Adolf Hitler.
Ted Bundy.
Son of Sam.
and whoever you would kill that I left out.
When? Under what circumstances? Would I break Baby Adolf’s neck in the cradle? Probably not. Would I give the order for him to hang after a war tribunal? I probably would.
MR
You’re probably asking if we would kill them before they got the chance to do their infamous deeds.
I, for one, would not. I would put each of them in a small room and force them to watch a Sesame Street Live video over and over again.
After a while, they would kill themselves.
What circumstances? Say you had some poison and had an opportunity to pour some in Hitler’s drink?(I know pretty slim chances but just say it happened)itler was before he rose to power.
This one could happen. Or say you saw Ted Bundy or Son of Sam drop a dead body off in a ditch while you were hunting and had a nice high power rifle. Those are two situations. What would you do in those?
Here’s a thought- what about those CNN anchors who were hiding under a table during the Gulf war when Saddam Hussein walked in. If any of them had had a firearm, they could have ended his “reign of terror”, though at the expense of their own lives. Would there have been any takers? Probably not.
I think it was Bernie Shaw, or maybe Blitzer.
What was that quote from the Bible? Vengence is mine, sayeth the Lord.
No, no.
Barney! That would drive anyone to suicide.
Or the teletubbies.
I read a book a couple of years ago called Making History by Stephen Fry (who is also a well-known actor, having appeared in “Peter’s Friends” and “Wilde”). In the novel, an historian and a scientist join forces to prevent Hitler from ever having been born, by introducing a sterilizing agent into the well from which Alois Hitler, his father, draws water for their home.
The net result is that someone else comes to power in Hitler’s stead, someone so much smarter and more efficient that Nazi Germany wins WWII. A very interesting and funny (yes, funny) book. Recommended reading.
Anyway, the lesson is, “Beware the unintended consequences of your actions.”
No, I would kill Bob Saget instead.
Hey Freyer,
I’m not saying I would do it. I have very mixed feelings about it. I know the Bible says that. But the Bible also doesn’t forbid the death penalty. I mean if you saw Ted Bundy dropping a poor young girl’s body in a ditch you know he killed her otherwise (you have seen his mug on the news). So why waste tax payer money on a trial and a chance some sleazy lawyer would get him off when you could be the justice right then.
I don’t think a court in the world would convict you so would that be wrong to do him in?
Then you got Hitler that killed so many of God’s people would he hold that against you? Also maybe God would be using a person for his vengence?
Au contraire Wildest One. Just about any court, at least in the U.S., would convict you. The courts typically don’t look too kindly on vigilante justice. That is, after all, why we have the courts in the first place. There’s that Constitution and all.
As for God, well, I can’t say one way or another whether He might hold that sort of thing against you. But then it was His dictate, “Thou shalt not kill,” yes?
Depends on how much I get paid to do the job.
Ok mauve dog,
Let’s look at my scenerio I see Ted Bundy dumping the poor girls body in the ditch and I tell him to stop and he tries to take off so I take him out. If you even were on the jury knowing what this guy has done to women, would you convict me? I bet most people wouldn’t.
And gunslinger you funny.
**Wildest Bill worte:
I’m not saying I would do it. I have very mixed feelings about it. I know the Bible says that. But the Bible also doesn’t forbid the death penalty. I mean if you saw Ted Bundy dropping a poor young girl’s body in a ditch you know he killed her otherwise (you have seen his mug on the news). So why waste tax payer money on a trial and a chance some sleazy lawyer would get him off when you could be the justice right then.**
WB, there’s a big difference between using the death penalty and viligante justice, which is what you seem to be advocating.
Regarding your Ted Bundy example, I wouldn’t know he killed someone unless I saw him kill that person with my own two eyes. No matter how much I’ve heard about a person, I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt.
And I would MUCH rather “waste” tax dollars on a trial where the evidence weighs heavily against someone rather than see an innocent person get the death penalty and killed without benefit of a trial. Call me old fashion, but I do believe in our Bill of Rights.
I don’t think a court in the world would convict you so would that be wrong to do him in?
Emphatically YES!! In fact, I find it rather cold-blooded of you to consider anything else otherwise. I would only kill (another human) if it were in self-defense or in the defense of another. And hopefully I would keep enough moral sense about me to simply wound the agressor to prevent him from killing myself or the other rather than killing him outright.
Then you got Hitler that killed so many of God’s people would he hold that against you? Also maybe God would be using a person for his vengence?
If I would be the chosen instruments of the Gods for vengence, They’re going to have to give me a pretty good indication of that. I wouldn’t presume to take such a responsibility upon myself otherwise.
Good points freyr other than the girl he killed didn’t get much of a fair trial(and sorry for spelling you name wrong on the other post)
What about this scenerio. Say you saw Ted Bundy strangle the life out of a girl and started running away then would you shoot em or wound em? After all you saw him do it why should we waste time on a trial?
I would kill Saint Paul, somewhere before the road to Damascus. He ruined a perfectly good religion that was based on love of fellow man, by making one’s salvation more important than how you treat people here on earth. That concept is responsible for more pain, torture and death than all the athiestic dictators, serial killers and madmen who ever walked the earth.
Hasn’t anyone seen the Terminator movies?
I was serious. 
::waits a minute. D@mn 1-post-in-60-seconds rule! My computer’s slow, so I’m using multiple windows!::
(a) regarding Ted Bundy, there are two separate questions being discussed here… one is:
(i) would you travel back in time and kill a young Ted Bundy, knowing that he’s going to grow up and kill a large number of people
(ii) you encounter someone in the midst of a Ted Bundy-like crime. Do you kill them?
(i) is a very tough question… but if my only two options are doing nothing or going back and killing him, as opposed to going back to a baby Ted Bundy and kidnapping him and brning him forward in time and letting him be adopted and raised by loving parents (with occasional psychological tests), well, if I had only those two options I think I’d kill him. Call it preemptive self defense
(ii) is also a tough question which depends entirely on the circumstances… if I see things which leave me with absolutely no conclusion but that this person has just killed another human being with no provocation and has done so other times in the past and enjoys doing so and will try to do so in the future, and if there is no way for me to arrest or wound (shoot in the knee) or otherwise stop this person, then I might consider it. But it’s hard to see how I could be so certain. If I just encounter someone dumping a body, well, there aren’t many good reasons for someone to be dumping a body, but there are many such reasons that don’t give me the right to kill that person. If I walk in and witness a killing (but am too late to stop it), well, again I don’t really know everything that just went on.
(b) regarding Hitler, this is far more cut and dried than the Ted Bundy question… I would not kill him. It’s easy enough to kill Ted Bundy because the chances of there being some unintended large scale side effects are extremely small. However, who’s to say what would come of killing Hitler? (pldennson mentioned this)
First of all, maybe there would be someone worse than Hitler. And for that matter, there arguably was someone worse than Hitler, namely Stalin, and one might argue that Hitler and Stalin kind of balanced each other out, and either one without the other would have been even worse. Alternatively, one could argue that World War II happened at precisely the right time, because if nuclear weapons had been developed any time other than the middle of a war (and it seems likely that the development of nuclear power would have led to the development of nuclear weapons eventually, even without the Manhattan ProjecT), they might have been manufactured in much larger numbers before being used… suppose the Vietnam war had happened with both sides having Nukes, and neither side having the example of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to show what happens when Nukes are used on real people?
It sounds horribly cold blooded to say this, what with World War II, the holocaust, nukes, the cold war, etc., but the past 60 years have really turned out pretty damn well, all things considered. And by killing Hitler you land us in who knows what situation.
For an interesting book on the topic of messing with the past, I recommend Pastwatch: The Redemption of Christopher Columbus by Orson Scott Card
I would say that this question presupposes that people are destined to become what they are. That is, no matter what the circumstances Hitler was raised in, he will still grow up to be a very effective fascist dictator hellbent on annihlating a certain race of people from the earth. I’d imagine it would be a very depressing realization for the parents of the world. To effectively answer this question you’d have to take into account the age-old question nature vs. nurture. I’d say that killing them would be completely amoral. If you really had any control over the situation you would become the benevolent presence in their life, trying to lead them to the proper path.
I remember I read a short story about a man who saw the future. He saw visions where quite a few children grew up to become terrible people. The only way he saw was to kill them while they were children. He did this for a while before it was revealed that one of his own children was going to grow up to become worse than Hitler. After a crisis of faith he kills his children and then himself in horrible, gory detail. Too bad he killed himself before he found out his wife was pregnant again.
In real life we don’t know the future, so just do the best you can.