It's a poor disposition toward the value of life when you don't stomp out people who take innocent peoples' lives with the fury of a 1000 sun Gods. It's a poor disposition toward the value of life to recognize murderers as humans deserving of rights.
I don't think it's about justice, but it's about revenge. Most people who are put to death also fear for their lives, and that, in principle, is supposed to make the family and friends of their victim somehow feel better. I will never understand how reproducing fatal suffering is supposed to right a wrong.
It depends on who you are talking to, but I'm not convinced that inflicting death on another is going to make you feel better per se. Forgiveness is the more ever lasting route, because then you can learn let it go. Forgiveness is not the same as doing nothing. Doing nothing is easy, but forgiving is hard.
I sense a criminal reformation argument approaching.
Not really. I'm not suggesting that all murderers can be reformed. This has to do more with our disposition towards those murderers. I don't believe murdering a murderer makes us any better. And I'm not in favor of execution, so my tax dollars should not pay for it.
That isn't mutually exclusive of supporting the death penalty. I agree that we should be more observant toward the warning signs and offer help and preventative measures. That said, anyone who slips past that and is in the mental stage where they feel it's ok to murder another person, there is no reformation, not that they even deserve it.
Well, herein lies the problem. Why does one person who murders deserve the death penalty while another does not? The law is not applied consistency. Why is one instance more grave than another? It all has to do with subjectivity sensibilities... what jury you get, what the judge thinks, what city you're in, if what people think you did is "bad enough" to warrant execution. There are plenty of mentally disturbed murderers idling away in jail for the rest of their lives, yet others die.
Why do some places think it's worth trying to reform, while other places just want to kill them and be done with it? Both approaches exist simultaneously in the U.S. It's not fair that some die based on where they committed the crime while others get lesser sentences. It's not fair that some die and some don't based on the luck of how the jury is comprised.
If some don't deserve to die, then none should deserve to die. That would correct the discrepancy.
This is reminding me of A Clockwork Orange. "I was cured all right"
It's not just about rehabiliating the criminal, it's also about what our treatment of them
does for us.
That's assuming it's societies responsibility to prevent people form murdering. It isn't in my opinion, it's something society should be interested in, it's something society should help, but not it's responsibility.
That's not exactly what I meant. I didn't mean finding a murder suspect, sitting them down and trying to get to the root of the problem. By then it might be too late. I mean... when the kid grows up, is bullied, has strange tendencies, clearly is "different", shows patterns of behaviour that aren't quote/unquote "normal". A lot of people just don't want to get involved, or they contribute to the problem. Murderers aren't just born, they develop.
And that speaks volumes of thier character. They have proven that they have no concern about other people's lives, they have proven that they view society as something to be exploited for personal gain, and don't see why we should offer them a chance to do it a second time and ruin another life. They'll do and say anything to get out including pleaing that they are changed, but there is no reason to believe them.
And why do they view society as something to exploit? Why do they feel lives are dispensible? They got that impression from somewhere, or someone. This is what I'm talking about. Execution is putting away a mistake that is partially a collective one. I'm not trying to absolve the person of responsibility, they did their crime.
Maybe, in a sense, executing them is permanently putting away something that we feel is a mistake... something that we are so ashamed of that we don't ever want to see it again. After all, if a vicious person is still alive in jail, then we cannot convince ourselves that our society is such a great place. Killing them at least puts that disgrace to an end.