[Professor S]

Originally Posted by TheGame

So you'd chose to die instead of going to prison for life?

No, I'd rather die than go to prison for life. I would not choose to die, but I'd rather be dead. But thats just me, and I would not impose that on another human or state that they should have the same opinion.

Violent crime has been rising period. The death penalty isn't going to change that. The point of it is to punish people for the crimes that they commit. Life sentances hasn't helped the situation any more then the death penalty has.

Exactly, so why choose the option that is irreversable if the guilty is proven over time to be innocent? Punishment on any level hasn't proven to be a deterrent in violent crime so in the end you can lock up someone to prevent them from killing, or kill them out of anger and vengeance. I choose the less destructive and reversible option.

If you want to talk about deterrants preventing death, lets talk about war. If death cannot be justified under our system of law in our own country, what gives us the right to go out and kill other people in other countries for their international crimes? (Or for simply standing in the way of us getting the people who commited it) Is this because a millitary works as a deterrent, and it actually lowers the amount of fighting that happens in the world?

No, as I said, killing is justified if it is in self-defence. Now we can argue whether or not all wars have been fought our of self-defence, but that does not alter the fact that wars can and are often fought justly if only for self-preservation. Of course pre-emptive self-defence always brings it's own dubious and vague definitions of morality. Now I can see this easily degrading into a Iraq war tangent. so lets avoid that and keep the discussion high level, shall we?

If one side is morally wrong for attacking another country and it's people, then to defend oneself against their attackers must be morally right.