who cared about this beheaded guy have been wronged. The mother and father have seen their baby boy who they raised and loved murdered brutally...with no evidential uncertainty as to who actually did the act. I'm not saying they do, but if the parents DID want the murderers to be executed, I (currently) believe they should have the right to pursue that eventuality through the legal system. The only exceptions I see as valid to the death penalty are evidential uncertainty and cost (and they are very big - unless the murderers are caught standing around the body clearly indicating ownership of the actions, carrying meat cleavers with their hands bloodied). The egregiousness of the method of killing, the lack of retaliatory motivation in the perpetrators and the utter disrespect for the man's dignity should also feature as factors when deciding to allow the wronged people to pursue that penalty. [NB: I am not talking about petty theft, what the fuck is that about lol] You talk about it not being disproportionate. That's dumb as fuck. An eye for an eye doesn't make much sense when somebody is already blind. The point here is that eye for an eye rarely results in a truly equal trade. Hence why, historically, it never created a crime free society. As long as a person is willing to accept/ignore the consequence of an action, they generally come out on top because their 'eye' is worth less than what they expect to gain. Also your comment about the parents being allowed to make the choice is hilarious. Why cant they just be the judges? Why stop at execution? Shouldn't all forms of torture be on the board? Eye for an eye is child justice; nothing more than gut reaction. Well, you are right that eye for an eye doesn't result in an equal trade for most crimes, which is why prison is used as a proxy. But it does for murder. You kill, you get executed. Simple. And I don't believe that it's society's place to punish criminals. I believe it's entirely its place to prevent harm. However I do believe in the right of innocent people to achieve justice, and I believe that justice is done for a family of people whose relative has been murdered by allowing them the right to have the perpetrator executed. I believe he has forfeit his right to life by taking the life of another unlawfully. This is all, of course, with the proviso that I don't believe it is justified for 99% of murders because the level of evidence required is basically lots of corroborating video evidence from different sources. Not confessions or even a high quality of DNA evidence. The Dnepropetrovsk maniacs come to mind. They were completely sane and murdered multiple people, recording the murders in high quality. No evidential uncertainty. Again, you're wrong. You assume that one person's life is equal to another. Unless you're going to simplify down to eternal souls or something equally ridiculous, you have no accurate way to quantify their value. Furthermore, you conflate justice, vengeance, and retribution. What you propose is vengeance. Vengeance does not achieve justice (and often perpetuates a cycle of violence).
I don't understand your point about saying different lives are worth different amounts. You should not be spared execution if you murder an 80 year old or a paraplegic in cold blood as opposed to a 10 year old or attractive 21 year old. A life is a life. There's no further distinction needed.
Yes I do propose vengeance. Justified vengeance. What I propose does not have any reason to propagate further violence. Disproportionate revenge perpetuates violence. State sanctioned revenge does not. It may engender ill will however. I believe the wronged family has the right to vengeance/justice/damages...because as I say I believe the perp has surrendered his right to life in that circumstance...
On May 26 2013 05:00 Nachtwind wrote:
That´s not how our judical systems work. Victims don´t adjudicate. The judical system does. Living and coexists are the highest values of our judicals systems. Therefore the representives of our judical system must not sentence a criminal to death because they would place themselves on the same level as the ones that violate the highest values.
I honestly can't understand what you're trying to say, sorry.
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