patrick.net

Strategist says

Dan8267 says

But what about this? It is inevitable that mistakes will be made. If you serve on a jury and you convict an innocent person to death and he's killed before the mistake is proven, would you willingly submit yourself to the death penalty for your part in murdering an innocent person? And don't puss out by questioning the premise. Accept that and tell us if you would stick by your convictions when they call for your death.

It's not murder, or even manslaughter.

And you pussy out.

And still you're wrong. Wrongly sentencing a person to death is equivalent to killing that innocent person with your bare hands. If it weren't then it wouldn't be murder to hire an assassin to kill someone.

Dan8267 says

Actually, my pointing out the contradictions of your philosophy are valid even if you cannot admit them. As for your statement, it's premise is empirically false. Many convicted criminals have served their sentence and become productive members of society. Therefore, your premise that criminals will never be useful is historically false.

Most have not.

Dan8267 says

As for murderers, to murder someone is to intentionally kill them without their permission. The guy in America Sniper was a murderer. Are you saying he should be executed? Hell, executions of prisoners is, by definition, murder.

Killing by Self defense is also without permission. Is that murder too? The American sniper is a hero. Those who kill terrorists are heroes.

Dan8267 says

And for the pussies who want to cop out by saying murder is only the "illegal killing" or a person, by that definition, Hitler did not murder anyone. No person was murder in the Holocaust. After all, everything Hitler did was legal since he was the law.

Hitler was a murderer because he ordered the murder of countless innocent people. No one recognized the laws he made.

Dan8267 says

We don't really base what is and is not murder on government policy. If we did, what constitute murder would vary greatly from society to society. And still, the guy in American Sniper would be a murderer because his actions were ILLEGAL in the country where he performed them.

So, FortWayne, you only have a problem with SOME murderers and you glorify others. Hence, you are being disingenuous with your statement that all murderers should be executed. What you meant to say was, "anyone who commits a murder that I don't approve of should be executed", and that has an entirely different meaning.

Executions are legal in this land, so why do you call it murder, Dan?

Dan8267 says

It's not murder, or even manslaughter.

And you pussy out.

And still you're wrong. Wrongly sentencing a person to death is equivalent to killing that innocent person with your bare hands. If it weren't then it wouldn't be murder to hire an assassin to kill someone.

According to you, it's murder if the law of the land says it's murder. Therefore it's not murder if the law of the land says it's not murder.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. Make up your mind.

Dan8267 says

the solution to that is to make life sentences actually be life sentences.

Then it's obvious that you live in an academic argument and not in the actual practice of our penal system.

In our current time and age, there is no such thing as life imprisonment. So far, only those who're connected to high profile murders, see Sirhan Sirhan, Mark Chapman, Charles Manson, etc, are behind bars for life. And yes, because it was a prison guard, it also applied to the Birdman, during his time. Otherwise, he would have been paroled, if it were some random character.

If you can guarantee life imprisonment, for real, not simply a decade or so of jail time, prior to facing a parole hearing then yes, your arguments are valid. For one, I don't see the penal system changing anytime soon. The world is what it is.

Dan8267 says

So, FortWayne, you only have a problem with SOME murderers and you glorify others.

You ever heard that world is not black and white but many shades of gray? And yet somehow you liberals still try to go with all or nothing. That's not how it works man.

Strategist says

Killing by Self defense is also without permission. Is that murder too?

Yes, but sometimes murder IS justified. When murder is the path of least evil, say in defense of oneself or another, it is justified. However, if a lesser evil can prevent the crime, then murdering the criminal is not necessary or justified.

The man in American Sniper may damn well have been justified in every single murder he committed, but it's still murder and still an evil. The lesser of two evils is still evil. A justified evil is still evil.

Strategist says

The American sniper is a hero. Those who kill terrorists are heroes.

This just demonstrates that murderers can be heroes and that murder can be heroic. I don't argue against that. I'd gladly have murder Hitler, say using Time Travel, if doing so would have prevented the Holocaust, but it's still murder.

Murder is not some marketing term that applies only when you want it to apply. It's not an insult to be hurled around subjectively. Murder is the specific decision to kill someone who doesn't want to die.

Strategist says

Hitler was a murderer because he ordered the murder of countless innocent people. No one recognized the laws he made.

Millions recognized the laws Hitler made particularly those carrying out those lies. Furthermore, not recognizing a law does not change the fact that it is a law. Furthermore, we condemn the laws of our country's past like the Fugitive Slave Act, but that doesn't retroactively erase it from history. The fact remains that Harriet Tubman was a criminal who simply didn't get caught. Was she a hero? HELL YES! But that doesn't change the fact that her heroic acts were criminal acts. What it shows is that what constitutes illegal and what constitutes immoral have nothing to do with each other.

So your statements are simply wrong. If you define murder as unlawful killing, then Hitler did not murder anyone. To call Hitler a murderer is to accept that what constitutes murder is not up to popular election, the whims of lawmakers, or the culture of the time.

The difference between Hitler's murderers and the American Sniper's murderers is that the later are allegedly justified as the path of least evil. (As to whether or not they actually are, no one can say since we don't know the details of who was murder and what they were going to do, but that's irrelevant to this discussion.)

Strategist says

Executions are legal in this land, so why do you call it murder, Dan?

As show above, legality does not determine if a killing is murder. If it did, Hitler would not be a murderer and the American Sniper would be. Accepting your definition of murder requires considering Hitler to be a better human being than the American Sniper in order to be logically consistent. You may accept holding two contradicting beliefs simultaneously, but the rational among us do not.

Furthermore, the American Sniper's actions were not legal in the country in which he performed them. It would be like someone from Amsterdam coming to our country and selling weed in front of the White House. His actions may be considered legal by his country, but not by the country in which he's performing them and that's what determines legality.

Of course, it would be retarded to define murder as what is considered unlawful killing by the U.S. government. By that definition, killing your slave wasn't murder in the 19th century. Lynching blacks to deaths wasn't murder in the 1920s. It's a ridiculous definition that defies common sense.

The bottom line is that you cannot escape condemning the American Sniper if you condemn all unlawful killings, nor can you escape condoning Hitler if you condone killings on the condition that they are lawful. The law can be evil.

Strategist says

According to you, it's murder if the law of the land says it's murder. Therefore it's not murder if the law of the land says it's not murder.

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Make up your mind.

No, that's the opposite of what I said. I said that murder is "the intentional killing of a person against his will".

In any case, arguing about nomenclature does not change the nature of the subject being discussed. If you got some bug up your ass about using the word murder in a consistent matter, then substitute another made up word like forjuring. It does not matter. It does not change what is true and what is not.

Whether or not intentionally killing someone against his will is justified or not is not determined by the word you use to refer to the killing or the law of the land. Law is not self-justifying. Only reasons can justify law or policy, and reasons are independent of nomenclature.

Rin says

Dan8267 says

the solution to that is to make life sentences actually be life sentences.

Then it's obvious that you live in an academic argument and not in the actual practice of our penal system.

So your argument is that killing a human being is justified as a means to prevent the possibility that people in the future might erroneously reduce that person's sentence and he may become a threat again.

First, that is a value judgement and therefore cannot be classified as right or wrong. I do, however, disagree with that value judgement and in my opinion that value judgement undervalues human life.

Second, that value judgement does not address the question I posed. Once again, you are arguing NOT P instead of showing an example of P and NOT Q. Show me an example were it is justified to kill a person who CANNOT EVER harm a person again. That is the moral and ethical question at hand.

FortWayne says

Dan8267 says

So, FortWayne, you only have a problem with SOME murderers and you glorify others.

You ever heard that world is not black and white but many shades of gray?

Hypocrisy isn't an example of shades of gray. For example, the only reason you like the American Sniper is that he's a member of YOUR tribe. If he were a member of the opposing tribe and did the exact same thing, killing the foreigners threatening his land and people, you would condemn him as an evil and despicable person who deserves to die painfully. There are no shades of gray in your assessment, only hypocrisy.

I have no problem with the idea that murder can be justified if its the path of least evil. So, by definition, I'm recognizing shades of gray, or shades of evil to be more precise. However, that does not even address the moral and ethical question I've posed a dozen times in this thread. When it's not the lesser or two evils, when a person is no longer a threat and never will be, how can one morally, ethically, legally, or rationally justify murdering that person?

So far no one has even attempted to address that question. Instead they try to avoid the question by negating the premise. Negating the premise does not address whether or not the statement is true. For example, the statement "all tigers have stripes" is a true statement even if an elephant does not have strips. If the premise is false, the statement is still true. Again, there is no wisdom without logic.

Dan8267 says

were it is justified to kill a person who CANNOT EVER harm a person again

In academia, there is no justification. And that's where you are, in academia.

In the real world, however, there are extenuating circumstances because CANNOT EVER does not exist.

In academia, there's an ideal gas equation for the behavior of molecules. In real chemical applications, however, Van Der Waal coefficients needed to be added, via experimental methods, to build a working model.

And just like that, observing the real world, I don't believe in the current system in place works well for life imprisonment w/o parole.

He should be used for stem cell research while alive.

That way even bleeding heart liberals like Dan would want to play along.

Dan8267 says

Strategist says

The American sniper is a hero. Those who kill terrorists are heroes.

This just demonstrates that murderers can be heroes and that murder can be heroic. I don't argue against that. I'd gladly have murder Hitler, say using Time Travel, if doing so would have prevented the Holocaust, but it's still murder.

Wow. I actually love what you say. What ever you smoked this morning seems to be putting your brain cells in the right order.

I disagree on the terminology. We don't call "justified murder" murder. We call it something else. Though it's still killing.
From Wikipedia:
Murder is the killing of another person without justification or valid excuse, and it is especially the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought. This state of mind may, depending upon the jurisdiction, distinguish murder from other forms of unlawful homicide, such as manslaughter.[1][2]

Strategist says

Murder is the killing of another person without justification or valid excuse, and it is especially the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought.

So I guess hiring a professional hit man is killing (w/o malice) but not murder, since it's only a payday for him.

And in a sense, isn't that what an executioner is?

Rin says

In academia, there is no justification. And that's where you are, in academia.

I'm not asking in academia. I'm asking in the real world. Image there is a real person who isn't able to harm anyone. Is there any justification for killing him? If so, what? That's not an academic question. It's a question of ethics, a question of morality, a question of rationale, and a question of what the basis of law should be. Each of these questions is important and opens up a deeper discussion.

Just because you cannot answer a question or are unwilling to accept the answer to that question does not make the question "academic".

Rin says

In real chemical applications, however, Van Der Waal coefficients needed to be added, via experimental methods, to build a working model.

And all those things are part of the theory of physics. Yes, even the details.

CaptainShuddup says

He should be used for stem cell research while alive.

That way even bleeding heart liberals like Dan would want to play along.

I'm willing to discuss the ethical ramifications of using prisoners for organ extraction, stem cell research, medical research, etc. But that's a whole different topic and the consensus is that the conflict of interest will always turn such a system into a corrupt profit machine that wrongly convicts people to harvest their organs.

Strategist says

I disagree on the terminology. We don't call "justified murder" murder. We call it something else.

Terminology is irrelevant. And human history is full of using deceptive wording for the sole purpose of polishing turds.

The problem with using subjective definition is that what is justified to one person is an atrocity to another. There are plenty of jihadist who believe that 9/11 was justified. You cannot prove or disprove a value judgement.

Whatever you call it, I submit that the intentional taking of a life against its will is an evil even if its the lesser of two evils. A corollary to that is one should not take a life against its will if there is no greater evil to prevent. That is the basis of the question I've been asking for the past several hours. It's also the question no one wants to address.

Strategist says

From Wikipedia:

From Wikipedia:
Murder is the licking of a person's foot while someone plays a banjo in the background.

Wikipedia says whatever the last asshole who edited wrote. It has no authority.

Furthermore, if you define murder as unlawful, then by definition, Hitler was no murderer. If you define murder as unjustified killing or not having a "valid excuse" than murder is nothing more an an opinion. What is justified or valid to one is not to another. Such a definition is useless and does not serve well as the basis for any conversation.

A good conversation of any subject is one in which the value judgements and the facts are separate. Both may be debated, but value judgements aren't facts and facts aren't value judgements. It is a fact that ice cream is a dairy product. It is an opinion that ice cream tastes yummy.

Rin says

Strategist says

Murder is the killing of another person without justification or valid excuse, and it is especially the unlawful killing of another human being with malice aforethought.

So I guess hiring a professional hit man is killing (w/o malice) but not murder, since it's only a payday for him.

And in a sense, isn't that what an executioner is?

An executioner is, by definition, committing murder. It may be legal murder; it may be justified murder; it may be the right thing to do, but it's still murder and, by my value judgement, still an evil. It may very well be the least evil option, but it is not without evil. Killing even a bad guy is a bad thing; it's just the least bad option, possibly by far, of many bad options. For example, if one could eliminate the threat of Hitler by talking to him as a child and making him far less of an asshole, that would be less evil than killing Hitler when he was a child even though killing kiddie Hitler would be better than letting the Holocaust happen.

[Side note: Killing Hitler might make history worse, but that's a practical consideration rather than an examination of judgement and decision making.]

Dan8267 says

An executioner is, by definition, committing murder. It may be legal murder; it may be justified murder; it may be the right thing to do, but it's still murder and, by my value judgement, still an evil. It may very well be the least evil option, but it is not without evil. Killing even a bad guy is a bad thing; it's just the least bad option, possibly by far, of many bad options. For example, if one could eliminate the threat of Hitler by talking to him as a child and making him far less of an asshole, that would be less evil than killing Hitler when he was a child even though killing kiddie Hitler would be better than letting the Holocaust happen.

So you are evil. So we are all evil.
If we are all evil, we are no longer evil, but normal.

Dan8267 says

Whatever you call it, I submit that the intentional taking of a life against its will is an evil even if its the lesser of two evils. A corollary to that is one should not take a life against its will if there is no greater evil to prevent. That is the basis of the question I've been asking for the past several hours. It's also the question no one wants to address.

Allow me to try. The point is valid. Why bother to kill someone when that person is no longer capable of doing any harm? The answer is one of the most popular of human emotions.....anger. When someone does us harm our first reaction is to go after him and take revenge. It's a reflex action that evolution demanded for our survival. "Anger is temporary madness" That emotion will continue to exist for many many generations to come. We also have compassion in our species that could at times dissuade us from carrying out any acts of revenge. For e.g. a teenage gang member that murders as an initiation to join the gang. If I was in the jury I would want to give him the death penalty. But what if I saw my son in him, and I also sensed he was remorseful, and a victim of older gang members who just used him. My compassion could emerge making me less likely to give him the death penalty.
Basically, to answer your question. Emotion.

Dan8267 says

The problem with using subjective definition is that what is justified to one person is an atrocity to another. There are plenty of jihadist who believe that 9/11 was justified. You cannot prove or disprove a value judgement.

You too have your beliefs that others may disagree with. So which values end up prevailing and which ones fall to the wayside? It will be a shootout that determines the victor. If you do not want the Jihadi crap to be the victor, you will need to join the less evil side, just as you would have killed Hitler because it was the lesser of the evils.

Dan8267 says

Image there is a real person who isn't able to harm anyone.

Unless that person is a quadriplegic, I cannot imagine such a person. And then ... even if he were let's say physically not in the best of shape, if he's a charismatic communicator, he could convince others to commit malice towards others. That's commonly referred to, as a cult leader figurehead.

Thus, the killing of such a person, basically a Hannibal Lecter on Steroids, in absence of a perfected system of incarceration with zero real world visitors, zero percent chance of parole, and all that jazz, may, under some circumstances, be justified.

Of course, knowing what we know about the police and the DA's office, that sliver of justification isn't enough, given the fact that the person may be exonerated in the future.

And this judicial process applies for all people under trial, not just the obvious Hannibal Lecters.

And thus, I'm against the death penalty for strictly practical reasons.

Strategist says

But what if I saw my son in him, and I also sensed he was remorseful, and a victim of older gang members who just used him. My compassion could emerge making me less likely to give him the death penalty.

Yes, that's how jury selection works in such a trial.

Rin says

Dan8267 says

Image there is a real person who isn't able to harm anyone.

Unless that person is a quadriplegic, I cannot imagine such a person. And then ... even if he were let's say physically not in the best of shape, if he's a charismatic communicator, he could convince others to commit malice towards others. That's commonly referred to, as a cult leader figurehead.

What if we had captured Bin Laden and brought him to trial in NYC. He would have been the greatest inspiration ever to millions of wacko Jihadis for decades to come. Killing him instantly was the best thing ever, because the screwed up wackos can't say Allah is protecting him, and Allah wants us to take revenge and die for Islam. It would have been a mess.
My only regret is that Bin Laden did not suffer enough. I would love to torture that rat.
Yes Dan, that's my evolutionary need to inflict great bodily harm on killers like him that is talking, and I don't give a damn. As you mentioned, he feels his terrorist acts were perfectly justified and blessed by Allah. We need to eliminate this thinking among the wackos, and being nice to them ain't gonna cut it.

Strategist says

What if we had captured Bin Laden and brought him to trial in NYC. He would have been the greatest inspiration ever to millions of wacko Jihadis for decades to come. Killing him instantly was the best thing ever, because the screwed up wackos can't say Allah is protecting him, and Allah wants us to take revenge and die for Islam. It would have been a mess.

That's the essence of the Hannibal Lecter/Cult Leader effect, where the mere presence of a demagogue has profound influence on other ppl.

Granted, I don't believe the Boston bomber is in that category but for Osama, it may very well have been the case.

Strategist says

My only regret is that Bin Laden did not suffer enough.

I think that's where you and I differ.

I simply want to see the man disappear, whether it's via execution (which is what had happened, using the heat of the clandestine operation as the cover story) or by putting him into a parallel dimension where he can't interact with the current 3 dimensions on earth.

Strategist says

Basically, to answer your question. Emotion.

Or more precisely, bloodlust. However, that is not an ethical, moral, rational, or decent legal justification for the death penalty.

If someone were to kill a member of my family, I would not only want to kill him, but I would want to irradiate his entire family including innocent children. The reptilian part of my brain would want to completely remove his bloodlines, but what makes me a civilized human being is that I don't listen to the reptilian part of my brain. I listen to my frontal lobe which realizes it is not productive or rational to kill him or his family.

Why should we, as a society, seek to satisfy the obsolete reptilian parts of the brains of victims instead of using our frontal lobes to figure out and do what is best for society? We are animals and as such we have a lot of evolutionary baggage, but we don't have to be held back by that baggage. Support for the death penalty and the desire for revenge is simply evolutionary baggage left over from the days were our reptilian ancestors established hierarchies. Bloodlust had a long period of usefulness, but that ended after the Stone Age. As soon as you start to live in cities with thousands or millions of people, taking out your competitors is no longer a viable option. Bloodlust becomes counterproductive and offers to benefits.