Death Penalty

[Aisling]

Ah, is that where the "unAmerican" bullshit comes from when people argue against the death penalty? Just because there's twelve of them doesn't make them any more qualified either.

Life sentences are cheaper, avert the hypocrisy factor, and in the case of extreme serial killers, psychological insight can be gained and possibly applied to prevent repeat situations. What argument is there for the death penalty besides "they deserve it because they killed someone too"?

Just the fact that life sentences are cheaper should be enough reason to abolish the death penalty. The economy is already in the shitter and you want to waste more money on executions? You want to continue ruining our nation be my guest.

 

[J.T.]

I love how you bring up a point, then as soon as it's disproven label it a "distraction from the point".

I'm not to decide, twelve jurors are.

Way to miss the point entirely. Who the hell are those twelve people to decide who gets to live or die?

That's the way it's always been. We've always placed our trust in the people.

Just because you have always done it doesn't mean you should be doing it.

Also yeah we all know people are completely infallible, it's not like anyone has ever been wrongly convicted. And if we do wrongly convict and execute an innocent, then hey! we can always just let them go fr-- oh. Oh crap.

You want to take on a founding principle of our nation be my guest.

Oh great, next thing you know you'll be calling anyone who opposes you "unAmerican" or something (and I'm a Canadian so honestly I don't have much of a problem with that label).

 

[opaltiger]

How anyone can support the death penalty with the knowledge that people have been released from death row is beyond me.

Let me spell it out: it is a virtual certainty that the US government (to use an example of a supposedly developed country) has condoned the murder of an innocent human being.

How the hell anyone can justify that is beyond me.

 

[Pwnemon]

I'm not gonna call people un-American like Joe Biden does. But I am saying good freaking luck getting people to change a founding principle of the nation.

Postninja: how can you support driving when certainly giving people drivers licenses will cause deaths?

 

[Aisling]

[21:22] surskitty: ..
[21:22] zuu: Licensure has little to do with deaths
[21:22] surskitty: the whole point of a driver's license is to try to keep awful drivers off the road
[21:22] zuu: if anything if someone gets a license it will make them less likely to kill someone with a car
[21:22] zuu: so in short: what is he talking about

Killing people is a founding principle of the nation? That's the epitome of "an eye for an eye", killing someone for killing others. You know how fucking primitive that is? That's a terrible principle. I want it fucking gone. And people like you who are unwilling to change their minds for the better for... who knows why are exactly why stupid and wasteful practices like this carry on. There's no reason for it to be there. Just because it has been doesn't mean we can't fix it now. That's what progress is. Fixing previously existing problems. Are you really against progress? Go Amish and get rid of your computer right now. That's the least you could do.

 

[Dannichu]

I thought America was founded on the principle of freedom (or has The West Wing taught me wrongly D:)?
Which, you know, is pretty amusing in a discussion about imprisoning/executing people.

Giving people driver's licenses cannot in any way be compared to a government actively executing its own citizens. Thus comes one of the oldest arguments against the death penalty - "it's one thing for Joe Public to kill an innocent person, another thing entirely for the State to do it".

 

[ultraviolet]

Postninja: how can you support driving when certainly giving people drivers licenses will cause deaths?

yes, but capital punishment is entirely unneccesary; it doesn't work as a deterrant, it's hypocritical, and there is no way to be sure who you're killing is innocent. driver's licences are so people don't get in a car and drive dangerously. I don't know where you're coming from with this analogy.

edit: and even so - it took me months to get over the fact that I could very easily kill someone while driving.

That's the way it's always been

so black people and women shouldn't be allowed to vote? slavery should be reinstated? all of these things were the way they'd always been until society changed.

I mean this is nothing anyone hasn't said before but since you seem to be incapable of replying to anyone...

 

[Pwnemon]

Way to intentionally misinterpret my post Alruane. There's no real way you would have read that a the death penalty instead of popular sovereignty as being a founding principle.

On the other hand, let me show the similarities between licenses and death penalty trials:

1) They're both state issued.
2) They both cost a lot of money.
3) They both have a considerable chance of resulting in death.
4) They both are used to make society a better place to live.

Edit at ninja: How many times must people bring this up? You're right let's change everything for no real reason just because it must be inherently good.

Tomorrow the national currency will change to lolipops. All cars must be painted blue with a smiley face on the left hand side. Our official language will become pig Latin and cursive will be illegal.

What the heck? I'm not saying all change is bad, but until you can give me specific examples as to why YOU can't be trusted to make decisions then STOP FREAKING REPEATING THAT RETARDED DOGMA.

 

[surskitty]

No. Driving has a chance of resulting in death. A driver's license exists to reduce that chance by limiting driving to people who know how to and theoretically will drive safely. A rather better analogy would involve death penalty as a deterrent to people killing each other (though the death penalty is used disproportionately against people with white victims) and laws requiring a driver's license as a deterrent to bad drivers, but that's still a pretty awful analogy.

 

[Aisling]

Way to miss the fucking points in that post! So I'll just post my edit in a new post since you probably missed it

BESIDES THAT, whether or not it can be viably abolished has nothing to do with whether or not it actually should be! Bringing up again the "good old days" when anyone who wasn't a white man had no rights, it was "Good luck changing how things have always been!" but look where we are now. It's the exact same line of stupid and close-minded thinking.

So since you've resorted to arguing whether it's possible to "change a founding principle of the nation" instead of the topic at hand, whether or not it's even right, you have just tacitly admitted that you've got no ammunition left and you're just blowing air. Not that you haven't been changing the subject whenever your arguments have been handily proven fallacious anyway. You lose. Believe what you want but they don't properly justify the practice of the death penalty, and there's no way you can make them do so. Even if you won't change your mind you lost the argument itself a long time ago.

 

[Pwnemon]

Blow one little statement about popular sovereignty out of proportion to call it my whole argument for the death penalty why goddamn don't you.

 

[ultraviolet]

Edit at ninja: How many times must people bring this up? You're right let's change everything for no real reason just because it must be inherently good.

... because wanting to not kill innocent people isn't a real reason? you don't think that's an inherently good thing, to not kill innocent people?

...

nevermind the fact that it doesn't work as a deterrant and all those other points you keep ignoring

 

[Aisling]

Blow one little statement about popular sovereignty out of proportion to call it my whole argument for the death penalty why goddamn don't you.

I'm not calling it your whole argument. I did a reversal on your argument that the death penalty is actually still cheaper, so I'm counting that too. "whenever your arguments have been handily proven fallacious" Arguments is plural there, you see?

 

[#1 bro]

I'm pretty sure all the jurors do is decide whether or not the defendant is guilty. The judge determines the punishment.

Anyway I think the point that Pwnemon is trying to make is that deaths that the government could, in theory, prevent occur almost all the time. However, the government doesn't do anything about it for the "greater good." (whether those quotation marks belong of course depends on the situation). So the fact that the government has almost certainly killed an innocent person - ONE innocent person out of 300 million American citizens - does not mean that the death penalty should be abolished. We must pay the price of keeping the streets safe.

Of course, Pwnemon is wrong, for reasons that I'm sure everyone except him is aware of (lifetime imprisonment is just as safe as the death penalty in this regard). But that's not my point.

My point is that it's really aggravating me how people are taking the poorly worded arguments that Pwnemon is making and purposefully misconstruing what he is trying to say, then saying things like "I'm sorry, but how does that make any fucking sense" and resorting to ad hominems.

For example:

Killing people is a founding principle of the nation? That's the epitome of "an eye for an eye", killing someone for killing others. You know how fucking primitive that is? That's a terrible principle. I want it fucking gone. And people like you who are unwilling to change their minds for the better for... who knows why are exactly why stupid and wasteful practices like this carry on. There's no reason for it to be there. Just because it has been doesn't mean we can't fix it now. That's what progress is. Fixing previously existing problems. Are you really against progress? Go Amish and get rid of your computer right now. That's the least you could do.

This shit just makes me angry. Can we just all tell Pwnemon why he is wrong without feeling the need to attack him? It looks really bad for "our" side when 16, 17, 18 year olds are swearing and using ad hominems while a thirteen year old is respectfully presenting his admittedly ridiculous arguments, and continuing to do so despite being attacked in almost every post and from every direction.

:\

edit: ninja'd by even more pointless immature bashing. let's all settle down, shall we?

 

[Pwnemon]

It doesn't work as a deterrent orly? I would think if I was planning on killing a dude the fact that I may get killed back would deter me pretty well so I would like a source on that one.

I think it's inherently good to not kill innocent people but the way to do that is not to let murderers go free.

Edit at postninjas: zeta pretty much summed up my argument. Though I do have one thing to sat which is that a "Life" imprisonment isn't actually life. It's a forty year term over here and only fifteen in Britain.

 

[nyuu]

What the heck? I'm not saying all change is bad, but until you can give me specific examples as to why YOU can't be trusted to make decisions then STOP FREAKING REPEATING THAT RETARDED DOGMA.

"I think the government worked great back then, you think it should reflect the times."

these were your words when you insisted that the constitution, the basis of us government and law, should not change

you have explicitly stated that any and all change pertaining to the government is bad

your belief that any and all change pertaining to the government being bad is the basis of a lot of your arguments

you spent a number of posts arguing that the constitution was ideal and should not be changed because it was fine as it was and because changes would make it different from how it was when it was envisioned, or something

you are saying that all change is bad
later explaining that when you told us "all change is bad" you did not mean "all change is bad" does not make it better
which is it?


(also what do you even mean by "but until you can give me specific examples as to why YOU can't be trusted to make decisions"? I cannot find whatever it is in the thread this is directed at)

 

[Pwnemon]

Well, it's directed at Ultraviolet claiming that we should change the principle of popular sovereignty just because it has always been that way.

 

[Aisling]

Well, it's directed at Ultraviolet claiming that we should change the principle of popular sovereignty just because it has always been that way.

That's not what uv was saying. She wasn't specifically referring to popular sovereignty, nor was she saying it should be changed just because it has always been that way. She was saying that just because something has always been a certain way is not a good enough reason to not change it when there is a need to change it.

more specifically
[22:13] ultraviolet_: his post confuses me
[22:14] ultraviolet_: I'm not entirely sure he got what I was saying at all
[22:14] ultraviolet_: you can't say 'that's the way it's always been' in an argument about human rights
[22:14] ultraviolet_: because it's entirely irrelvant

 

[#1 bro]

It doesn't work as a deterrent orly? I would think if I was planning on killing a dude the fact that I may get killed back would deter me pretty well so I would like a source on that one.

When I had to write a paper on this, I found an equal amount of sources that said that the death penalty does and does not deter crime (more of the latter, I think, but my memory might be biased).

Anyway, think about it this way. If you are about to kill someone, and thinking of the consequences, I don't think there would be too much of a distinction. At least for me - I feel like a life in jail would so hardly be life at all, that the two punishments would be more or less interchangeable. Never seeing a tree or a family member or an animal ever again vs. just being killed... I don't know, I don't think most people are contemplating the differences.

Besides, I don't think those who just murdered one person are ever given the death sentence anymore. The people who would recieve it, i.e. serial killers, almost definitely do not care about the death penalty, I would hazard.

 

[nyuu]

(This is a very important point, so I will elaborate juuust a little)

She is not arguing that change itself is inherently good. For that matter she isn't arguing that it is inherently bad.
Arguing against the claim that change is inherently bad is not the same as saying it is inherently good.

Additionally, arguing that change is not inherently bad is not the same thing as arguing that making ~random changes~ is a good course of action.

Being in favor of making precise, specific changes in response to actual occurrences is different from being in favor picking of picking rulings out of a hat. Do you agree?


"It has always been that way; it was good enough for my grandparents and is good enough for me" is not an argument when it comes to how you treat others.