‘Justice is death’ for alleged shooter in Batman rampage...

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Or one can try actively improving the condition of the poor, who are so overrepresented in criminals it's not even funny, by stuff like public services, provisions for them in the law, education to offer them a chance at social mobility... you know, the realistic alternatives to criminality that make the last decades worth living in.

But then one would have to keep one's BDSM fetishes to oneself, or at worst publish them as poetry. A fate worse than death, I'm told.

You are a strawmanning little manwhore who should be ashamed of yourself. I am strongly against the application of the death penalty to the poor, as I have stated before and even in this thread, regarding it immoral and unnecessary. I advocate for the use of spectacle and execution for a particular class of terrible crimes, and find the Norwegian system of very mild rehabilitative regimes which lack any aspect of punishment to be infinitely preferable otherwise.

The problem with using that system without a reserve of state power is people like the Tsarnaevs, and of course most pertinently in Norway itself, Breivik.

Of course, you are incapable of seeing nuance in positions you disagree with, so you don't consider carefully what's been said, and make a moron of yourself.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

P.S. I never proposed the gibbett, nor would I ever. I just could not think of an argument against it, which is quite different from arguing for it.

[Formless]

But you gentlemen are basing your arguments entirely off the idea that I wish to apply the death penalty to common criminals, which I manifestly do not. I have long proposed its restriction to certain classes of especially horrible crimes which people are not driven to do for economic reasons. [...] The death penalty should be used as a demonstration of state power in cases of severe crimes that threaten state power. The brothers Tsarnaev are the sort of simple-minded people I was referring to.

Unfortunately, that's what thinking people call "Special Pleading", and I think you will find that its a fallacy. The Tsarnaev brothers killed exactly four people, whereas drunk drivers on the same day probably killed hundreds without getting on the news. In many of those cases, a single driver can kill as many or more, and in the same age range. The court case that started this discussion ended with more people in the morgue than they managed, but not one person considers him a terrorist. Furthermore, some of us aren't so idiotic as to think our government is seriously threatened by terrorists; simply put, that's right wing propagandist bullshit. Its never actually worked that way in any country that didn't have an active civil war going on. Their crime is murder and detonating a bomb, not corruption or treason which create far more serious threats to the state's integrity.

By the way, not all of us give a damn about Focault. He is but one source, and not a primary source like legal documents are. Appeal to Authority is yet another fallacy; for someone who was once respected enough on this board to have a senate seat, I am sure I don't have to explain that one to you, do I? Besides which, my use of that video ties into my own arguments directed at Simon, not debunking your own. Nice job paying attention. I'm sure you can provide actual evidence that there is a greater deterrence effect when punishments are more public? Yes? No? I'm going to go out on a limb and predict you won't.

Therefore, I drew the conclusions that, really, we would probably all be happier if state power was enforced through blood and iron and brilliant paegentry instead of a sophisticated mechanism of enforcing morality and law through propaganda, mass media, and psychological indoctrination.

However, while I never said that it is my preferred solution, there is strong evidence of the efficacy of propaganda, as shown by numerous events and political movements throughout history. Deterrence has a far more speculative effect on people's behavior.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The rules of argument on this board are not really suited to intellectual discussions, and have never been. They were created to mediate Star Wars debates and haven't really ever functioned sanely in N&P.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

I suppose however by the board rules I ought formally state my concession in the thread, so, there, you have it, Formless, and I won't be further participating.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

You are a strawmanning little manwhore who should be ashamed of yourself.

Black holes are infinitely dense, when did you manage to collapse into one?

Uneducated people on the bottom rungs of society will always understand that sort of thing better than logic and law and reason.

This looks to me like you're saying that a good tactic for preventing crime would be a show of savagery. So I responded by pointing out that there is a more effective method of reducing crime: reducing poverty, one of its major causes.

Next time, take your meds before deciding what is a strawman and what isn't. Oh, and tell me, if poverty is a major cause of crime, what the fuck kind of deterrence you'll make by executing people whose reason for committing crimes is not being poor?

[Formless]

The rules of argument on this board are not really suited to intellectual discussions, and have never been. They were created to mediate Star Wars debates and haven't really ever functioned sanely in N&P.

[...]

I suppose however by the board rules I ought formally state my concession in the thread, so, there, you have it, Formless, and I won't be further participating.

Mostly it doesn't work in N&P because they get ignored so often. You can sum them up as being honest (with evidence), and allotting people some amount of crass speech. Most people seem to care mostly about the latter, I care for the former.

I accept your concession humbly. And by the way, if you wish to continue participating in this thread in other ways, I make no objection.

[Simon_Jester]

O, just actually noticed this:

Personally I suspect that the lack of spectacle in execution and the lack of spectators are the two driving factors behind any lack of deterrent effect. The Guillotine and the firing squad created a moral spectacle of right and wrong to intimidate the simple minded. Uneducated people on the bottom rungs of society will always understand that sort of thing better than logic and law and reason.

Wow, so there's not only carnal bloodthirst, there's also outright snobbish class warfare. Yeah, we must execute people in a spectacular way so those dimwitted slobs don't get any ideas. I guess you were born two centuries to late to have this attitude and not be seen as a reactionary freak.

Equally credible alternate interpretation: our school system is fucked up to the point where we are failing to teach people to think along rational lines, to appreciate the value of cooperative, rule-abiding society. Some people are still at heart living in primitive times, because those of us not living in primitive times have failed at outreach. While this is unfortunate and needs fixing, it is a reality, and ignoring the way human nature actually works isn't going to make us better at running a human society.

More important, Simmo, is that treating punishment as a spectacle sends the wrong message to the public. From a historical perspective, those public punishments were in most cases a perverse form of public entertainment-- sometimes explicitly as in the case of Roman Gladiatorial arenas (which were also used for public executions), sometimes implicitly as in the case of the stocks where people were encouraged to harass the prisoners physically or public executions where they drew huge crowds. And then there were those public punishments which simply made public spaces unpleasant, because you literally couldn't enter town without seeing a dead body nailed to a cross or hanging from a tree. Cause, yaknow, that's sanitary.

Furthermore, looking back through history I think you will find that Duchess is simply full of shit about public punishments having a higher deterrent value. Looking through historical documents should reveal just how frequent these punishments were applied; partially of course because of corruption and unfairness (but that's why we don't use 17'th century standards anymore) but also because there is no evidence that criminals are particularly thoughtful about their own mortality then or now.

Certain extreme punishments were common (i.e. theft; clearly chopping people's hands off for theft does not get rid of thieves). Others were not (i.e. the horrific stuff that they did to attempted regicides; people didn't attempt regicide all that often).

Personally, I think that punishment as spectacle is not a good thing, but that punishment as ritual just might be. The desire is not to have public humiliation of criminals (though a communalist might be all for that); it's to create a framework around crime, punishment, and redemption/rehabilitation/atonement that can be understood and even mythicized, so that it has a role in the symbolism of the culture and not just in the mechanistic side.

Because people aren't very mechanistic; you can't just say "We took criminal and poured X amount of jail time into him, now he is OK."

A good system of punishment-with-ritual might actually be far more civilized than what we in the US have now, which crams criminals into overpacked jails full of equally hardened or more hardened criminals, in an environment where all they're likely to learn from the experience is bodybuilding tips and ways to make a better shiv. It might view such prisons as being only slightly less bad than the barbarism of drawing and quartering traitors.

And of course, I must challenge the assertion that teaching "respect" for the law is the best way to instill virtuous behavior in a country's citizens. Even when it works, all it creates are people who approach issues of right and wrong or civil justice in a passive way-- that is, "how can I not do something blameworthy?" rather than "what should our society do better in the future, and how can I participate?"

If you can figure out a way to actually teach this to people, you will have achieved the Millenium, or at least laid out a blueprint for it.

So far, social schemes based on teaching everyone to actively think hard about improving society have not worked well or on large scales. In the short term, we need to increase the number of people who "ask what you can do for your country," but we also need a legal system to prevent, deter, and entangle anyone who tries to sabotage the system. That's a problem at all levels from petty theft to Wall Street malfeasance: we can't make everyone good, so at the very least we have to stop them from breaking the whole system by being bad.

Or one can try actively improving the condition of the poor, who are so overrepresented in criminals it's not even funny, by stuff like public services, provisions for them in the law, education to offer them a chance at social mobility... you know, the realistic alternatives to criminality that make the last decades worth living in.

But then one would have to keep one's BDSM fetishes to oneself, or at worst publish them as poetry. A fate worse than death, I'm told.

Actively improving the condition of the poor and, say, having public floggings for petty criminals... those are not mutually exclusive. A very weird combination, but not a mathematically impossible one.

Unfortunately, that's what thinking people call "Special Pleading", and I think you will find that its a fallacy. The Tsarnaev brothers killed exactly four people, whereas drunk drivers on the same day probably killed hundreds without getting on the news. In many of those cases, a single driver can kill as many or more, and in the same age range. The court case that started this discussion ended with more people in the morgue than they managed, but not one person considers him a terrorist. Furthermore, some of us aren't so idiotic as to think our government is seriously threatened by terrorists; simply put, that's right wing propagandist bullshit. Its never actually worked that way in any country that didn't have an active civil war going on. Their crime is murder and detonating a bomb, not corruption or treason which create far more serious threats to the state's integrity.

There are two separate arguments here:

1) "Terrorists are a threat to the state, and must therefore be made an example of."
2) "People who attack the body politic in an indiscriminate way should be used as examples of the body politic's power to strike back, lethally."

The argument for messily executing people who commit mass-casualty attacks comes from (2), not (1). After all, regicides still got messily torn to bits even when they didn't succeed in killing the monarch- because that was the king proving that he could strike back with deadly effect against whoever had attacked him, even if the original attack had no chance of succeeding.

For this purpose, it isn't really about whether the attacker was a 'terrorist' or simply a very vicious mass murderer. It's about the idea that an indiscriminate attack on The People (or The King or whatever) should draw a deadly counterattack which will show the defender's willingness and ability to protect themselves. Even if there was no threat of the state being destroyed, the state and people showing that it responds aggressively to threats has social value under this framework.

Which again is a communalist idea, it's totally at odds with individualism because it more or less pisses on the idea that the criminal has individual rights NOT to be made a horrible example of. And most political philosophy that survived into the 21st century is individualist.

By the way, not all of us give a damn about Focault. He is but one source, and not a primary source like legal documents are.

Since Foucault is a relatively respected secondary source on the history of the justice system, I would still be interested to see someone engage Duchess's argument on that basis though. After all, I doubt Foucault would conclude that we're better off with highly public and bloody executions of people who commit extreme crimes.

So I imagine Duchess's interpretation of the book is at least idiosyncratic- which suggests that a person more familiar with the original text would be able to find support for arguing in the opposite direction, which would be a lot more interesting to watch than "fuck you you bloodthirsty sadistic harpy."

This looks to me like you're saying that a good tactic for preventing crime would be a show of savagery. So I responded by pointing out that there is a more effective method of reducing crime: reducing poverty, one of its major causes.

To me, it looks more like a good tactic for preventing crime (or promoting public happiness) would be a show of tradition.

For example, the firing squad has traditions, but as a form of execution it is not designed to be watched by large crowds, or to prolong the pain and anguish of the victim. Indeed, it's probably going to be over a lot faster than it would be with a lethal injection. But it has a different set of symbolic associations.

Sadly, symbolism is really hard to quantify, so it's hard to prove that we're better off with "death by volley fire and possibly pistol to finish them off," as opposed to "strap them to a gurney and spend two hours poisoning them into paralysis, then death."


Next time, take your meds before deciding what is a strawman and what isn't. Oh, and tell me, if poverty is a major cause of crime, what the fuck kind of deterrence you'll make by executing people whose reason for committing crimes is not being poor?[/quote]

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Actively improving the condition of the poor and, say, having public floggings for petty criminals... those are not mutually exclusive. A very weird combination, but not a mathematically impossible one.

I still think that my idea is more effective. But I never said it was impossible to combine the two, as they are completely different horses (edit: I mean there is nothing in either that precludes the other). I'm not that binary.

To me, it looks more like a good tactic for preventing crime (or promoting public happiness) would be a show of tradition.

For example, the firing squad has traditions, but as a form of execution it is not designed to be watched by large crowds, or to prolong the pain and anguish of the victim. Indeed, it's probably going to be over a lot faster than it would be with a lethal injection. But it has a different set of symbolic associations.

Sadly, symbolism is really hard to quantify, so it's hard to prove that we're better off with "death by volley fire and possibly pistol to finish them off," as opposed to "strap them to a gurney and spend two hours poisoning them into paralysis, then death."

It's hard to prove we are better off by the act of execution itself.

PS: You must have fouled up a bit at the end, were you supposed to say something about that or you forgot to chop it?

[Grumman]

Which again is a communalist idea, it's totally at odds with individualism because it more or less pisses on the idea that the criminal has individual rights NOT to be made a horrible example of.

A criminal forfeits many rights by their actions: the right to liberty, the right to vote, the right to own firearms, the right to life. Is the right to not be used as a cautionary tale more important than any of those?

[Simon_Jester]

Which again is a communalist idea, it's totally at odds with individualism because it more or less pisses on the idea that the criminal has individual rights NOT to be made a horrible example of.

A criminal forfeits many rights by their actions: the right to liberty, the right to vote, the right to own firearms, the right to life. Is the right to not be used as a cautionary tale more important than any of those?

Since it's much of the basis for the freedom from "cruel and unusual punishment," I would argue that the answer could well be "yes."

PS: You must have fouled up a bit at the end, were you supposed to say something about that or you forgot to chop it?

Sorry. Tired.

What I meant to say was that it depends on who you execute, and why. Revolutionary France made huge bloody public spectacles of executing people not because they were poor and weak, but because they were rich and powerful. And that served a purpose in the broader context of the society the revolutionaries were trying to create. Part of the point was that these powerful, arrogant rules (who had themselves dealt out torture and death) were not immune to this themselves, and that the new revolutionary state was in fact more powerful than the old regime. It was right, someone like Robespierre would say, that the nobles be killed for their crimes against the people. And given that this was the case, they must be seen to be killed, to prove that the revolution had nothing to fear in carrying out its sentences, just as the courts should be open and visible in turn.

This is why Duchess keeps saying moral spectacle: because the point here is that the killer is saying "we are right, and this is how we enforce it." It is not just an enforcement of a law, it is a statement by the government about the moral order of the world- that they do these things not because they are sadists or ghouls, but because they are righteously dealing out a terrible punishment for a very terrible crime.

And this does have a psychological impact because people are hit rather hard by things like massive bloodshed. The effects may be disturbing and not exactly what we want to invoke in the human psyche*, but they're real.
_________________________

*Which I think is the strongest single counterargument to Duchess's position, that even if ritualizing the death penalty works it involves consciously invoking a set of mores that carry the sleeping demons of the Dark Age. The more Dark-Agey the punishment gets, the stronger the counterargument.

[Ralin]

Take the Qin Dynasty as example. The Qin imposed such a strict, cruel and barbarian law over the country that it drove people who would have otherwise minded their own business to outright rebellion simply because they had nothing to lose once they broke the law in even just the most minor way. That should put the kibosh on the Duchess' simple-minded idea of "cruel punishment=peaceful populace".

Going off what my pre-modern Chinese history professor said way back when, that's largely a myth. We don't have a complete copy of the Qin legal code, but what has been found is pretty fair and even benevolent, all things considered.

Bear in mind that most of the traditional sources on the Qin come from Han dynasty writers. Who had a vested interest in demonizing their predecessor as much as possible.

[Metahive]

Going off what my pre-modern Chinese history professor said way back when, that's largely a myth. We don't have a complete copy of the Qin legal code, but what has been found is pretty fair and even benevolent, all things considered.

Bear in mind that most of the traditional sources on the Qin come from Han dynasty writers. Who had a vested interest in demonizing their predecessor as much as possible.

I'm sorry, but the strictness of the prevalent legalist ideology ruling Qin as formulated by Han Fei and codified by Qin statesman Shang Yang is pretty well established. For fuck's sake, the core principle of it is that all humans are born evil and must be restrained by brutal laws! Why don't you read the Book of Lord Shang, where all this is explicitely written down, and then come again and tell me that it's "fair and even benevolent"?

[Formless]

Personally, I think that punishment as spectacle is not a good thing, but that punishment as ritual just might be. The desire is not to have public humiliation of criminals (though a communalist might be all for that); it's to create a framework around crime, punishment, and redemption/rehabilitation/atonement that can be understood and even mythicized, so that it has a role in the symbolism of the culture and not just in the mechanistic side.

Because people aren't very mechanistic; you can't just say "We took criminal and poured X amount of jail time into him, now he is OK."

A good system of punishment-with-ritual might actually be far more civilized than what we in the US have now, which crams criminals into overpacked jails full of equally hardened or more hardened criminals, in an environment where all they're likely to learn from the experience is bodybuilding tips and ways to make a better shiv. It might view such prisons as being only slightly less bad than the barbarism of drawing and quartering traitors.

I don't think Communalist (and definitely not the Communitarian subset) means what you think it means. Duchess' mode of thinking seems hardly in line with the philosophy as I have always heard it described-- by contrast she would definitely be an Authoritarian (consider that her execution exception is for those who challenge the state's power).

Anyway, there is a certain level of ritual associated with the justice system already, and most of it surrounds punishment. They don't happen in the public eye of course, but even the simple act of changing a criminal out of personal clothes and into the uniform has been described as a ritual by sociologists because of the role it plays in the process. I think if you want to inject rituals into this, some form of ritual confrontation for victims would be far more helpful than trying to find more alternative forms of punishment.

If you can figure out a way to actually teach this to people, you will have achieved the Millenium, or at least laid out a blueprint for it.

You make it sound as if no one is looking into that problem, certainly within the context of the justice system.

There are two separate arguments here:

1) "Terrorists are a threat to the state, and must therefore be made an example of."
2) "People who attack the body politic in an indiscriminate way should be used as examples of the body politic's power to strike back, lethally."

The argument for messily executing people who commit mass-casualty attacks comes from (2), not (1).

Duchess clearly made it in the context of #1, or do I need to quote her directly? Please remember that you do not talk for anyone but yourself, Simmo. Sometimes you need to step back and remember that not everything is about your ideas and arguments.

For this purpose, it isn't really about whether the attacker was a 'terrorist' or simply a very vicious mass murderer. It's about the idea that an indiscriminate attack on The People (or The King or whatever) should draw a deadly counterattack which will show the defender's willingness and ability to protect themselves. Even if there was no threat of the state being destroyed, the state and people showing that it responds aggressively to threats has social value under this framework.

Which again is a communalist idea, it's totally at odds with individualism because it more or less pisses on the idea that the criminal has individual rights NOT to be made a horrible example of. And most political philosophy that survived into the 21st century is individualist.

I would argue that it is Humanism, not Individualism, that is the overriding factor in why that is no longer an acceptable reaction in most first world countries (the U.S. notwithstanding). Its fundamentally at odds with the idea that all human beings deserve certain minimum guarantees against attacks on their dignity, life, and universal rights.

[Formless]

Which again is a communalist idea, it's totally at odds with individualism because it more or less pisses on the idea that the criminal has individual rights NOT to be made a horrible example of.

A criminal forfeits many rights by their actions: the right to liberty, the right to vote, the right to own firearms, the right to life. Is the right to not be used as a cautionary tale more important than any of those?

You are acting as if it is an individual right. It is also the right of the offender's family not to have to suffer such a public dehumanization of one they are close to.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

No, Simon spoke correctly. When I say "threat to the state" in this context, I mean "threat to the psychological prestige of the State as an institution". The idea that people like the brothers Tsarnaev threaten the State in a literal physical sense is so absurd I never once fathomed someone would ascribe it to me.

And I am a communitarian, because I believe that society functions as an organic whole that is greater than the sum of its parts and people are to a certain extent defined and valued based on social role.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Simon is actually a dear friend who was at my wedding and who I sometimes rely upon to put my dense and archaic, even anachronistic language into common terms for the sake of others.

I conceded the thread and argument, but it seemed important to note from the original source, (i.e., me, since we're debating my prior words) that I actually fully endorse as most accurate Simon's interpretations of what I say.

[Metahive]

Equally credible alternate interpretation: our school system is fucked up to the point where we are failing to teach people to think along rational lines, to appreciate the value of cooperative, rule-abiding society. Some people are still at heart living in primitive times, because those of us not living in primitive times have failed at outreach. While this is unfortunate and needs fixing, it is a reality, and ignoring the way human nature actually works isn't going to make us better at running a human society.

Fuck ass, more snobby elitism! So while you take your time to fix the education system...maybe...some time...when you get your ass off your current WoW session anyway...the only way to make sure that those destitute morons on the bottom rungs of society behave is by flaying some n'er-do-wells alive on a jumbotron (would you like to know more? *click*). I mean, it's only poor people who would ever commit crimes worthy of getting impaled head-first right? Educated people are always model citizens because of their edu-ma-ca-damia-ation! Just ask Bush and Cheney, mass-murderers and robbers.

I complained in another thread that there's a distinct lack of reflective thought within certain segments of the US. Here we get another prime example of it.

Go find the nearest port-a-potty and dunk your head in it. People should have a fair warning about the shit you spread.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Meta, try and keep on topic.

Simon, I... you know, fuck it. I just agree with Formless that making an example out of people is well outside of humanitarian ideas. I'll leave it at that.

And Duchess, now that I think of it, sorry about the bit about the meds. I feel I was wrong to say it.

[Thanas]

Meta, try and keep on topic.

Trainwreck, try not to backseat mod.

[Dr. Trainwreck]

Apologies.

[Simon_Jester]

Equally credible alternate interpretation: our school system is fucked up to the point where we are failing to teach people to think along rational lines, to appreciate the value of cooperative, rule-abiding society. Some people are still at heart living in primitive times, because those of us not living in primitive times have failed at outreach. While this is unfortunate and needs fixing, it is a reality, and ignoring the way human nature actually works isn't going to make us better at running a human society.

Fuck ass, more snobby elitism! So while you take your time to fix the education system...maybe...some time...when you get your ass off your current WoW session anyway...

It is to laugh; I work fifty-plus hour weeks trying to do exactly that, and wish I had the energy to work harder.

the only way to make sure that those destitute morons on the bottom rungs of society behave is by flaying some n'er-do-wells alive on a jumbotron (would you like to know more? *click*). I mean, it's only poor people who would ever commit crimes worthy of getting impaled head-first right? Educated people are always model citizens because of their edu-ma-ca-damia-ation! Just ask Bush and Cheney, mass-murderers and robbers.

No, actually, if we're going to go this way it is especially important to make spectacles of criminals from the upper strata. Because part of the message being sent is "we hold even powerful people accountable, brutally accountable, for their actions against society at large." Or it damn well ought to be.

Medieval societies generally did not do it that way. Revolutionary France did, and I suspect those guillotinings helped clear the air wonderfully.

Please stop mistaking me for a stereotype in your head.

You are acting as if it is an individual right. It is also the right of the offender's family not to have to suffer such a public dehumanization of one they are close to.

I'm not sure of that- do I have a right to intercede in the fate of another person under the legal system? I don't get to say "don't arrest my spouse, that would be undue hardship for me." Do I get to say "don't sentence my spouse to a public whipping?"

[I don't think public whippings are a good idea, but if we had them, I wouldn't expect the family of the offender to have any say in them]

I don't think Communalist (and definitely not the Communitarian subset) means what you think it means.

I'm sorry, I'm using "communalist" with a small "c" to mean "people who, when asked to create a moral order for society, think about the perceived good of the community first, and the perceived good of any individuals in it second." This obviously contrasts with "individualist."

If you know a better word for it than "communalist," I'd be happy to hear it.

So for now, I'm using that word because I need it so I have a word for "people who order society based on optimizing the community's survival and well-being," to contrast with "individualist." I'm sorry that it's already been adopted by someone else as a word for one of the many interesting variations on socialism, but there's not much I can do about that, and it's bloody stupid for me to be unable to even present my argument for lack of a single word for a type of society seldom found in modern Western culture.


Now, it's perfectly possible to be an authoritarian communalist in that sense of the word; all it takes is a system where the perceived good of the community is enforced by violence. Or where it is so sacred that individuals don't really have any rights as such when they go against it. Think of Sparta.

A LOT of societies have worked this way (not exactly like Sparta obviously, but along communal lines with a varying dash of authoritarianism). It has a long, long list of disadvantages, but the one thing you can say about it is that we have lots of empirical evidence of it functioning under Dark Age conditions.

Duchess is, using the words the way I've described them, definitely a communalist with authoritarian leanings. Her authoritarianism is easy to recognize for the typical N&P commentator. Her communalism not so much.

Duchess' mode of thinking seems hardly in line with the philosophy as I have always heard it described-- by contrast she would definitely be an Authoritarian (consider that her execution exception is for those who challenge the state's power).

Yep. Duchess is an authoritarian communalist. I don't think anyone involved here, including her, would deny that.

There is very little overlap between this and, say, the individual-rights centered, generally leftish positions someone like you or Metahive would take. I think that creates a barrier to understanding. Because where she is seeing something unpleasant but necessary to convey the idea that the social order is to be taken seriously, a la 18th-19th century thinking... most 21st century observers just see a big ball of human rights violations.

And in modern language "human rights violation" basically means "no redeeming qualities whatsoever."

Anyway, there is a certain level of ritual associated with the justice system already, and most of it surrounds punishment. They don't happen in the public eye of course, but even the simple act of changing a criminal out of personal clothes and into the uniform has been described as a ritual by sociologists because of the role it plays in the process. I think if you want to inject rituals into this, some form of ritual confrontation for victims would be far more helpful than trying to find more alternative forms of punishment.

I find this totally agreeable.

If you can figure out a way to actually teach this to people, you will have achieved the Millenium, or at least laid out a blueprint for it.

You make it sound as if no one is looking into that problem, certainly within the context of the justice system.

I do?

I don't think any such thing- but people have been trying to achieve the Millenium for a long time, with limited success, so I don't like to count on any given blueprint for it being guaranteed to work.

There are two separate arguments here:
1) "Terrorists are a threat to the state, and must therefore be made an example of."
2) "People who attack the body politic in an indiscriminate way should be used as examples of the body politic's power to strike back, lethally."
The argument for messily executing people who commit mass-casualty attacks comes from (2), not (1).

Duchess clearly made it in the context of #1, or do I need to quote her directly? Please remember that you do not talk for anyone but yourself, Simmo. Sometimes you need to step back and remember that not everything is about your ideas and arguments.

Duchess's own comments apply...

But seriously, you're mistaking her for a generic Murcan. Not all people who think terrorists and mass murderers should be punished harshly are afraid of those terrorists and mass murderers. There are reasons other than fear to think that it would be a good idea to make a public example out of them.

These reasons may be distasteful (such as wanting to use them as raw material for a symbolic display of state power upon the body of the condemned). They may be widely at odds with the modern Western tradition of what it is and is not acceptable to do to prisoners (see previous).

But they're not just a reaction of fear, or based on the idea that this is meant to exterminate or intimidate some specific threat.

For this purpose, it isn't really about whether the attacker was a 'terrorist' or simply a very vicious mass murderer. It's about the idea that an indiscriminate attack on The People (or The King or whatever) should draw a deadly counterattack which will show the defender's willingness and ability to protect themselves. Even if there was no threat of the state being destroyed, the state and people showing that it responds aggressively to threats has social value under this framework.

Which again is a communalist idea, it's totally at odds with individualism because it more or less pisses on the idea that the criminal has individual rights NOT to be made a horrible example of. And most political philosophy that survived into the 21st century is individualist.

I would argue that it is Humanism, not Individualism, that is the overriding factor in why that is no longer an acceptable reaction in most first world countries (the U.S. notwithstanding). Its fundamentally at odds with the idea that all human beings deserve certain minimum guarantees against attacks on their dignity, life, and universal rights.

Personally, I think that individualism is mixed with the foundation of of the humanist renaissance the West has enjoyed. The rights humanism extends are overwhelmingly individual rights- guarantees made to each individual, and that we (hopefully) all benefit by. And in enforcing these rights we usually don't worry too much about the impact on the community as a whole.

It is assumed that (unless proven otherwise by VERY compelling evidence) we're better off protecting your right to be insulting even if it makes the community less polite, better off protecting my right to works of art you think are obscene even if it makes the community as a whole more insensitive about the issue, better off protecting your property even if it makes the community as a whole worse off to have you use your property in that way.

By and large, the only things we look at as exceptions to individual rights, in a seriously humanist society, are things that threaten some other individual directly- someone we can point to and say "but what about them?"

Is it right to operate that way? I don't know, probably. We may have swung the pendulum a little bit far, but it seems to be working out.

[Formless]

No, Simon spoke correctly. When I say "threat to the state" in this context, I mean "threat to the psychological prestige of the State as an institution". The idea that people like the brothers Tsarnaev threaten the State in a literal physical sense is so absurd I never once fathomed someone would ascribe it to me.

If you want to ascribe idiocy to someone, just add a little of your own.

To be absolutely blunt, what you just described is exactly what I thought you meant. That is what makes you an authoritarian-- you care more about the prestige of the state than the lives of its citizens.

And I am a communitarian, because I believe that society functions as an organic whole that is greater than the sum of its parts and people are to a certain extent defined and valued based on social role.

Then find another word to describe it, because as far as I can tell that's not how its used outside your personal circle of friends. Social Holism, maybe? If you know what those words mean, then you know that basically sums up all that you just said in two words, and its got that esoteric sound to it as well.

I conceded the thread and argument, but it seemed important to note from the original source, (i.e., me, since we're debating my prior words) that I actually fully endorse as most accurate Simon's interpretations of what I say.

Well, I'm not retracting what I said, because he does this even for (apparently) complete strangers. You might notice sometime that I basically never do this with Agent Sorchus, and he's both my brother and my roommate. It irks me anytime someone acts like they know so precisely what people are thinking just because they have similar thoughts or ideas.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The most correct term isn't "social holism", it's corporativism, which is also highly misinterpreted. My preferred government is the constitutionalized Patrician Republic of Corporate Bodies (in the sense that "corporate" is used in in corporativism), with or without a constitutional Sovereign; my preferred sort of large company is the Mondragón--that is to say, a Cooperative owned by its workers and run democratically, my international relations are Realist and founded on the deep conviction of the importance of a strong military, though minimal realism, not maximalist. My preferred philosophers are Hegel (in the right-Hegelian sense), Schopenhauer, and Hobbes, generally with a strong sense of the importance of aesthetic in human happiness; my labour politics are right-unionist, my view of History is Cyclical, my social sentiments are rural in character and feminist in analysis, my preferred legal system is the Civil Law or at least bijuridical with the Common Law, and my sense of nationhood holds that nations and states with sovereign power should not be held to necessarily be required to be unified, therefore, I am largely against the development of the ethnic state and in favour of regionalism under a single sovereign; in that sense I am a Cascadian, tho' absolutely loyal to these United States of America as the government of sovereign power. My preferred authors in modern literature run generally the gamut that sweeps from Solzhenitsyn to Mishima Yukio.

If you must know my real beliefs on issues, those are a single-paragraph summary thereof.

[Simon_Jester]

If you want to ascribe idiocy to someone, just add a little of your own.

To be absolutely blunt, what you just described is exactly what I thought you meant. That is what makes you an authoritarian-- you care more about the prestige of the state than the lives of its citizens.

Alternate interpretation: she places variable value on the lives of the citizens, and citizens convicted of terrible crimes can justly be expended for reasons that ordinary people wouldn't be. Compare to pre-modern practices of testing medical treatments on criminals, rather than on random citizens chosen by lot.

I would not presume to say, of course, Duchess might think that just any random person could justifiably be 'expended' as a salutary example for the sake of state prestige. I'd be surprised to hear her say so, though, and since she's back in the thread now, I'm guessing she'll answer "no."

Then find another word to describe it, because as far as I can tell that's not how its used outside your personal circle of friends. Social Holism, maybe? If you know what those words mean, then you know that basically sums up all that you just said in two words, and its got that esoteric sound to it as well.

I could work with "social holism." It's descriptive; the only drawbacks are that it's not one word, and that it loses the intentional parallel I made between "individualist" and "communalist." Unless I make up yet another word and call nearly all modern Western political thought "social-atomist."

Hmph.

Just me being irritated, but- it's my personal feeling that since socialism is NOT the only possible ideology that focuses on the health of communities over that of individuals, that calling some highly specific substripe of socialism "communalism" is sort of like calling, say... the ideology of the Democratic party in the US "democratism." It is far from the only way to be democratic, so the word is too broad to rightly 'belong' to such a narrow group. I feel the same way about "objectivism," since it's not like being a Randist is somehow the only way to be objective about things.

If this were some kind of universal vocabulary any 100-level poli-sci graduate should know I'd feel differently, I think.


Duchess identifying herself as "corporativist" has the advantage of being specific, I couldn't have done that myself, but I was also trying to give a broad description that fits that with other historical viewpoints that share some similarities. At the bedrock is, of course, the subordination of the individual's fate to getting the right outcome for the community, which causes all sorts of misunderstandings when dealing with someone who sees all social questions in terms of human rights first and foremost.

Well, I'm not retracting what I said, because he does this even for (apparently) complete strangers. You might notice sometime that I basically never do this with Agent Sorchus, and he's both my brother and my roommate. It irks me anytime someone acts like they know so precisely what people are thinking just because they have similar thoughts or ideas.

Honestly, I think it's not very hard to do this at all, you just have to be willing to stop and listen. Most people make a lot more sense when you stop assuming you already know what they think or want, stop trying to pigeonhole them, for long enough to get a sense for their background experiences as an individual person.

I wouldn't bother so often except that I find it annoying when people are systematically misunderstood in ways I find childish and silly. I can understand mature disagreement, I disagree with people I'm interpreting like this all the time. But not being able to tell the difference between "I favor executions by firing squads over life imprisonment in solitary, as being more in keeping with the dignity of the accused" and "put the bread-thieves in gibbets!" is just stupid and willfully ignorant. The breadth of human political views shouldn't be artificially compressed onto a single axis of "left-correct, right-wing-wrong-and-stupid" like that.

When I perceive a conversation as having turned into a dogpile because of a systematic failure of one side's listening skills... yeah, I get sucked in too easily.

*For myself, I think corporal punishment of criminals is almost certainly a terrible idea, and would vote against it if it ever came up.