One of the greatest thinkers of our time, John Stuart Mill would contest your assertion that there is no debate. By all means, think what you want about the death penalty. However, you are not infallible. You are nothing but the sum of your limited experiences and thus have no authority to judge anything for the SDMB, let alone mankind.
Actually, opinions sometimes are extremely difficult to debate, This is true when those opinions are derived from values.
Al seems to believe that the state taking the life of a human being is wrong…it’s immoral. I don’t reallk know how this can be refuted. You can say “It is moral”, but what that comes down to is a difference of beliefs.
True, but “difficult to debate” still is possible to debate. Whereas I don’t know how one can debate a fact. Al is treating his belief as fact, which it is not.
I assume you see the intenal humor in this statement. This is the same logic that is used by the Army of God when it lionizes the people who blow up clinics and shoot doctors. Not that the resemblance would deter an educated sophisticated intellect like yourself, but it would be reassuring to the rest of us to know you at least saw the idiocy of the assertion.
While the former are certainly laudable goals, I’d be willing to wager a princely sum of money that most of the people that have been described as monsters, freaks or just plain evil in this thread also share that hope. The later point is only linked together in your diseased imagination. Being a supporter of capital punishment does not mean you are automatically a supporter of all the evil ‘-isms’ you so fervently wish to eradicate.
Before you go off on one of your neurosyphillitic induced flights of fancy about Solyent Green, Big Brother and the glittering tinsel of neo-fascism that’s just waiting to suck us all in to the dark and dank future, why don’t you try checking the fucking facts?
The U.S. Census Bureau has wonderful publications availible, I took the first one that popped up on Google during a search for “United States population growth”. On page eight you’ll find a projected population of around 380 million people, less than half your idiotic ramblings predicted.
Fuck what? Make up your mind. Either it is a debate, in which case you should grow the fuck up and act like the rational “educated sophisticated” person you claim to be, or you should keep your whining and meandering to an absolute minimum, just popping up long enough for the sharper wits to sink their barbs into your spleen before you slither back underneath whatever rock from which you crawled.
Btw… you also lost points from the judges for style when you tossed in the entirely gratuitous reference to Hitler. Not even the East German judge is going to bring you out of that termimal swan dive, buddy.
I think you overestimate your own importance in this venue. I really don’t think anyone here has been trying to change your mind, I doubt that people care enough to expend the energy. What people have been doing is trying to point out the idiotic flaws in your pathetic arguments. Your performance so far has been so rife with idiotic assertions that lack any semblance of coherent reasoning that you might as well break out the big red bucket of paint and inscribe a bull’s eye on your ass.
I happen to support capital punishment, at least on a limited basis. I don’t feel evil, or like a monster. I’m fairly well educated, moderately sophisticated and somewhat intelligent. I have serious reservations about the reaction fo some of the people that have been described as taking such pleasure from the death of Timothy McVeigh, or anyone else. Satisfaction, I can understand, but joy, never. I don’t find the argument that it’s a deterrent particularly convincing. I would say that few people are able to envision themselves in that situation and so it has a negligible effect on their motivations. I think the idea that it’s cheaper to execute someone than to keep them alive in prison to be nothing more than digusting. I also am disturbed by some of the statistics that have been reported concerning the application of capital punishment according to race.
But for all that, I truly believe that there are some crimes that are so heinous and so destructive to this society that capital punishment is the only reasonable reaction. I don’t have any God inspired certainty about the issue, I know that someday I might change my mind. The whole idea about an issue as divisive as this is to share our ideas and opinions. Perhaps we’ll never come to a real consensus and change another person’s mind about it, but standing by like a child and asserting that you have the one and only truth is not only productive, it’s boring as hell.
To paraphrase Dennis Miller: Some people will say that by using the death penalty, we lower ourselves to their level and by doing so, allow them to win. Okay, mabye we do, but it’s nice knowing that a few of their guys aren’t going to be up there on the victory stand.
jab1, I am not trying to debate with you the rightness or wrongness of how I feel. I feel it should be wrong for me to want to kill the two men, and yet…it is how I feel. I would actively participate (including throwing the proverbial switch) in killing the two men who raped me. I would be eager to do so too. Would I do it for anyone else? No. Not even a legally-tried and sentenced convict in a capital punishment State. It is not my business, or my job to do it, and I do have serious doubts about the death penalty from many angles.
However, when it comes down to me personally, and my experience, then these people do deserve death. I would have been legally justified (in my State) if I had shot and killed them during, or immediately after the event. I see no reason why waiting a few years afterwards makes any difference. That sounds ignorant and callous, perhaps, but…it’s how I feel. I know you look down on me, and think I am a really terrible person - an “evil” person. That really got to me.
As you indicated by your posts, it apparantly was not clear from my post that I was referring to certain people or a specific event, as opposed to all people in all cases. And this event was unknown to you. However, you could have asked me more before declaring me “evil”, but then perhaps I should have posted more exactly and in more detail instead. It doesn’t matter anymore, I am tired and sad and cannot discuss this specific event any more in the near future.
Even if I did, you can’t win, however, because like it or not I have played a “victim card” now, although I did not intend to, by having others post a link to where I mention the event. Further discussion now makes it look like you could be “picking on poor Anthracite”, and this is not fair to you if you are trying to represent your viewpoints. People can say what they want about me, but I do recognize what is fair and what isn’t. Maybe I am evil, in your value system. I hope I am not in most people’s, but we will not know. Since I don’t think there is any way a fair debate that can be had here anymore, our conflict and communications are at an end, from my standpoint. I bid you peace.
Moderators, if you ever read this thread again and see my two earlier requests in it…just forget it. Obviously it wasn’t important enough for a response, but I sure would have liked something. Even if you were just going to tell me to pipe down. I’m a big girl, I could have taken that.
I don’t know what to say except that, on some days, I could set a record for jumping to conclusions.
I just love it when the pro-DP folks on the Usenet call me a “murderer lover.”
Ooooh, this makes me so mad, I could just KILL them.
Or maybe they would like to KILL me. Sometimes they certainly sound like it.
Either way, I wonder which of us would get executed?
Would wanting to kill you be a capital offense?