Re: Death penalty

pcg <[email protected]>
Newsgroups gmane.music.dadl.ot
Message-ID <[email protected]>
>> Sorry, Paul its not a fact.  It is your opinion and one you obviously believe
>> passionately in but the level of you passion does not make it a fact.
>
>>I agree with your last point, but not with the former. Please show how
> the death penalty has served a useful social purpose. (To be clear,
> this would need to be a purpose that is not also served by
> imprisonment.)<
>
> Um, what was that you asked me previously....?   You need to set forth some
> objective criteria before you can bandy about the word fact, and "useful social
> purpose" is obviously not one of them.

Sorry, I've read this through a few times, and I don't understand what
you're saying. Would you mind rephrasing?

> I've already provided a number of them
> to you, which you obviously don't accept
> and I'm not going to waste my time typing
> them again.

You've provided *nothing.*

I'm asking a very simple thing: What useful social purpose does
killing prisoners serve? I submit that there are none, and therefore
it amounts to nothing more than vengeance. If you disagree, then
you'll need to do better than the vague and dubious claim that it
somehow provides deterrence (when it manifestly does no such thing).

> And who says it *needs* to be a purpose not also served by
> imprisonment?

I do. I'm saying life imprisonment is sufficient to protect society.
If you believe we need to go a step further, you need to show why.

> > I use the term "murder" because it's an easy shorthand, but
> > if it bothers you and you prefer "immoral homicide,"
> > that's fair enough.
>
> It may be easy shorthand but it is wrong.  Murder is a legal term defining what
> forms of homicide society has decided are illegal.  Not all homicides are
> murder, hence to refer to a homicide that is not illegal as homicide renders the
> word meaningless.

I've already surrendered use of the word, why are you still going on
about it? This long rabbit-trail concerning my use of "murder" instead
of "immoral homicide" hasn't distracted me from the original point,
which was that the death penalty *is* a realistic punishment
possibility, and that didn't prevent any of the 16,000+ murders last
year.

-- 
-pcg
 [email protected]

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