And backing up just a second here.....
True: All human life is equally valuable, but not all killings are equally blameworthy. Your passion has clouded your eyes. All killings are homicides; not all homicides are murder. Observe:
A.) While driving home, John hits a 7 year old with his car. John immediately stops and calls 911. The child is taken to the hospital but dies 3 days later of her wounds. John was talking on his cell phone while holding a soda pop and trying to tune in his radio: a literally fatal distraction. John is convicted of negligent homicide, serves 3 years in prison with good behavior, has his license suspended, and is sued by the child's family for wrongful death. The judgment is large and though John's insurance covers it, he is effectively unable to drive for several years if ever, due to the rate increases.
B.) Dave comes home, finds his wife in bed with another man and shoots them both in a "heat of passion." He is tried and convicted of voluntary manslaughter, because of the "heat of passion" mitigating circumstance. He serves 10 years in prison.
C.) Tommy wants Joe's car. Tommy doesn't have any money, so instead he gives Joe two bullets in the head, unceremoniously removes his corpse from the car, and drives off in it. The police eventually catch Tommy, who is convicted of murder and sentenced to life imprisonment.
There are degrees of evil.... Society has less to fear from John than from Tommy. Tommy is far more blameworthy, because he did it, he meant to do it, and if he could, he'd do it again. While John may have killed a child, he sincerely didn't mean to, but he had a duty to drive his car safely. He breached that duty and some kid died for it. He didn't pay attention and negligently killing somebody isn't as bad as planning to and actually doing it on purpose.
I didn't say that.
Then I'm not sure how else to interpret this: We lock people up in tiny concrete rooms with other people who may or may not be violent, giving them all nothing but the basic supplies to stay alive, for years and years and years. If you did that to someone who wasn't a criminal people would find you abhorrent. Indeed, we find it so abhorrent to do that to an innocent person that if it does happen the level of money they're usually compensated with upon release could be lived off of for many years.
But we don't think it's bad to do that to people who are actually criminals.
Unless, again, you're for a system which doesn't allow the acts implicit with that set up to occur -- which isn't our system. I'm with you so far as that goes -- like I said, that position does not bother me nearly as much.
The prison system is unsafe, underfunded, overcrowded, and over sentenced for non violent criminals, especially drug offenders. It has definite problems, which need to be fixed. That said, fixing those problems is the issue. Society has a right to protect itself from dangerous individuals and separation/incarceration is the only means of doing so. The problem is with the method of incarceration, namely the, quite frankly, piss poor way in which we do it. Incarceration per se, in and of itself, isn't the problem. It's the fact that the realities of it, as it is currently done, need serious fixing....
That's funny, I heard that so will getting murdered. But I guess your life doesn't matter if you've picked a lock or broken a window.
They made that choice themselves. Sometimes your choices end up costing you more than you intended.
I think it's more, the person who killed in self defense had no other option. Nobody deserves to die, but if it comes down to two people and one of them is going to die, then the person who didn't create that situation shouldn't be the one to die. Rather, they've the right to defend themselves. Though quite frankly, theft is a risky proposition and honestly getting yourself hurt by the person you're trying to steal from, is something every theft should anticipate the possibility of....
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Topic: Calm and Cool Progressive Discussion Thread (Read 1286205 times)