Thoughts on the death penalty?

[Professor S]

Originally Posted by TheGame

I'm not putting words in your mouth. I just think the act of supporting any pre emptive war in some cases and not suppoorting the death penalty in all cases is hippocritical. Which is exactly what you're doing/saying. (Now if you're saying attacking pre-emptively in self defense is wrong in ALL cases, then you can ignore the rest of this post because then I don't think you're a hipocrite.)

I don't think understanding that everything isn't 100% black and white in terms of self-defense isn't hipocritical, but I've already explained myself in this thread. If you wish to call me a hipocrit for not being an absolutist when it comes to the definition of self-defense, go right ahead, it doesn't affect the validity of my statements regardless of whatever perjorative you wish to apply to them.

Meanwhile you've conveniently avoided my entire arguementabout killing Hitler and his supporters before WW2 to preempt the destruction and genocide he cause. I can only believe thats because you have no answer, or haven't yet found a way to misstate the concept to fit your opinion.

I have maintained from the beginning that killing in self-defense is moral and even preemptive self-defense can be moral (depends on the situation), while killing for punishment or vengeance is not. I've also presented reasoned argument in defense of these ideas. There is nothing hipocritical about anything I've said, regardles of whether or not you wish to agree or disagree with my comments.

And since we're heading back down the road of repetition, I'll exit this conversation... stage right eveeeeeen...

[TheGame]

Originally Posted by Professor S

I don't think understanding that everything isn't 100% black and white in terms of self-defense isn't hipocritical, but I've already explained myself in this thread. If you wish to call me a hipocrit for not being an absolutist when it comes to the definition of self-defense, go right ahead, it doesn't affect the validity of my statements regardless of whatever perjorative you wish to apply to them.

No, I'm calling you a hypocrit for claiming you value human life too much to allow someone to die for a crime they have commited, no matter what crime they commit.. Yet you find ways to justify killing people proactively who only threaten to do the same thing who are in a different country.

Meanwhile you've conveniently avoided my entire arguementabout killing Hitler and his supporters before WW2 to preempt the destruction and genocide he cause. I can only believe thats because you have no answer, or haven't yet found a way to misstate the concept to fit your opinion.

I didn't ignore it, my responce to that was: "I personally support the idea that killing pre-emptively in self defense is ok, but I'm not the person who is saying that killing someone as a penalty for a crime they commit is universally wrong, you are."

So if he made himself out to be a realistic threat to do such things before he did them, then I have no problem with knocking him off before hand. But if the threat was not realistic (i.e. Saddam Hussein) I would disagree with it. Unfortunately the problem with gambling such things is that sometimes you are going to be wrong, and in many cases you have to wait for something to happen before taking action.

I have maintained from the beginning that killing in self-defense is moral and even preemptive self-defense can be moral (depends on the situation), while killing for punishment or vengeance is not. I've also presented reasoned argument in defense of these ideas. There is nothing hipocritical about anything I've said, regardles of whether or not you wish to agree or disagree with my comments.

You don't believe there is anything hipocritical about it, but there is. You just want to ignore the facts to try and sound reasonable.. There is no consistancy to your arguement. If you can't hang your own people for breaking your laws, then you have no right to go around the world hanging other people for doing the same. If you do that, then you're a hipocrite, period.

[Acebot44]

Here an interesting TED video on the minds of Psychopathic Killers that made me think of this thread