Re: [Bulk] Re: Death penalty

> And on your last one - when exactly can murder be justified?  If homicide were
> justified it wouldn't be murder.

>I should have been more clear on this point -- the person committing
the "sin" can justify their behavior to themselves.<


I'd say a little harmless flirting doesn't need quite the same justification as 
murder but I'm funny that way, ("funny how?").   But I'll get off the roundabout 
on this one; I think we both know where each other is coming from.


>To your more direct point, what if I said *no* homicide is justified?
Would that make it *all* murder? I suspect that in your mind, it would
not, and you would prefer that I didn't impose my viewpoint upon you.
Why, then, should I accept that any homicide is justified, simply
because someone else says it is?<

No, because murder is intrinsically a legal term.  You can say you think it 
should be considered murder and even vote that way if it were put to a vote, but 
when one uses the term murder they are necessarily making a statement about the 
legality of the act.  


We also have to look at what you mean by justified.  If you are talking strictly 
moral justification I suppose you can say or accept anything you want.  It's 
when you start imposing that moral justification, or lack thereof, as a legal 
matter that you run into trouble.  And isn't the legality of the death penalty 
what we are really debating?  You don't believe it is justified so you think it 
should be illegal, I think it is so I think should be legal.


>Me killing your mom is not the moral equivalent of you killing my cat,
but a legitimate analogy could be drawn between the two -- not to
demonstrate that a cat's life is worth as much as a human life, but
that it's cruel to deprive someone of a relationship they treasure.
Unless someone specifically says they're demonstrating a moral
equivalent with their analogy, you're attacking... (wait for it)... a
straw man.<

Sorry I'm not feeling it.  I don't need an example of killing a cat to 
demonstrate how cruel it is to kill someones mother regardless of how 
devastating the death of the cat might be to anyone.  For me, that is a perfect 
analogy of how flawed the original analogy was.   IOW analogizing killing a 
mother to killing a cat is about as useful as analogizing a flirt to a 
murderer.   

Why use an analogy but to make a point?  Suffice it to say the more tenuous the 
analogy the less persuasive it is and at some point it become rather useless.    


And if some throws up a straw man I don't have much of an alternative but to 
knock it down.   "Everybody loves to knock down straw men"  


Mike F.  

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