Morally, you might feel superior, but I assure you, Breivik is laughing all the way to his treadmill. He should be treated the same way as he wanted to treat others. Turning the other cheek only works in the Bible...
The Bible... that same idiotic book which, on a different page, urges us to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth?
A meaningless sentence, really. Talk to the victims' family and ask how they feel about it....
I've said it before and I'll say it again: Bereaved people must not be allowed to make policy. They're overwhelmed with emotions.
The might is just. History is written by the winners and the losers are forgotten eventually. For thousands of years that's how it has been working . . . .
No, it hasn't been working. Some pretty awful things have been done. Unforgivable things, things for which no repentance is adequate. For example, the obliteration of two entire civilizations (Olmec/Maya/Aztec and Inca) by the Christians, who always claim to be such moral people.
Did you miss my post about gassing? Have you heard of shanking? Ordering hits from prison?
I made the same point in my post. There are indeed a few situations in which we have no choice but to execute. A terrorist, because his buddies will kidnap twenty of our people and kill them if we don't turn him loose. A mafia boss because his power is so great and so pervasive that he can continue his work from prison. But these are exceptions that don't justify killing every person who's been convicted of murder, or even mass murder.
You sure missed the latest news on overpopulation....
Huh? The first derivative of population went negative thirty years ago. The population is universally calculated to peak around the end of this century
and then start decreasing.
My concept of justice has nothing to do with "he smashed my art project". I'll ask you to take a break from a poor attempt at psycho-analysis and see that my reasoning is much deeper, for more thought-out. It has the emotional current that any society needs to see enacted: justice for crimes committed.
But those are just buzzwords. They have no meaning.
What is justice? The fucking Bible that guides a large portion of the Earth's population says "an eye for an eye" on one page and then "turn the other cheek" later on. Which is correct?
The "eye for an eye" is the justice of the Bronze Age, when civilization was grappling with a new technology that made possible the first "weapons of mass destruction": metal blades and armor. The "turn the other cheek" speaks to the denizens of the Iron Age, an era characterized by stronger governments, permanent written records, formal education and philosophy. We've been through another paradigm shift since then, the Industrial Revolution, which brought about its own wrenching changes in morality, and we're smack in the middle of the next one, the Electronic Revolution, which promises to unite all of humanity through instant communication.
I think it's fair, fitting, and
necessary to come up with new rules. We don't have to behave like our ancestors. We can be better than they were, just as they could be better than their own cave-dwelling ancestors.
Now, I'm in NO WAY demanding capital punishment. I've not asserted that it is required for a fair or crime free society. In fact, even though I believe it can be justified in horrific cases, I am not passionate enough about it to go out rallying for it. What I do believe is that the government's job is to create a balance in society and to see to it that wrongs are righted and that individual members keep up their end of the bargain or forfeit certain portions of their share of the franchise (sometimes all of it). If "righting that wrong" doesn't include lethal injection, I'm okay with that. But it should most certainly include a concept of "rights" which can be forfeit in rare circumstances, and in even rarer circumstances fore the entirety of a specific human lifespan. Now. It certainly appears that Norway has got a lot to brag about. A fairly crime-free society. Good rehabilitative processes in their penal system. I'm not going to damn an entire nation for what I consider to be one egregious injustice. It's just that no society is perfect and while I get that their system was set up to prevent overly-zealous judges from sending people away for times not deserved, I think we can clearly see that some people deserve the maximum and that maximum can be their entire life behind bars.
You're not arguing with me at all. My diatribe is aimed strictly at capital punishment and the emotionally-overwhelmed people who think it has a place in the 21st century.
People who cause trouble must be apprehended and stopped, and when possible restitution must be made. I've got no problem with that. If we think that a particular individual cannot be trusted to reform, with the benefit of all the means at our disposal to heal and retrain him, then obviously we have to separate him from society so he can cause no more harm. As for "making him pay," well sure. If he wrecked your car then he should reimburse your insurance company. But killing him doesn't result in anyone being compensated for their loss. It just incurs additional loss on his friends and family.
What bothers me the most about this argument is that some of the participants seem to believe that because Mister X is a horrible man, that his mother and his father and his wife and his children must be horrible people too. That's the only possible way they can justify killing him and making all of those people feel like shit. Otherwise, they're no better than he is. Thoughtless, uncaring, overcome with their own emotions. I.e., uncivilized.
And as I said, if it's okay for us to kill him because we're angry and grief-stricken, now that his entire family is angry and grief-stricken, why is it not okay for them to kill us? No matter how it's dressed up, the entire argument in favor of capital punishment is illogical. And that is precisely because it is driven by emotions rather than reason.
