Does that make you a murderer, too?

And what exactly, praytell, outrages you about my comments?

However, I've always wondered why in my state we give each school district $3,800 per student for his or her yearly education.
It costs $26,000 yearly for each prisoner. The physical plants housing students are often meager at best, while the prisons are in much better conditions. A recent survey noted that the "majority" of prisoners read at about a 5th grade level. Maybe we ought to look at our funding priorities. Security is I'm sure a large part of the funding. Still, it makes one wonder.

Look, 170 dead people and another 100 injured is no joke. That's a lot of pain and suffering for a lot of people.

And letting killers live behind bars is expensive and may even be seen as a pampered existence, and perhaps does, as JJH says, give extra pain to the victims.

One of the OK bombing victims was quoted as saying: "Closure is something you do on a house, not something that can happen here."

However, I believe that crime and punishment should work as a very detached, clinical, technical, objective, emotionless mechanism. What people want or feel should happen should not be allowed to intrude.

Human emotion, people crying on witness stands, people demanding closure and "their due" and the like really have no place in it.

For example, if someone breaks in and shoots my wife and steals my Morricone CDs [the second crime far worse than the first], I'd want to kill him, see him get thrown to alligators. But the guy down the block who knows neither me, my wife, or Morricone, is less emotionally connected to the case and is likely to be more fair and impartial about identifying the criminal and dealing with him. Execution is an emotional over-reaction.

As I said before, a killer is someone who let his inner emotions and convictions and philosophy erupt beyond the restraints needed for people to live without interference. To revenge against a killer is allowing the same thing to happen but stamping the action approved. If the principle is that killing is wrong, it's wrong for the killer, the government, and the friends of the victim. Just because one of these three violates that principle doesn't really mean the others should follow suit however much they want to or feel justified in doing so.

I don't know where Hasta is coming from but JJH is obviously caught up in personal emotions that he can't seperate himself from or look in on from the outside. Which is precisely why there should be no death penalty--because JJH would kill the guy himself if he could--he sees the killer as inhuman and therefore in his mind it's ok to rub him out, exterminate him like a bug. As I said earlier when referring to Nazis, a lot of people get it into their heads that it's ok to do things to people which it isn't and this seems to me as one of those cases. I'm not saying good things about the killer. But JJH is crossing the same boundary if he wants to execute a person, no matter what that person did.

This has really nothing to do with the death penalty. Lou, you seem to think
that emotion has no place in justice... “Human emotion..crying on the witness
stand, demanding their due...have no place in justice.” I certainly understand
that irrational emotion can perhaps taint justice, but at some point, the victims
of a crime (those left living) should be allowed to also have their day in court.
Grief and devastation from a senseless death(s) are not irrational, IMHO.
The criminal has every right guaranteed by our Constitution, and he has the
right to address the judge before sentencing. He can express remorse or lack
of it, ask for leniency or (rarely) for a strict sentence. Now finally, before
sentencing, the victims can also have their say, and it’s about time.

We’re a complex race, irrational, rational, good, bad, noble, ignoble, etc. We
are a study in contrasts, but above all we’re human, not Vulcan.
To ask all of us to abide by some Spockian agenda in the courtroom
demands we go against our very nature. If some guy who had 15 previous DWI’s
and only a few slaps on the wrists, killed my daughters while driving drunk again,
I would want my say. Call it a cathartic act for the victims left living. Rational?
Maybe not, but perhaps that would at least grant ME some due process also.
In a courtroom, where rational laws and sentencing guidelines exist for various
crimes, and appeals and paroles are as ubiquitous as kudzu, I think now and then
it is O.K. for a loquacious and irrevocably damaged heart to speak.

quote:

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JJH would kill the guy himself if he could

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no I wouldn't. I'd kick his/ her ass.
Then I'd turn him in to the law enforecment for justice.

"Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's..."

I am NOT one for government intervention in lives -- the less there is the better; I can live my own life, thank you -- but one of the legitimate functions of government is the enforcement of laws, for which we elect representatives and legislators and set up police departments.

I am trying to make light of being held captive in prison; it IS far from a cakewalk.
But bear in mind that thesse prisons become very "cliquey" and have their own little culture.
These guys DESERVE to have their rights revoked for violating the laws.

As I said before, if you think about it, it is EXTREMELY to CONVICT someone beyond a reasonable doubt. Society dictates that a murderer die for his crimes. Of course, the killer may repent, and become a great guy, but the law of the land states that he must die, regardless of his religion, ethnicity, etc.

Someone up above stated that the Old Testament was defunct, a relic.
I think that is baloney. Just for instance, the 10 Commandments. Who (other than our resident atheist robot) can have any quibble with the words of the 10 Commandments as outlined in the Book of Exodus, as a means of living life?
If the OT is defunct, then that renders the 10 Commandments null and void.

Hasta, you should not be "outraged" when someone expresses a differing opinion.

This is part of the problem with society -- the lack of cordial, intellectual debate -- hell, with the emphasis on anything but intellectualism in school these days, can you surprised?
Any more, arguments degrade into name-calling and censorship by those who cannot bear intellectual diversity. Witness David Horowitz at Berekely U in California...bithplace of the free speech movement. (for those that don't know, he is a politically conservative columnist that was shouted down and called bigot at a recent talk he gave there. Censorship is a horrid thing, though there is something to be said for taste, decorum and an appreciation & respect for the finer things in life.)

There are different philosophies and viewpoints in history that have helped form people's views of what is proper social organization: the Judeo-Christian ethics, Greco-Roman Paganism, tribal customs, Hume, Locke, Marx, etc.

Although I believe in God, I do not believe that the law as given the people of the Old and New Testaments should be adhered to by present day governments (and thank God it isn't--God may punish adulterers and fornicators, but I don't think we should, certainly not by stoning them to death).

It's hard to say what was proper before Man began to live in cities. We look at present day tribes, natives, aboriginies to get a clue. Some feel that before the rise of the ego and the sections in the brain that promote ego structure, that there was a communal utopia. Others see paleolithic man as the head-clubber he's often depicted as.

For me, the question of what a crime actually is, how it is defined, etc., does not come from a religious source, but a secular, practical one.

If someone is out there violating person and property, that's a crime. Why? Mainly because people cannot live peacefully if other people are going to steal and kill them. A killer goes to jail because he has shown by violating someone's life that they cannot be a part of a society where other people don't take such action.

You'll see here that there is no talk of morality, right and wrong, evil, etc. No emotion, no victim's rights, any of it.

Someone kills. It's an act. God decides if it's right or wrong, I don't. All I as man do is isolate the killer. Capital punishment is killing in God's eyes too, how do I know it's not? But put God aside. Someone kills. That's not right or wrong, it just is. If we can determine who the killer is and can capture him without having to shoot him in the process, we put him away and that's that.

Murder is common. It is well within the realm of sane human activity. Most of the people who don't commit it usually want to at some point as well. I view looking at it as a behavior somewhat basic to what people are, but one which must be contained for people to live together.

And, repeating myself yet again, I don't believe the law and law enforcement should be concerned with the personal or emotional aspects of crime. Someone kills. You find, convict, and put away the killer because he's violated a principle rather than any specific person. The victim, the extent of his pain, the pain of others, their wishes, etc. are side issues that have no place in determining whether someone is a criminal and what should be done to the criminal once captured. Very Vulcan, Joan.

That we as a society determine by voting just what a crime is and how it should be dealt with is a weakness of democracy (Menckin among others knew that just because Democracy was the best of alternatives, that didn't mean it was without its own problems). I do believe most people are idiots but am not so elitist as to exclude myself from the rabble. But Democracy does provide a loophole through which atrocities of all kinds can be inflicted quite self-righteously. I pointed to the Nazis earlier as people who felt they were doing right, but I could point to America and other countries as well that violate the basic rights of their citizens daily and legally.

As long as we have a basic freedom of speech and property, I see no reason to question government as McVeigh and the Militia movement has, certainly not in the manner that they did.

Because government is a force that must be held to certain actions and constrained from others, laws should be basic and few, always geared towards protecting individuals from others even if they are in the majority. I don't believe in majority rules, I believe in individuals rule despite majorities.

KKK guys can come to office but the pro-individual laws have to stay on the books. If not, it's civil war. Oddly, law needs to be kept away from the tampering of it by people through their emotionalism or ideology. And for me this goes for the death penalty as well.

I've talked about a number of political issues over my many posts and I wish I had a consistent label I could reach for to sum up how I stand, but my politics are all over the map.

A friend suggested I was a libertarian, but when I read Ayn Rand and met up with Libertarian Party people, I was appalled with Rand's atheism and their belief that poor people were parasites. Although I do share a lot of their take on things in terms of government intervention into people's lives, I'm not as pro-market as they are. Too many Harry Limes out there willing to take money to see "those dots" not moving for business to be trusted to act unrestrained. Conservative. Liberal. I'm not a religious conservative, but I'm not a tax and spend welfare state liberal either. Economically, I'm more left than libertarians, more right than liberals, but I believe in legalization of drugs and am pro-choice [The toughest stance to decide in my life. Personally, I'm pro-life for religious and legalistic reasons, but again, I can't allow my personal emotions on this to be imposed on the right of individuals to determine the course of their own lives and bodies. As long as a foetus is connected to a woman by an umbilical cord, it is a part of her body rather than a seperate being, and she has ultimate decision over its continuance, regardless of my own views which see it as murder.]. I also believe that an efficient government will not come from either Republicans or Democrats but from an independant or 3rd party. Unfortunately, none of the recent options have been good. Perot would have solved the drug problem he said by going house to house. It would have solved the problem, sure. But who would have solved the dictator problem? I like Ralph Nader, but feel he should remain a consumer advocate rather than a politician, and while I consider destroying the environment a crime that needs stopping, I'm not as pro-socialist as the Greens. So, I am a man without a party or a platform that meshes with others. I suppose I'm just a Lou-ist, my own political party.

Yes, vote for me, give me a large salary, and watch me take long vacations and go on neat "fact-finding" missions with cute interns to Club Med and the Bahamas

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I'm not as pro-socialist as the Greens.

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well, even the Greens aren't as pro-socialist as the Democrats are these days.
Criminy, they want government intrusion in EVERYTHING.

and no one bothers to mention to them that OF FRICKIN' COURSE the wealthy get the biggest chunk of a tax cut...they make the most money, so by default they will get a bigger tax break. This isn't rocket science.

give us all a tax break, but good God, don't turn it into class warfare.

I'll never be rich, but I don't hate those that do have wealth, whether the earned it or inherited it. They live in a completely different reality from most people anyway.
Many actually WORKED for it. Why punish them for their achievement?

I mean criminy. These Democrats are crying because a government with a $33 TRILLION or so budget for the next 10 years will have to do without ONE TRILLION of that. Cry me a river, guys.
Gee, I feel so bad for the government. Must be hard.

God in secular law? I dunno. I have mixed feelings about it. While I do want the country to be more Christian (go figure, I actually want fellow Christians to actually start acting like they are), I am wary of a government potentially telling people what religion they should ascribe to, lest they be imprisoned. That is just plain wrong.

your religion should inform your choices in the secular world, and you make it part of your being, and act accordingly. May not like this world, but you have to live in it, so get out and make do.

the 10 Commandments I didn't mean to connect to secular law in that way. I meant to say that I think they are pretty much universally true. How many are walking around that are suicidal or depressed because their mate cheated on them? or are insanely jealous because an ex or potential mate is out with someone else? how many marriages have been ruined by adultery? how many kids from those families suffer?

They're just good basic rules to live by, even if you don't subscribe to Christianity.

NP -- Canone Inverso, Morricone