[Professor S]

Originally Posted by TheGame

Though I understand what you're saying, for the sake of the arguement lets look at it for what it is. In the end, you would chose life in prison over death, period. Because life in prison is the preferable option to most men then death is. If death was the lesser penalty, then you would chose to die.

No, you misunderstand my argument completely. I would rather be dead than live in prison, but I would not kill myself because THAT IS NOT MINE TO TAKE. No life is man's to take except in self-defense, IMO, and includes our own.

There are men who really would chose to die, however. But if they chose to die, and the family of the victim wants them to die.. and equal punishment for their crime is to have them die... why would we waste space and money keeping them alive?

Because that is not ours to take except in self-defense. My argument is is not an argument based in economics (the horror of economics being a factor in choosing the death penalty scares me to death), its based in morality and philosophy.

That's why I said before that it should only be done if there's video evidence or if its some type of public display. I agree with you when it comes to crimes where there's no solid evidence.. but when it comes to crimes where there is such evidence.. why should we waste the money to keep that person alive?

Because that life is not ours to take, and to be quite simple about it, two wrongs do not make a right. But thats just my opinion and in the end this is a subjective argument. My main objection to man believing they can make life and death decisions is that is cheapens our value of life overall and makes us believe we can engineer or euthanize our way to a better society, and I think that is a slippery slope.

How do you define self defense? In your opinion, what does an enemy have to do to justify a war with the united states? And keep in mind, the moment you make the decision to go to war, you are sentancing thousands of people to death (your own people and others) by simply going there.

Well thats a difficult question. Fighting an aggressor is always justified, IMO, such as the Allies fighting against the Axis in WW2 or the US invading Afghanistan after 9/11. I don't think anyone can argue against that. It's when a country acts in preemptive self-defense that the moral lines blur considerably, and quite ironically, these actions in theory are to prevent another WW2/Nazi terror. The vague and dubious area of preemptive self-defense is that we'll never know if it worked because if the action it prevents the justifying evidence from ever existing. We'll never definitively know whether or not the Iraq War was truly justified because we'll never know the alternative.