Death Penalty: Yea or Nay?

[Formless]

To add, I wasn't going to weigh in on this thread, as death penalty threads are a great example of a time waster that sucks you in; but frankly that the subject encourages this kind of downright dangerous thinking is one reason I don't think our society at this time can be allowed to keep it on the table. Philosophic arguments aside, the dehumanization it and other "tough on crime" punishments bring about to the criminal/prisoner population as a whole serves only to hinder reforms to the criminal justice system, which we are in need of quite a bit. I mean think about it: how goddamn common are these recidivist, guard killing, serial mass murdering pedophiles that inevitably come up in these discussions? Its like those stupid Right Wing arguments that go along the lines of "well, theoretically, if we knew the terrorists had a bomb right now about to go off in a major city, we would be justified in torturing someone to find out which city". In a vacuum its a valid argument, but completely divorced from everyday realities by design.

And let me say right now that its precisely because human beings are capable of this kind of behavior that dehumanizing them is a bad idea. It means we aren't trying to understand them, which is crucial to stopping or preventing them from acting badly in the future. The kind of behaviors that we put people on death row for are for the most part on the extreme end of spectra of behavior we don't usually put people on death row for.

[Formless]

OH? Please, do explain what logically makes you unworthy of living just because you've killed someone, raped someone, etc. Then explain why the executioner should be allowed to live under this moral code you've crapped out your mouth.

That human beings are equally deserving of the right to live and be happy is the very basis of our fucking society, moron. Don't act like arguments for the death penalty aren't de facto arguments for the lesser evil, if they are valid at all.

Are you retarded or something?

Are you going to answer my question *? Lets see...

Because most people would recognize the difference between murder and state-sanctioned killing. And the state certainly reserves the right to sanction killing, in war for example. Murder is defined as illegal (ie, non-sanctioned) killing, and our justice system prosecutes it because of the harm that it does to society. All justice systems that are not an extension of divine law operate under the same rationale, ultimately derived from the nature of sovereignty to enforce the King's Peace.

Nope, you jumped straight to the second question while disregarding the first. Resorting to legalism is not a convincing argument. We are talking about whether or not the law should change. In that context, it doesn't fucking matter what is and is not state sanctioned, what matters is whether or not it should continue to be state sanctioned. And for the record? All arguments for war are arguments for the lesser evil too, but I doubt you would understand that, considering that you think all justice systems operate on Realpolitik.

Also, if you knew anything about the law you would know that the definition of murder is the intentional killing of another human being (unintentional killing being manslaughter). Lawful murder is still fucking murder.

And I'm sure murdering people makes a serial killer really happy. So what? Their rights end when it threatens the social order, from which all "individual rights" are ultimately derived. By attacking that order they have placed themselves outside society and are de-facto enemies of that order. They have to be neutralized one way or another, and locking them up in a cage for the rest of their lives has no utility over simply executing them; provided, of course, that guilt can be established with certainty, but the moral argument that "the death penalty is inherently wrong" ignores the issue of such uncertainty.

Why does it have no utility? Because you say so?

Good grief, "enemies of that order"? I bet you support the War on Terror too. because, you know, Bad People must die. Because I have a hard on for Big Brother Knows All.



* emphasis added, obviously.

[Sea Skimmer]

Personally, I don't believe that the death penalty can ever be a justifiable punishment. While there are crimes that deserve permanent removal from society - that prove that the criminal involved is simply too dangerous to be allowed further opportunities for violence - I have very little faith in any real-world justice system to never convict an innocent man of a crime. Rather, I find it likely that a significant fraction of those in prison are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted, given the ludicrously corrupt state of prosecution in the United States today.

So what is your answer when real murders in prison kill those other innocent people in jail because they are not violent enough to defend themselves, and then after isolation in solitary confinement, which we know causes actual insanity, begin killing prison guards? Just let them keep on killing? Lock them in complete isolation from human contact which is blatantly a lifetime of torture?

[MarshalPurnell]

Are you going to answer my question *? Lets see...

So, you're actually going to press this point and call attention to your emotionally-laden, irrational ranting? Fine. A person who commits a crime is a threat to everyone around them. We have laws, and rules, and regulations for a reason, to see to the smooth operation of society so we avoid the state of anarchy, and to provide for a degree of personal security for the general public. The threat that criminals pose justifies treating them in coercive ways (fines, imprisonment, death, depending on the severity of the offense) that we would not treat someone who has not violated the law. An executioner acting under state authority is not a criminal and can be trusted to only kill people that the state has designated for execution, rather than randomly killing members of the public.

Nope, you jumped straight to the second question while disregarding the first. Resorting to legalism is not a convincing argument. We are talking about whether or not the law should change. In that context, it doesn't fucking matter what is and is not state sanctioned, what matters is whether or not it should continue to be state sanctioned. And for the record? All arguments for war are arguments for the lesser evil too, but I doubt you would understand that, considering that you think all justice systems operate on Realpolitik.

Also, if you knew anything about the law you would know that the definition of murder is the intentional killing of another human being (unintentional killing being manslaughter). Lawful murder is still fucking murder.

Resorting to emotional outbursts about what you think is the case, but is not, does not convince anyone who doesn't already share your beliefs. And no jackass, the legal definition of murder is, to quote Merriam-Webster, "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought." Murder is not "killing people," murder is the illegal killing of people. And it is illegal, to go to Blackstone's Commentaries, one of the foundational texts on English Common Law which is still used as a basis for American law and frequently cited by the Supreme Court, because "1. Because it is impossible they [murders and other public wrongs] can be committed without a violation of the laws of nature; of the moral as well as political rules of right: 2. Because they include in them almost always a breach of the public peace: 3. Because by their example and evil tendency they threaten and endanger the subversion of all civil society."

http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century ... k4ch14.asp

There is no such thing as a lawful murder because murder is defined as unlawful killing, and is unlawful not because killing is wrong in all circumstances, but because in the circumstances it is illegal it threatens civil order. And on a moral plain it is beyond bizarre to suggest that the murderer and the executioner are equivalent. The nature of their acts, and the people they are killing, distinguish them. The moral guilt of killing rests on the circumstances, not some kind of absolute commandment against it. Killing a murderer as an exercise of state authority helps reinforce social order and is not an arbitrary killing of an innocent person, whereas murder threatens social order and usually (not always, though in the not always cases the death penalty is almost never invoked) involves either an element of arbitrariness or selection of innocent victims.

Good grief, "enemies of that order"? I bet you support the War on Terror too. because, you know, Bad People must die. Because I have a hard on for Big Brother Knows All.

And do you have any logical conception of the law? Obviously not, given your blatant and demonstrated ignorance about the nature of murder. You also of course failed to address my point; why exactly should we keep people who have proven themselves to be threats to other people alive? "Because killing them makes us as bad as they are" is not a serious answer, and shows the shallow, even frivolous attitude of the person making that argument. I can certainly accept that the unreliability of the justice system makes execution in error inevitable and therefore we shouldn't have the death penalty, but to claim a nonexistent moral equivalency is just stupid.

[Korto]

I'm philosophically in favour, but only under very strict conditions. I came up with a procedure under which I would be willing to have the death penalty.

1) Accused receives trial, is found guilty, and is sentenced to more years (non-parole) than he could conceivably expect to live.

2) Accused then receives a second trial, perhaps a year or two later (when all the media heat has died), heard before a panel of high court judges. The standard of guilt here is no longer "beyond reasonable doubt", but now "beyond all sane (and marginally insane) doubt". Even the defense wants to say "he has an evil identical twin", that's a valid defense that must be disproved; "The entire city's police force has it in for him and has set him up!", ditto. Only defenses like "An alien clone did it!" are ruled out, out of hand.
Three possible verdicts here : Proven, death sentence approved; Guilty, but standard not met (life sentence stands); Not guilty, to be released.
There is no civilian jury. While judges aren't perfect, they should be far better than lay-people not trained in law or experienced in the tactics of lawyers. The guy already had his jury trial in the first place.
This second trial also counts as an automatic appeal. There is no appeal from the second trial, as there's no-one left to appeal to.

I do feel that the cost, trouble, and rarity of this procedure makes trying to bring it in a complete waste of time in Australia (where we are opposed to the death penalty).

[Bakustra]

MarshallPurnell, you're relying on the idea that murder hurts the social order. Please explain the reasons that you believe it does so, without retreating into incredulity, as I want to make myself sure of what you believe before moving on to my main point.

But several ancillary issues: why does morality define itself from law, in your belief? Why should this be applied generally? Why exactly are you incapable of understanding that the colloquial definition of murder overlaps with homicide? If you are capable of understanding that the two are functionally identical in colloquial English speech, then why are you playing the dunce?

[MarshalPurnell]

MarshallPurnell, you're relying on the idea that murder hurts the social order. Please explain the reasons that you believe it does so, without retreating into incredulity, as I want to make myself sure of what you believe before moving on to my main point.

Are you fucking serious? Let's consider: Why is murder bad for society? Because if people go around randomly killing each other, without restraint, we have a state of anarchy. The existence of civil order rests on a certain level of peace and stability that murder is inimical to. We have social orders because anarchy is a really bad thing, and upholding that order is the reason that justice systems exist.

But several ancillary issues: why does morality define itself from law, in your belief? Why should this be applied generally? Why exactly are you incapable of understanding that the colloquial definition of murder overlaps with homicide? If you are capable of understanding that the two are functionally identical in colloquial English speech, then why are you playing the dunce?

Morality is a subjective system that can have any number of precepts and goals. Law in the modern Western nation is supposed to be an objective system that at root has one goal (notwithstanding political interference), preservation of social order. One can debate morality until one is blue in the face, but there is no moral system I know of save perhaps some insanely warped form of utilitarianism that would place equal moral weight on everyone's life, regardless of circumstances or the actions of the individual in question. The murderer has done something to compromise his claim on moral sympathy, the average person has not. And the murderer is also a serious threat to social order which is why the law treats him differently (IE by putting him on trial and taking away his rights by indefinite detention or execution) than it does the average person.

The colloquial definition of murder is not "killing," it is "intentional killing of innocent people." Which does not in fact entirely overlap with the legal definition, but is far more restrictive than Formless's assumption that "murder=killing anyone, in any circumstances." He was the one playing the dunce, by suggesting that murder and execution were equivalent acts.

[Formless]

So, you're actually going to press this point and call attention to your emotionally-laden, irrational ranting? Fine. A person who commits a crime is a threat to everyone around them. We have laws, and rules, and regulations for a reason, to see to the smooth operation of society so we avoid the state of anarchy, and to provide for a degree of personal security for the general public. The threat that criminals pose justifies treating them in coercive ways (fines, imprisonment, death, depending on the severity of the offense) that we would not treat someone who has not violated the law. An executioner acting under state authority is not a criminal and can be trusted to only kill people that the state has designated for execution, rather than randomly killing members of the public.

See that bolded part? Fallacy of over-generalization. Most criminals only victimize people due to specific circumstances, such as poverty or disfranchisement due to race/nationality. Take them out of that situation, and they are no threat to anyone. Furthermore, those who commit violent crimes are far more likely to victimize people they know, as opposed to strangers. Think about it: who is more likely to kill you, someone you have never had a chance to piss off due to not knowing them, or someone you've met personally and made enemies with? Plus, you are so focused on a single kind of crime (random acts of violence) you forget about crimes of passion.

Shit like this is why I wrote the first post on this page. What's really funny though is the way you accuse me of emotional outbursts (an irrelevancy regardless of whether or not its true) when you obsess over the second question I asked... one contingent on another you refuse to address. I guess you think the criminal justice system cannot operate without capital punishment, or that because we disagree on the priority of morality over law I must think law is pointless? Edit: And then there is that lashing out at Bakustra, can't ignore that (morality is subjective my ass-- how many times do I have to deal with the same bullshit relativism on this forum?). Yeah, you obviously have no emotions invested in this argument at all, uh huh. And I'm an avatar of Shiva.

Let me put this in simple words: laws are a formality, morals are not. Laws are created by the state as a way of enforcing a common (if skeletal and modular) moral code. Laws can be changed, this argument is about whether or not they should, and those changes come about due to moral concerns. I am arguing morals, you are arguing law. Your arguments are irrelevant to the thread, and suggests you have slipped into a reactionary mindset rather than meeting my challenge. I'm not even going to quote your evasive "what is murder" sematics whoring, I'm just going to cut to the chase:

You also of course failed to address my point; why exactly should we keep people who have proven themselves to be threats to other people alive?

You had two points, don't try and run away from your words. I quote you exactly:

Mercy to the cruel is cruelty to the merciful. It is absolutely ridiculous to require that to be morally superior to a serial pedophile, or murderer, or mob boss, that society spare their lives. It ignores the possibility that they can still harm other people, and makes the silly assumption that all human life is equally valuable or has equal moral weight. I would say someone who has placed himself outside the bounds of society by his egregious harm to it (such as by murdering people) should have no standing to demand anything of that same society. As threats to the general public, outside of hope of rehabilitation, what utility is there to not simply disposing of such people?

Emphasis added (as if I really have to say it). Now either back up these claims, or shut the fuck up. This is SLAM-- Science, Logic, And Morality. Not your personal soapbox where you can ignore dissenting opinions or declare that others bear the burden of proof when they challenge your assumptions.

[MarshalPurnell]

See that bolded part? Fallacy of over-generalization. Most criminals only victimize people due to specific circumstances, such as poverty or disfranchisement due to race/nationality. Take them out of that situation, and they are no threat to anyone. Furthermore, those who commit violent crimes are far more likely to victimize people they know, as opposed to strangers. Think about it: who is more likely to kill you, someone you have never had a chance to piss off due to not knowing them, or someone you've met personally and made enemies with? Plus, you are so focused on a single kind of crime (random acts of violence) you forget about crimes of passion.

Shit like this is why I wrote the first post on this page. What's really funny though is the way you accuse me of emotional outbursts (an irrelevancy regardless of whether or not its true) when you obsess over the second question I asked... one contingent on another you refuse to address. I guess you think the criminal justice system cannot operate without capital punishment, or that because we disagree on the priority of morality over law I must think law is pointless? Yeah, you obviously have no emotions invested in this argument at all, uh huh. And I'm an avatar of Shiva.

Let me put this in simple words: laws are a formality, morals are not. Laws are created by the state as a way of enforcing a common (if skeletal and modular) moral code. Laws can be changed, this argument is about whether or not they should, and those changes come about due to moral concerns. I am arguing morals, you are arguing law. Your arguments are irrelevant to the thread, and suggests you have slipped into a reactionary mindset rather than meeting my challenge. I'm not even going to quote your evasive "what is murder" sematics whoring, I'm just going to cut to the chase:

You completely ignore the context I gave as to why criminality is a threat to everyone, by focusing on the target of said crime at the individual level rather than the aggregate effect of crime on social fabric. Laws are in place for people to obey, so that society will function smoothly. A serial murderer targeting random people has transgressed the laws and frayed the social order, and so has some asshole ex-boyfriend who goes offer and murders his former girlfriend and her new man.

Let me put this in simple words: morals are subjective, law is objective. Laws are created by the state by virtue of its authority as sovereign to enforce a common peace. Laws can be changed, due to differing circumstances or ideas about how to protect the social order or even because of moral concerns. The ultimate point however remains to protect society, sometimes by enforcing a particular morality, but in all cases by creating an environment of stability and order where society can flourish. Your arguments are poorly thought out, barely coherent, bleeding heart nonsense that have no relationship to how the world actually works. Indeed, the whole "murder semantics" you dismiss were a response to your insane claim that all killing is morally equivalent, and that murder encompassed all killing, when nothing of the sort is commonly accepted.

You had two points, don't try and run away from your words. I quote you exactly:

Mercy to the cruel is cruelty to the merciful. It is absolutely ridiculous to require that to be morally superior to a serial pedophile, or murderer, or mob boss, that society spare their lives. It ignores the possibility that they can still harm other people, and makes the silly assumption that all human life is equally valuable or has equal moral weight. I would say someone who has placed himself outside the bounds of society by his egregious harm to it (such as by murdering people) should have no standing to demand anything of that same society. As threats to the general public, outside of hope of rehabilitation, what utility is there to not simply disposing of such people?

Emphasis added (as if I really have to say it). Now either back up these claims, or shut the fuck up. This is SLAM-- Science, Logic, And Morality. Not your personal soapbox where you can ignore dissenting opinions or declare that others bear the burden of proof when they challenge your assumptions.

Fuck off, you whiny little twit. Let me lay out a simple moral precept that most people accept so readily as to not need to be stated, except perhaps to the autistic. People who do bad stuff compromise their moral sympathy. That's why there is the entire concept of innocence. An innocent person has more claim to moral sympathy than someone who has committed a crime. Society as a whole makes those kinds of moral judgements all the time, especially when it, you know, imprisons someone for committing a crime. If the innocent and the guilty have equal moral weight, when what possible rationale is there for taking away the rights of the guilty? Aside perhaps from, hmm, the threat they pose to public and social order? In any case it's just the extreme example of something that goes on all the time; unless you think "women and children first" is just a neat suggestion, their lives are implicitly valued more highly than those of men.

Also of course I have repeatedly said I would favor abolishing the death penalty on procedural grounds, since guaranteed guilt is all but impossible except in freakish cases. I do not however see any reason whatsoever to take such an utterly extreme and frankly insane position that all forms of killing have the same moral weight, and such an extraordinary claim as that (which you made) requires extraordinary evidence. Or extraordinary stupidity to believe in.

[Thanas]

Morality is a subjective system that can have any number of precepts and goals. Law in the modern Western nation is supposed to be an objective system that at root has one goal (notwithstanding political interference), preservation of social order.

You just cited one of many goals of law and declared it to be the sole goal. Why?

[Bakustra]

MarshallPurnell, you're relying on the idea that murder hurts the social order. Please explain the reasons that you believe it does so, without retreating into incredulity, as I want to make myself sure of what you believe before moving on to my main point.

Are you fucking serious? Let's consider: Why is murder bad for society? Because if people go around randomly killing each other, without restraint, we have a state of anarchy. The existence of civil order rests on a certain level of peace and stability that murder is inimical to. We have social orders because anarchy is a really bad thing, and upholding that order is the reason that justice systems exist.

I said without retreating into incredulity. So your basic argument is that murder hurts the social order because allowing people to kill each other "randomly" causes a state of "anarchy", which I will instead refer to as a state of disorder from hereon for accuracy's sake and because you're still clinging to this massive gulf between homicide and murder. The problem is that it's rare for people to kill randomly, indeed incredibly so. So as you phrase it, it is only the lack of restraint which makes murder bad, because killing without restraint causes a state of disorder. So, then, what of organized crime conducting assassinations? There we have the bylaws of the organization to restrain the killers. Are they then committing murders? If so, why? Again, try to answer without retreating into incredulity at the very idea that someone might question you about your beliefs. Pretend that I'm an alien or something, if it helps.

Furthermore, the way you phrase this indicates that we are currently in a state of disorder, as people do (serial and spree killers) essentially kill people randomly and without restraint already. If this is what a state of disorder looks like, it's not too shabby, and frankly the alternative seems to be a sort of totalitarian police state that crushes all possibility of murder, as you have phrased things. Really, such unfortunate sentences.

But several ancillary issues: why does morality define itself from law, in your belief? Why should this be applied generally? Why exactly are you incapable of understanding that the colloquial definition of murder overlaps with homicide? If you are capable of understanding that the two are functionally identical in colloquial English speech, then why are you playing the dunce?

Morality is a subjective system that can have any number of precepts and goals. Law in the modern Western nation is supposed to be an objective system that at root has one goal (notwithstanding political interference), preservation of social order. One can debate morality until one is blue in the face, but there is no moral system I know of save perhaps some insanely warped form of utilitarianism that would place equal moral weight on everyone's life, regardless of circumstances or the actions of the individual in question. The murderer has done something to compromise his claim on moral sympathy, the average person has not. And the murderer is also a serious threat to social order which is why the law treats him differently (IE by putting him on trial and taking away his rights by indefinite detention or execution) than it does the average person.

The colloquial definition of murder is not "killing," it is "intentional killing of innocent people." Which does not in fact entirely overlap with the legal definition, but is far more restrictive than Formless's assumption that "murder=killing anyone, in any circumstances." He was the one playing the dunce, by suggesting that murder and execution were equivalent acts.

Oh, please. People use the term murdered to describe the killing of the guilty and refrain from using it to describe the killing of the innocent, because people are not peevish, small-minded individuals like yourself, obsessing over the improper usage of technical definitions by lay persons.

The rest of your response is frankly schizophrenic. It starts by denouncing morality as being lacking in meaning for the death penalty, which is frightening in and of itself for its implications towards your beliefs on government, but not really a response to what I asked. Then you conflate legality and morality, which is also quite frightening, and if you really hold to it, will destroy you. You cannot hold to and defend injustice and simultaneously act with justice. It will tear you apart just from the problem of defending separate-but-equal, slavery, and white supremacy as moral alongside egalitarianism, let alone the other historical injustices you must defend from their enshrining into law. In other words, one must distinguish one's morals from the law in order to be able to criticize it. I am deeply, deeply sorry that you cannot.

Now, do you have a moral argument for the death penalty? One distinct from legalism? If so, I'd love to hear it.

Finally, one last question. Why is death assumed to be the null state, such that you can frame questions as "Why should we keep people alive?" rather than "Why shouldn't we kill people"? Is it your own lack of comfort with your argument?

[Formless]

A serial murderer targeting random people has transgressed the laws and frayed the social order, and so has some asshole ex-boyfriend who goes offer and murders his former girlfriend and her new man.

SErial killers do not target random people you fucking ignoramus. Does everything you know about criminology come from hollywood? Actually, scratch that, even Hollywood knows this.

Let me put this in simple words: morals are subjective, law is objective.

Now you are just lying to yourself. By your own criteria for objectivity ("there can't be room for disagreement" which is just wrong on its own merits) law is just as subjective as morality if not more so. Sixty years ago, it was illegal in some places for a black person to sit on the same bus as a white person. 200 years ago when this country was founded, the founders explicitly designed the constitution with legal reform in mind. Over 2000 years ago when Democracy was first invented, it was predicated on the notion that different people were going to have different opinions on what the law should be and how the government should work.

And across the pond, there is no (or very strict) death penalty.

You are just. Plain. Wrong. Conceded that, or go to hell.

[MarshalPurnell]

I said without retreating into incredulity. So your basic argument is that murder hurts the social order because allowing people to kill each other "randomly" causes a state of "anarchy", which I will instead refer to as a state of disorder from hereon for accuracy's sake and because you're still clinging to this massive gulf between homicide and murder. The problem is that it's rare for people to kill randomly, indeed incredibly so. So as you phrase it, it is only the lack of restraint which makes murder bad, because killing without restraint causes a state of disorder. So, then, what of organized crime conducting assassinations? There we have the bylaws of the organization to restrain the killers. Are they then committing murders? If so, why? Again, try to answer without retreating into incredulity at the very idea that someone might question you about your beliefs. Pretend that I'm an alien or something, if it helps.

Furthermore, the way you phrase this indicates that we are currently in a state of disorder, as people do (serial and spree killers) essentially kill people randomly and without restraint already. If this is what a state of disorder looks like, it's not too shabby, and frankly the alternative seems to be a sort of totalitarian police state that crushes all possibility of murder, as you have phrased things. Really, such unfortunate sentences.

This is such a grasping response that I'm not sure how to respond to it. But obviously, if I have to spell out in my response that having a war of assassins is also bad for society, or qualify that the point of law is to prevent breaches of the common peace from having a serious impact on social order... yeah, there's no point. This is not an honest debate but rather more SLAM bomb-throwing and I refuse to be involved further.

Oh, please. People use the term murdered to describe the killing of the guilty and refrain from using it to describe the killing of the innocent, because people are not peevish, small-minded individuals like yourself, obsessing over the improper usage of technical definitions by lay persons.

The rest of your response is frankly schizophrenic. It starts by denouncing morality as being lacking in meaning for the death penalty, which is frightening in and of itself for its implications towards your beliefs on government, but not really a response to what I asked. Then you conflate legality and morality, which is also quite frightening, and if you really hold to it, will destroy you. You cannot hold to and defend injustice and simultaneously act with justice. It will tear you apart just from the problem of defending separate-but-equal, slavery, and white supremacy as moral alongside egalitarianism, let alone the other historical injustices you must defend from their enshrining into law. In other words, one must distinguish one's morals from the law in order to be able to criticize it. I am deeply, deeply sorry that you cannot.

Now, do you have a moral argument for the death penalty? One distinct from legalism? If so, I'd love to hear it.

Finally, one last question. Why is death assumed to be the null state, such that you can frame questions as "Why should we keep people alive?" rather than "Why shouldn't we kill people"? Is it your own lack of comfort with your argument?

LOL wut? This is utterly incoherent and bears no resemblance to anything I said. I said, "murder is not the same thing as killing." And I get this bizarre aside on homicide and murder that has no precedent in anything beforehand. The rest of course is just obfuscating bullshit that tries to associate a whole host of unpleasant opinions to me on the basis of... nothing.

[MarshalPurnell]

SErial killers do not target random people you fucking ignoramus. Does everything you know about criminology come from hollywood? Actually, scratch that, even Hollywood knows this.

Hey, nitpicking jackass, that has exactly zero relevance to why murdering people is a problem for society. And yeah, serial killers often have some kind of arbitrary fetish, so they only threaten... whoever randomly happens to fall in their category of victim. Random and arbitrary are close enough to the same thing, especially to people who, you know, don't know why the serial killer is operating the way he is.

But of course, nitpicking irrelevancy that shows just how unserious you're being.

Now you are just lying to yourself. By your own criteria for objectivity ("there can't be room for disagreement" which is just wrong on its own merits) law is just as subjective as morality if not more so. Sixty years ago, it was illegal in some places for a black person to sit on the same bus as a white person. 200 years ago when this country was founded, the founders explicitly designed the constitution with legal reform in mind. Over 2000 years ago when Democracy was first invented, it was predicated on the notion that different people were going to have different opinions on what the law should be and how the government should work.

And across the pond, there is no (or very strict) death penalty.

You are just. Plain. Wrong. Conceded that, or go to hell.

Go fuck yourself. I didn't say law couldn't change, I said it was objective. You and I can disagree on whether or not killing a murderer is as bad as killing a child, but if I disagree with stopping at a red light the government gives me a ticket for doing so. Trying to spin that observation out into me supporting segregation is a really utterly stupid ad hominiem fallacy, and I'm not playing this strawman game.

[Bakustra]

I said without retreating into incredulity. So your basic argument is that murder hurts the social order because allowing people to kill each other "randomly" causes a state of "anarchy", which I will instead refer to as a state of disorder from hereon for accuracy's sake and because you're still clinging to this massive gulf between homicide and murder. The problem is that it's rare for people to kill randomly, indeed incredibly so. So as you phrase it, it is only the lack of restraint which makes murder bad, because killing without restraint causes a state of disorder. So, then, what of organized crime conducting assassinations? There we have the bylaws of the organization to restrain the killers. Are they then committing murders? If so, why? Again, try to answer without retreating into incredulity at the very idea that someone might question you about your beliefs. Pretend that I'm an alien or something, if it helps.

Furthermore, the way you phrase this indicates that we are currently in a state of disorder, as people do (serial and spree killers) essentially kill people randomly and without restraint already. If this is what a state of disorder looks like, it's not too shabby, and frankly the alternative seems to be a sort of totalitarian police state that crushes all possibility of murder, as you have phrased things. Really, such unfortunate sentences.

This is such a grasping response that I'm not sure how to respond to it. But obviously, if I have to spell out in my response that having a war of assassins is also bad for society, or qualify that the point of law is to prevent breaches of the common peace from having a serious impact on social order... yeah, there's no point. This is not an honest debate but rather more SLAM bomb-throwing and I refuse to be involved further.

No, you have to come up with a definition that doesn't suck. I'm pointing out holes in your definition, and if you're going to throw around insulting, demeaning language and then complain about other people being all nasty and "bomb-throwing", crush your finger in the doorjamb on the way out, OK? Good-bye, whiner.

Oh, please. People use the term murdered to describe the killing of the guilty and refrain from using it to describe the killing of the innocent, because people are not peevish, small-minded individuals like yourself, obsessing over the improper usage of technical definitions by lay persons.

The rest of your response is frankly schizophrenic. It starts by denouncing morality as being lacking in meaning for the death penalty, which is frightening in and of itself for its implications towards your beliefs on government, but not really a response to what I asked. Then you conflate legality and morality, which is also quite frightening, and if you really hold to it, will destroy you. You cannot hold to and defend injustice and simultaneously act with justice. It will tear you apart just from the problem of defending separate-but-equal, slavery, and white supremacy as moral alongside egalitarianism, let alone the other historical injustices you must defend from their enshrining into law. In other words, one must distinguish one's morals from the law in order to be able to criticize it. I am deeply, deeply sorry that you cannot.

Now, do you have a moral argument for the death penalty? One distinct from legalism? If so, I'd love to hear it.

Finally, one last question. Why is death assumed to be the null state, such that you can frame questions as "Why should we keep people alive?" rather than "Why shouldn't we kill people"? Is it your own lack of comfort with your argument?

LOL wut? This is utterly incoherent and bears no resemblance to anything I said. I said, "murder is not the same thing as killing." And I get this bizarre aside on homicide and murder that has no precedent in anything beforehand. The rest of course is just obfuscating bullshit that tries to associate a whole host of unpleasant opinions to me on the basis of... nothing.

No, you deliberately pretended that the legal and colloquial definitions of murder were the same to lend weight to your pathetic refusal to engage Formless. Now, somebody else, somebody with a spine, somebody not a fucking schmuck, might say, "but I'm not conflating legality and morality at all, because X, Y, and Z." But I see that that is beyond you, though apparently parting shots are not.

So, do you have a moral argument to make for the death penalty? Do you have a definition that has been adjusted to account for my criticisms? Do you have a response to my question about the null state of your arguments? Well?

[Formless]

You know what folks? There is no point in responding directly to scum like this, so lets turn this into an objective lesson in...

How Not To Argue: Circular Logic and Evasiveness

[note: the following argument is a fictionalization of real events. Somewhat.]

Glaucon: [talking about the death penalty] Murderers, rapists, and other violent offenders are too dangerous to allow to walk among us. They should lose all rights, including the right to live! We just need to get better at convicting the right person.

Skeptic #1: uh, why is that? Isn't our society predicated on universal rights (however you conceive of them)? Isn't that position inconsistent with how our legal systems and moral codes function? If you are right, wouldn't the executioner guilty of murder?

Legalism advocate: the executioner can't be guilty of murder! Murder is defined by the state--

Skeptic #1: Excuse me, but shouldn't you be more concerned with justifying your assumption that criminals deserve to lose all rights? Besides, I was talking about murder in the moral sense.

Glaucon: But of course they deserve to lose all rights! That's how the law works. If they are allowed to live the justice system wouldn't work, and our society would fall apart!

Skeptic #1: hey, you still haven't answered the question--

Skeptic #2: Let me try. Are you saying that moral concerns don't matter? Also, I challenge the assertion that violent offenders are too dangerous to be allowed to live. We can (and do) throw them in jail.

Glaucon: What is morality? A matter of opinion, that's what! Now law, that's objective.

Skeptic #2: Why? Why is law objective? And why is it bad for something to be a matter of opinion?

Glaucon: Because the state creates it! Every legal system works about the same way, for the same purpose: to keep society stable.

Skeptic #3: Wait wait wait... isn't the stability of society a matter of opinion?

Skeptic #1: yeah, I mean, our laws are designed to be changed. How do we decide what is a good change? Assuming that is a good criteria for objectivity, which I really don't think is the case.

Skeptic #2: Guys, give him some time to think. ([whispers] I think he's a Legalist)

Skeptic #2: Ahem, the law has changed over the years. How do you account for that?

Glaucon: It changes, I never disputed that.

Skeptic #1: So...

Glaucon: [Refrain] the law is objective, because it comes from the state!

Skeptic #1: oh, come on! Now you're just repeating yourself.

Skeptic #2: Yeah, I'm beginning to think this guy is immune to reason.

[etc.]

Skeptic #4: yep. Immune to reason indeed.

------------------------------------------------------------

Teacher: So class, what did we learn today?

Class: Those who employ circular logic will keep going in circles unless everyone else gives up arguing with them.

[MarshalPurnell]

Formless: Killing anyone is murder.

Me: No, it isn't.

Bakustra: Why is murder bad?

Me: *headdesk*

[Formless]

Wow, that was a first. I mean, over the years I've called a lot of people stubborn jackasses, pointed out a lot of strawmen, and more then a few times I've called people out for treating their personal opinions as self evident in the face of skeptics. But this is the first time I've seen someone actually turn around and essentially confirm one or more of those things openly.

[Molyneux]

Personally, I don't believe that the death penalty can ever be a justifiable punishment. While there are crimes that deserve permanent removal from society - that prove that the criminal involved is simply too dangerous to be allowed further opportunities for violence - I have very little faith in any real-world justice system to never convict an innocent man of a crime. Rather, I find it likely that a significant fraction of those in prison are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted, given the ludicrously corrupt state of prosecution in the United States today.

So what is your answer when real murders in prison kill those other innocent people in jail because they are not violent enough to defend themselves, and then after isolation in solitary confinement, which we know causes actual insanity, begin killing prison guards? Just let them keep on killing? Lock them in complete isolation from human contact which is blatantly a lifetime of torture?

Has this, or anything even remotely resembling this, ever actually happened?

[MarshalPurnell]

Wow, that was a first. I mean, over the years I've called a lot of people stubborn jackasses, pointed out a lot of strawmen, and more then a few times I've called people out for treating their personal opinions as self evident in the face of skeptics. But this is the first time I've seen someone actually turn around and essentially confirm one or more of those traits openly.

You're an ignorant jackass who obviously does not have any grounding at all in legal history. Part of my problem was trying to go in-depth on the theory of legal systems when you have neither the interest nor ability to comprehend. In any case I don't need to go to first principles.

You ironically enough treated your own position, that everyone is always morally equal, as self-evident, even when contradicting yourself. Wouldn't you call indefinite detention of someone a revocation of their rights? Because that's what life imprisonment is. Which you argued was perfectly adequate to deal with murder. Having established that you in fact do not have a problem with society revoking the rights of a person whose moral standing has been compromised by committing a crime, where does your aversion for killing the (hypothetically certain) murderer come from? He clearly doesn't have the same moral standing as someone innocent of a crime, because you're willing to lock him away for the rest of his life. Is it some sort of religious thing you have in believing all life is sacred and should never be shed? Or just some reflexive ideology you've imbibed and never questioned?

Because I can think of a multitude of cases where killing is not at all morally equivalent to murder. The law itself recognizes that by allowing a self-defense exception. The state sanctions killing in wartime as a patriotic duty. Now perhaps you just have some extreme pacifist beliefs? But why is executing someone you know for certain is guilty of particularly heinous crimes, or who poses a serious threat to others, immoral? More immoral than locking them away in solitary confinement, if necessary to keep guards and other prisoners safe?

Life imprisonment has one utility over the death penalty; if we've made a mistake, we can fix it. And that's plenty compelling for me. I've never said the death penalty was necessary to maintain social order - I said a legal system was. But I see no reason, on a MORAL level, to spare the guilty because they have the same rights as the innocent. They don't (or else we should close down all the prisons), and they shouldn't, because they've compromised those rights by their own actions.

[K. A. Pital]

Personally, I don't believe that the death penalty can ever be a justifiable punishment. While there are crimes that deserve permanent removal from society - that prove that the criminal involved is simply too dangerous to be allowed further opportunities for violence - I have very little faith in any real-world justice system to never convict an innocent man of a crime. Rather, I find it likely that a significant fraction of those in prison are innocent of the crimes for which they were convicted, given the ludicrously corrupt state of prosecution in the United States today.

So what is your answer when real murders in prison kill those other innocent people in jail because they are not violent enough to defend themselves, and then after isolation in solitary confinement, which we know causes actual insanity, begin killing prison guards? Just let them keep on killing? Lock them in complete isolation from human contact which is blatantly a lifetime of torture?

Has this, or anything even remotely resembling this, ever actually happened?

Of course, many times. Prison murders are a big problem.

[Sea Skimmer]

Has this, or anything even remotely resembling this, ever actually happened?

Yes it certainly has, I know of one case even in which a guy managed to kill two prison guards in one fight with his fists, but he was literally a huge guy. Edited video of that killing exists. Murder in prison isn't as common as it used to be as the US has managed to greatly reduce the total number since the 1980s when it was more then one a day, but some of that is purely because of better trauma care allowing people to survive dozens of shank wounds. When 100+ people a year are still murdered in prison in the US and you are claiming a lot of them are in innocent then its obvious some innocent will be among those killed isn’t it? I'd support restricting the death penalty to cases like this and a few other things, but as far as I’m concerned the US is far too based around violence to abolish the death penalty especially for military cases. In some countries other then the US, prison murder can be a far more massive problem, the US has wasted a lot of money recently on ever bigger and more lavishly secured jails.

[Formless]

Christ, MarshalPurnell, you know what's ironic? You didn't want to go into first principals on law: neither do I want to go into first principals of morality. You ask whether or not I'm religious as if you've never met a moral atheist in your life. How sad. And then we have you asking if I've just never questioned my moral beliefs---

Oh, did I mention I didn't want to go into first principals on ethics? Because here is how many times I've had to do that in SLAM alone with people far more clever than you, and that's saying something because most of the following threads feature some of the stupidest people I have ever met online or off:

Starting with a thread featuring one of the smartest and one of the most consistently stubborn.

My most recent.

etc.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=141728

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=145312

Go get an education. This is philosophy 101 stuff. I've had to debunk anti-ethics screeds so often on this board, I'm sick of it.

Have a nice night, I've got a party to go to. Don't expect another response from me.

[MarshalPurnell]

Christ, MarshalPurnell, you know what's ironic? You didn't want to go into first principals on law: neither do I want to go into first principals of morality. You ask whether or not I'm religious as if you've never met a moral atheist in your life. How sad. And then we have you asking if I've just never questioned my moral beliefs---

Oh, did I mention I didn't want to go into first principals on ethics? Because here is how many times I've had to do that in SLAM alone with people far more clever than you, and that's saying something because most of the following threads feature some of the stupidest people I have ever met online or off:

Starting with a thread featuring one of the smartest and one of the most consistently stubborn.

My most recent.

etc.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=141728

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=145312

Go get an education. This is philosophy 101 stuff. I've had to debunk anti-ethics screeds so often on this board, I'm sick of it.

Have a nice night, I've got a party to go to. Don't expect another response from me.

You know what's pathetic? The constant cloud of bullshit you tossed up to obscure the issues. The strawmen you construct out of only the most tenuous possible implications, which of course any reasonable person would know better than to read into what I said - something you shared with Bakustra. When I wise up and go back to the core issue, and catch you out in a logical contradiction, you condescendingly declare victory and go on. Wanker.

[Hamstray]

Let me put this in simple words: morals are subjective, law is objective. Laws are created by the state by virtue of its authority as sovereign to enforce a common peace. Laws can be changed, due to differing circumstances or ideas about how to protect the social order or even because of moral concerns. The ultimate point however remains to protect society, sometimes by enforcing a particular morality, but in all cases by creating an environment of stability and order where society can flourish. Your arguments are poorly thought out, barely coherent, bleeding heart nonsense that have no relationship to how the world actually works. Indeed, the whole "murder semantics" you dismiss were a response to your insane claim that all killing is morally equivalent, and that murder encompassed all killing, when nothing of the sort is commonly accepted.

You do realize that your "subjective" morals apply to no one but yourself?
They are not commonly accepted and there is no need for them to be.

And I'm sure murdering people makes a serial killer really happy. So what? Their rights end when it threatens the social order, from which all "individual rights" are ultimately derived.
...

I'm pretty sure the social order itself is derived from "individual rights", not the other way around. Also the social order and peoples rights are concern of what you label as "objective law" and not of that of any subjective morals which you dissociate by claiming "death penalty is morally justified but not legally".