The Death Penalty

Thou shalt not kill? Or is that the Book of Revelations coming out of you?
And once again, White_Rook brings up the good point. Initially, killing others was for the intention of attaining food or when we're faced with a grave situation that is a matter of life and death--as it is human nature to want to survive. But in our more industrialized society now, where our race has become more sophisticated and more in control of the happenings that occur, there is hardly a point that 'forces' an individual to kill for someone 'to survive'--at least in a moment of immediacy. People who argue that "Killing this person will help humanity survive" are doing no more than rationalizing a personal belief.

Canada's Health Care is not a lot worse than America. You do realize many Americans come over here because of our Health Care? Your Health Care is optimum for people with decent salaries who can afford to enter a clinic and spend three bucks for a single advil from the counter.

And by the way, as White_Rook already stated, saying it takes longer to get 'major surgery' is incorrect. As well, I'd like to point out that a lot of major surgeries are actually free, and are performed at no cost of the patient. My aunt required surgery for breast cancer over the last year. She didn't pay a cent for her surgery, nor her chemo therapy, nor her medication because breast cancer (along with many other forms of cancer *and* other surgery-imperative illnesses) are covered by my province's OHIP.

Beats a three dollar advil any day.

EDIT:

The World Health Organization did a ranking of the health systems in different countries around the world a few years ago:

Canada is 30th
United States is 37th.

The country of Chile seems to have a better Health Care system than you do, along with Finland, Costa Rica, Dominica, Denmark, and Australia.

Said like a true conservative. This is probably why we disagree. I can't for the life of me, see how that works, especially if you're arguing financial factors. It's only natural for a government not to bite off more than they can chew, but doing absolutely nothing is definitely not the answer either.

 

You people seem to be taking my viewpoints to the extremes. I never once said a government should do nothing for its people, but I don't feel the government owes every single person in the country free health care or other self-attainable services. What I'm saying when I say that giving too much is bad is this; if the people rely too heavily on the government, they lose their independence and their ability to provide for themselves. Take social security for example; everyone knows that social security in the U.S. isn't doing so hot at the moment, and some speculate that it might not exist later on. If we rely too heavily on this social security, it might not even be there later and we will be, to put it bluntly, royally screwed. However, if we take matters into our own hands and we save up our own money and make a financial plan, we can create our own individual social securities. However, this isn't the topic...

"Thou shalt not kill" is generalized to me. Just as is murder in today's laws. It is the law that you cannot kill, unless it is during self defense or in defense of a family member/someone you love. Such is the same with the bible. Many times it gives times when it is permissible to kill so long as you take no pleasure in it. " Thou shall not suffer a witch to live" comes to mind here. There's also a passage, though I don't remember which, which outlines a punishment as stoning a person to death. You all seem to think that if anyone kills now-a-days it's out of pleasure. That's not the case. Often times it is out of self defense or defense of another. Sometimes it is for a strong ideal. And to say that killing is not in our nature is ignorance; throughout history man has always killed. Whether it is to gain food, gain honor or take land, it's always been a part of humanity. Not a century has gone by that there hasn't been a war of some sort.

Also, I'm not saying killing is our only instinct. I don't see how you would have even gotten that from what I said. We have other emotions and ideals like love and honor in order to balance out the urge and need to kill. The emotions we have help us to know when killing is required. Some people don't have those emotions and thus they kill. Some people have nothing but those emotions and could NEVER kill. Anger and love balance eachother out, and thus we require both in order to survive and live. Killing will always be in our nature, accept it or not, and I believe that it is society's responsibility to make sure it is done controllably and to those that deserve it.


Edit: Quick little add-on, I looked at that list of the countries with best healthcare, and all of the countries that received better scores have a much smaller population than the United States does, meaning they have more people weighing the score in one direction or the other. Can't always look at the numbers.

 

You know what? Like Abraham Lincoln said :"It's bad. It's damned bad." Ooops wrong Lincoln quote. Here is the right one:"Whenever I hear any one arguing for slavery I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally." and another: "Although volume upon volume is written to prove slavery a very good thing, we never hear of the man who wishes to take the good of it, by being a slave himself." I hope you get my point. If you really think what you said just switch the words slavery in those quotes with death penalty.

 

I don't plan on ever killing a man, why would I have to worry about the death penalty? None of us have to worry about whether we have a death penalty or not, only the fellas who are breaking the laws of both man and humanity as a whole.

 

Obviously my point didn't come across as clear as I thought. If Squishy was referring to what I said then I don't get where you are coming from. If not then I am sorry. I didn't say anything about worrying about the death penalty. I simply said that if you or anybody else believes the death penalty is good you are just as sick as those slave owners and criminals being put to death.

 

I -was- reffering to your post. You gave a quote saying, basically, " since you all talk about how good slavery is, you should try being a slave " which, to me, means you're telling me to try the death penalty.

I do think the death penalty is good. Murderers and rapists deserve to die. Period. To tell me I'm sick because of that offends me DEEPLY. I can say a person who is for abortion is sick and twisted because they're killing babies, but I don't. So don't try and tell me I'm as bad as a slave owner or a criminal.

 

Off topic, but the World Health Organization has taken population into account; it's one of the factors they look at. Being the World Health Organization, it's laughable that you think they'd overlook that.

i.e. Population isn't an issue with that ranking list.

 

In some cases the Death Penalty is the only way to go. Murderers don't deserve life and to have what the ones they murdered can't.

 

Forgive me if I don't really believe that. The United States has a lower death rate than at least half of those top 30 countries, plus a higher life expectancy.


And thank you, BlessedOne, I completely agree. =P

 

You still don't get it. Wishing for somebodies death is a terrible thing which nobody should wish for. It doesn't matter how evil somebody is they shouldn't have to die because a man (who shouldn't have the right to decide that) says so. But now I can see your next post : well what about Saddam?

 

Well third world countries aside, the United States has a majority of the highest mortality rates as a result of obescity and cancer alone. There are a lot more deaths per capita in the United States from Breast Cancer than in countries like Japan.

On to the topic.

It's difficult to ignore the issue of the death penalty of a country that prides itself in mixing religion with state. You'd think a very moral and Christian establishment would find another way to turn the other cheek and work towards bettering the person as opposed to just judging them unfit to no longer live. I find it most ironic that it occurs mostly in the states that constantly love to yam the bible and Christ down other people's throats. I think they completely miss the message they think they're believing in. In fact they bloody well contradict themselves. You can't have Chirst and kill your neighbour too. And then if you really want contradiction you're opposed to destroying an embryo, whose "life" is willingly open to debate, yet you approve of killing criminals. Yes, you could say that the person on death row made a conscious decision and chose to commit the crime and so deserves to die. But a life is still a life no? It should not be up to an establishment that believes in morality and right to life to take that very same life from another. And there's no difference. Some people seem to have claimed that every embryo has a purpose, so what if we found out that a couple hundred being aborted were going to one day become malcious serial killers? Would it then be alright to abort them? You're asking for a double standard, and bringing religion into the matter just ends up screwing you over even more.

 

It is true that some people deserve death. But a government should not have the power to deliver it. It is different when police have to shoot someone because they are too dangerous, but once someone is in captivity there is no reason to kill. Death should only be applied when there is no other alternitive and not doing so could cause the deaths of many more, which is a rare situation.
The government should not make decisions based on revenge (e.g. someone who killed someone has to be killed in turn), it should make decisions that are safest for everyone, including killers.
I have been thinking about the Death Penalty for years, and I always come to the conclusion that the issue is not about justice or fairness, but rather the amount of power a government should be allowed to have (especially when it calls itself a Democracy)

 

To say that a criminal who is caught and in prison is no longer a danger means you're fairly naive. There are hundreds of prison murders each year in which criminals kill other criminals. So to say that just leaving them in prison is "moral" is also a contradiction.

Our government doesn't pride itself in mixing religion with government, in fact it is a rule of the government to keep religion and state apart. If you want proof, ask the judge who was forced to remove a statue of the 10 commandments from infront of his court. Since not everyone is religious, the debate on the death penalty cannot be a religious one. It CAN be a moral one, but religion should be kept out of it; especially concerning the United States. The death penalty is practical in keeping criminals in check and keeping everyone safe. If we do not kill dangerous people there is a chance they could hurt someone. To say that a murderer doesn't deserve to be put to death is like saying killing someone in self defense is wrong as well and the defender should also be punished. If you think killing criminals is wrong then you must think all killing is wrong; defense or not.

 

Putting a murderer to death and killing in self-defense are two completely different things. In self-defense there is a current act being commited that, if no action to stop it is taken, it'll pose a threat to oneself or others at the present time. A prisoner on death row poses no threat as long as they're in prison. If prisoners are killing eachother it's because the prison system isn't as good as it should be. There are some cases where prisons are completely run by the inmates and those working there are simply under an agreement that things won't get too "out of hand". Yes it may produce deterance and reduce prisoner population, but either way it's still contradictory to lobby for the morality of preserving life and wanting to kill it at the same time. I brought up religion because the death penalty is mostly sanctioned in states that see morality and religion to be one and the same.

But even with removing the religion aspect from it my argument still stands. You yourself have said that to take the life of a fetus is wrong, yet you support taking the life of a criminal by means of public execution. One life that is arguably debateable as opposed to one that, even if slim, still has a chance to better themselves even if it requires medication or more solitude from the world. A life is still a life regardless. Like I said before, what happens if you know that a certain fetus is going to grow up to be responsible for the mass extinction of the human race. Would it be alright to abort it then? Right to life should apply to all living things. If there's no moral excuse to end a life before it fully begins, then there's no moral excuse to end one that can still continue and learn from it's mistakes, and nothing a person does should have merit to strip them of that natural born right.

 

Very true!

I am against the Death Penalty, by executing these people aren't we just sinking to their level? And what about the cases where after the execution has taken place the defendant was then proved to actually be innocent? I realise the strain they put on taxpayers (heck our prisons in England aren't much better), but if we killed everyone who strained that there would need to be a serious mass culling! Besides where do you draw the line at what crime constitutes the death penalty? Personaly Ithink death is too good for those people, they would get to escape and move on whilst those they hurt are forever traumatised by the crimes.

 

I didn't base my beliefs on what COULD happen, but what HAS happened. A fetus has done nothing wrong and as such does not deserve to die (by the way, in my arguments on abortion I never said anything about it being morally right or wrong to kill a child, I said that the woman should have to deal with the consequences of having sex, so your argument against me is meaningless...), whereas a criminal on death row has already committed horrible acts. That's the difference, and a huge one at that. I put no stock in the future because it is unpredictable. The past, however, cannot be changed and is always the same. And by the way, I never said public executions, I'm actually against public executions for the most part. The Saddam thing disgusted me, though I still believe he deserved to die.

 

Wouldntcha rather he got beat up in prison thought? And died a horrible slow burn? Horrible as that sounds, I think its a much more just punishment than getting off easy with a lethal injection. Painfree...yeah, just what hommocidal maniacs deserve

 

They are a waste of jail space, money, and resources. Plus...
Imagine a warden coming to you and saying, your going to be on death row, you have 2 months left to live - that wouldnt drive you insane?

 

Except that a lot of people are on death row for a heck of a lot longer than 2 months!

 

Yeah between sentencing and the actual exectution, it can take years.
What was your origional point Wabba? It seemed that you contradicted yourself? *Is confused*