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Saddam's half-brother wasn't the Highlander

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by Football_Bat, Jan 15, 2007.

  1. Killick

    Killick Well-Known Member

    This Thread Is Useless Without Pictures, I believe.
     
  2. You're setting up the typical straw man. I believe that, philosophically and intellectually, one must separate himself from the individual who is being condemned and focus on the action itself, which is the state-approved and state-administered ending of a life. Lacking evidence to the contrary, I think the matter should be approached with the idea that we're extinguishing the consciousness of a human being. They don't wake up in fantasy land. At least we have to assume that's not the case, lacking hard evidence to the contrary.

    The death penalty is a lot easier to swallow if you're a religious person who believes that an afterlife awaits - that the person can find redemption/salvation, or barring that, punishment at the hand of a higher authority. It's more difficult if you're a humanist who feels this is/may be all there is. You are condemning someone to nothingless. Not a black void. But nothing. It's difficult to come to terms, for me, with that as a form of punishment.

    You've seen the videos or at least heard about them. It's blood sport to these people, pure and simple. And thus the cycle continues. A greater respect for life will be mankind's pinnacle, if we can make it there against the darker side of our own nature.
     
  3. Mighty_Wingman

    Mighty_Wingman Active Member

    Yeah, but if the individual is a fucking malignant shit like Saddam and his brother, what's the difference?

    And who gives a shit about the afterlife? Whether Saddam is going to heaven, hell or nothing at all doesn't seem to have much to do with whether or not they should be executed.
     
  4. It solves nothing and it puts us in contact with base parts of our nature that we should be trying to move away from as a civilized and advanced species.
     
  5. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    I don't care whether Saddam's soul is going to spend eternity in the gates of Paradise playing Crisco Twister with 72 virgins, centuries festering in purgatory, or the rest of time burning in flaming hell, or whether his soul evaporated into nothingness the second the floorboard dropped out. I don't care.

    That's for him, Allah, Jesus, Yahweh, Buddha or whoever else they got running the admission gates up there to figure out.

    I don't care if he's executed in a horrifically bloody decapitation, fried in the electric chair, ventilated by a firing squad, or simply allowed to slip away to dreamland with a nice gentle lethal injection. I don't care.

    I want his existence on the planet earth finished, so he can't do any more of the crap which so richly earned him early termination from existence. We have more than enough malignant sick fuckers on the planet, whatever is done to thin the herd a bit is a good thing.
     
  6. Starman, wouldn't removing him from society permanently serve the same function?
     
  7. Starman

    Starman Well-Known Member

    Not conclusively.
     
  8. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    Actually, it does solve something. It prevents the executee from doing any more harm to society ever again.
     
  9. Any risk of them re-entering society - through a coup, a revolution, whatever it is - is too much of a risk for you to take? Am I interpreting that correctly? I can respect that.

    Ultimately, I think that state-sponsored capital punishment perpetuates the cycle of violence. I know this sounds like hippy-dippy utopian bullshit or whatever, but it all depends on where you're sitting and what you grew up being presented as fact. If a martian landed here and was told about Christianity, he may think we're a species of fairy-tale believing wackos.
     
  10. Armchair_QB

    Armchair_QB Well-Known Member

    Well, we agree on something.
     
  11. Then why do countries that have eliminated capital punishment have lower violent crime rates than the countries that still have it?

    Answer: Violence begets violence. As difficult as it can be because we by nature seek retribution, those countries ensure that the violence ends with the criminal. They don't perpetuate it.
     
  12. Because your way is working so well?
     
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