posted
I believe that we would be within our rights to kill this man.
Having said that, I hope we do not do so for the following reasons:
1) His death will prove to be a rallying point for others. I understand that if we keep him in prison someone at some time may take hostages and try to bargain to have this man released. But they could also be doing that now, no? It's not like the threat of hostage-taking increases over time, or because of a life sentence. And, killing him doesn't stop people from rallying in his name, or taking/killing hostages, or what have you. Irrationality is irrationality. I see no good coming from his death in this respect.
2) His actions and thoughts are not those of a sane person. I understand that behind his particular insanity may be religious zealotry, hatred, and a host of other things that give us reasons to declare him sane. But is he really? By what standard would we declare him sane? (and yes, I know the burden of proof for an insanity defense is in the other direction, but we're talking here about a man already found guilty and now we need to decide whether to execute him. I think, in that case, the burden of proof for sanity ought to be reversed, and it should be necessary to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the person is sane and capable of making moral choices before we decide to kill him. In this case, I think there's enough doubt as to his sanity to make me much less willing to call for his death.
3) State sponsored death does not serve a useful purpose in our society, IMO. I know it's got nothing specific to do with this case, but either this is a true statement for all cases, or it is a false statement. Economically, it costs us more to go through the mandatory steps to execute someone than it does to keep them incarcerated. Even if that economic argument fails, there's still the other argument about meaningful deterrent. The death penalty is not a meaningful deterrent in any crime for which it is meted out. I think, specfic to terrorism, it's especially meaningless. State ordered killing of a suicidal terrorist when that person is already removed from society to a point where they can't possibly do any more harm is bad for us as a society. Retribution is bad for us as a society too, but that's a different issue that probably needs a thread all its own.
4) We do not understand the enemy we face in this new reality of terrorism brought to America. This is an opportunity to study a man who became willing to die for the cause of harming people. To the extent that we could learn something from him that could potentially help us to avoid or identify others like him, killing him is a collossal waste of what may be unique opportunity. Certainly we're going to have a hard time interviewing others like him.
Put in the balance, my desire for his death as partial payment for the lives he helped to snuff out is just not measuring up. I can't call for his death even though his attitude makes me angry, scared and frustrated.
If he were to die tomorrow or in 80 years, it makes no difference to me. I would not feel more sad if he keeled over tomorrow. I feel as sad as can already. Neither will his death alleviate my sorrow in any way. I won't sleep better at night. It serves no purpose to order his death. And, I think, there's a price to pay for killing other humans, even if they are monsters. Once you've taken away their immediate ability to do others harm, then there is no purpose in killing them.
If he'd been caught in the act and taken down by an officer of the law, that is a different situation entirely, and law enforcement officers are charged by our society with the onerous duty of making life and death decisions in crisis situations.
This situation is no longer a crisis. Ergo, there is no excuse for state-ordered death. I do not wish to deputize a person to kill in my name in such a situation.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
I'm against the death penalty, even in this case.
But as for what Bob said about them taking hostages and whatnot...it's not like they'd execute him immediately, anyway. I mean, he probably wouldn't be executed for ten years, or something. So either way, there'd be an opportunity to take hostages to try to force his release.
quote:4) We do not understand the enemy we face in this new reality of terrorism brought to America. This is an opportunity to study a man who became willing to die for the cause of harming people. To the extent that we could learn something from him that could potentially help us to avoid or identify others like him, killing him is a collossal waste of what may be unique opportunity. Certainly we're going to have a hard time interviewing others like him.
What's there to learn? He's not a very complicated puzzle. All we need to know is that he's and other like him want us to die or convert. We in the west aren't the ones who need to struggle to understand the other side. Plus we've got many more in Guantanemo to "interview."
I appreciate all your moral arguements against capital punishment. They are valid, but one is either confortable with the idea or not.
As for whether his conviction would lead to hostage taking, or whether his death would lead to reprisals, there is nothing we could do to confront terrorists that would not lead to them to taking offense. They'll take hostages and kill innocents no matter what we do.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Mar 2006
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posted
I think the state has the moral authority to execute certain criminals in the context of a criminal justice system that provides fair and effective due process. And I think this defendant qualifies as one of those certain criminals.
However, I tend to agree it's not necessary in America at this time.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
People are inherently valuable. This is, I think, what it means to say "life is sacred". Unforutnately, it is rare to really appreciate this for anyone but your immediate family. Most people do see how their spouse or their children are inherently sacred though. Most people would not prefer their loved ones to be dead no matter what their loved ones did. Most people would love their spouse and children no matter what. This is what it means to inherently value human beings, and it is the attitude that we should hold towards everyone when we are trying to judge them fairly. I believe it is how God approaches every individual human being, and how he has called us to approach our neighbors - to love them.
God has the judgement and omniscience to know with certainty whether killing one person will help save others. We, however, lack that judgement. I do NOT believe we can figure out when it is truly right to kill someone and when it just seems right. Given this, it is unwise to gamble with the lives of human beings - to kill them based solely on our extremely limited judgement, no matter how obvious we think it is that we'd be better off killing them. For this reason, I don't think we should kill anyone, if we can ever avoid it.
Note also that people cannot choose to give up their own value. It is not a question of choice, and it is not a question of whether or not you deserve it. You are valuable whether you like it or not. This is why it is wrong to commit suicide. You may want to die, but your life is too valuable to even allow you to choose to take it away yourself. In the same way, you can't choose to do anything that will make you no longer deserving of life. It's not that sort of right, the sort that you control and can lose. It's the sort of right that you have no matter what, like it or not, because you are that valuable no matter what.
If you would personally execute your children if they did what Moussaoui did, so be it. But I would not. I'd care about them too much to do that, if I could avoid it. This is the attitude to take towards all people. If you give them the punishment you'd give to someone you really love who committed that crime, then you have respected their value as a human being, and can know that you are only giving them the degree of punishment that you absolutely must. Of course you don't let one of your children free if he is going to kill your other children, whom you also love. But you also don't give him a harsher punishment than he needs to get. And you don't waste his life if you don't absolutely have to.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:All we need to know is that he's and other like him want us to die or convert. We in the west aren't the ones who need to struggle to understand the other side.
It's certainly easy to dehumanize your enemy, but it is also counterproductive to resolving the situation. Instead of "die or convert", I see the mantra more as "stop screwing with us or die." Several of the complaints of terrorists are legitimate. Our foreign policies toward the Middle East are far from kind. This in no way legitimizes their actions. It does however make them human beings that we should strive to understand. I believe at least part of the answer lies in finding common ground, not in creating a wider and wider gulf. When we think about what motivates a terrorist, I think we should look at what they see as problems. If after analyzing it we agree that it is a problem, we need to change it. This isn't bending to terrorism, it's trying to become the just people that we strive to be. If we only respond to violence and hate with more violence and hate, nothing good will happen.
Posts: 1947 | Registered: Aug 2002
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: I understand not wanting to execute anyone when there's the slightest question of guilt, but this guy is guilty in spades and eager to do it again.
I'm curious to know if this man would be an exception for even the most ardent anti-death penalty people. Pix [/QB]
Seems to me that if your against the death pentalty because you think its simply wrong to kill people, then it really doesn't matter how bad the criminal is, or how dangerous. It owuld be one thing to kill him while he attacking you, but now that he is captured, for me, that's it. You just don't kill people.
I wonder at how difficult that concept is for pro-death penalty people. I don't think you, Pix, are confused, but I have heard the ridiculous attempts time and again to catch an anti-death person out on some extreme hypothetical: "What if he was the worst person EVEER EVER! And you KNEW he would kill more people!" For me it doesn't matter, because if you could execute someone for one crime, you might as well do it for another, or any crime (Yes the lame slippry-slope claim).
Posts: 9912 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
My opposition to the death penalty has nothing to do with whether or not the criminal "deserves" it. So no, I would not make an exception in this case.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:They are valid, but one is either comfortable with the idea or not.
I think that's incredibly dismissive. If you can make this into an issue of personal preference rather than something that really is about essential moral choices, then we're all free to do what we are most comfortable with.
Except, that leaves you getting your way, and people who oppose the death penalty completely marginalized.
Regarding the statements about there being nothing to learn, I think that's also a fairly narrow and rushed judgement. Would it harm you or America in any way if we at least tried to learn something before we execute people who we think deserve it?
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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quote: I'm against the death penalty, even in this case.
But as for what Bob said about them taking hostages and whatnot...it's not like they'd execute him immediately, anyway. I mean, he probably wouldn't be executed for ten years, or something. So either way, there'd be an opportunity to take hostages to try to force his release.
-pH
I feel the exact same way. And about hostage taking - I don't believe al Qaeda wants him. I think once they recognized that he has a mental illness they cut him out of the 9/11 plan. So, he knew a little, but not the final details.
Posts: 264 | Registered: Nov 2005
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posted
To answer the OP, no, I would not make an exception and say it's acceptable to me to execute this man. The isea os state sponsered execution sickens me in a way that a murderer doesn't. A man who murders is a sign of a sick man- state execution is a sick state.
Posts: 2711 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
I, too, cannot believe that it is "right" to kill someone just because the state says it's okay. State legislated death is still murder, in my opinion. In a time when sufficient means are available to lock him up, treat him decently, and keep him from doing further harm to anyone, I think there is absolutely no reason to kill him.
Posts: 340 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
I was going to write how I felt but dkw already expressed my own view, so I'll just quote her.
quote:My opposition to the death penalty has nothing to do with whether or not the criminal "deserves" it. So no, I would not make an exception in this case.
quote:-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think it's a mistake to stop viewing them as generally rational human beings trying to acheive their goals. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
These are not rational men.
I'm not sure the ones on our side are either, nor should they be.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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posted
Also, we should look at what it does to us, that we indulge in the death penalty. People cheer and wave signs with ghoulish glee. If it is ever necessary to kill anyone it should be a reason for great sorrow, a funeral rather than a party. I think that is most telling of all. It has a negative effect on the American people, on all of us, when we execute criminals.
CT is right that the most effective and wisest thing would be to keep him in prison but treat him decently. Then we would be proving them all wrong, the things they think about us. If we gleefully execute him, we take ourselves down to their level, and even go a small way toward proving them right about us, in my opinion.
Posts: 6246 | Registered: Aug 2004
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posted
The question is not so much who deserves to die, in which case I would have to cite the rather unusal source of Sweeney Todd ("We all deserve to die/ even you, Mrs. Lovett, even I.") But rather, who deserves to kill.
From a logical perspective, saying "X is wrong, and must be punished by doing X to the one who commited the origional X" makes absolutly no sense whatsover.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
Tresopax, I largely agree with the substance of your post. I think where we part ways is that I believe that a person can, indeed, do some things that make them no longer deserving of life--most particularly, murder. A person who not only ceases to regard life as sacred, but who comes to regard it as something to be destroyed--which is what a murderer is--is a deadly danger to the rest of life. Although it must be done with care, I see no more harm done in executing such a person than in dismantling a nuclear bomb. Or, perhaps more accurately, excising and "killing" a cancerous tumor--such a tumor is life, in one sense, but death in another, more important one.
That is why, by the way, punishment is reserved to the state. An individual human, acting on his own initiative, has the dangerous tendency of acting from the wrong motivations and losing track of what is allowed and what is not. Such a person could easily go from "freelance execution" to simple murder of whomever he considers "guilty". But by setting a seriies of impartial rules--this person must not be executed; this other person must be--we remove the human element, the emotional motivation. This is the difference between vengeance and justice.
Posts: 1114 | Registered: Mar 2004
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quote:From a logical perspective, saying "X is wrong, and must be punished by doing X to the one who commited the origional X" makes absolutly no sense whatsover.
So we can't put kidnappers in jail?
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Originally posted by The Pixiest: I understand not wanting to execute anyone when there's the slightest question of guilt, but this guy is guilty in spades and eager to do it again.
I'm curious to know if this man would be an exception for even the most ardent anti-death penalty people.
This does not change my stance on the death penalty - I am still against it in this case.
And the reason it doesn't change is because I'm not against the death penalty because I'm worried about guilt or innocence (although obviously I don't want innocent people getting killed) nor am I anti-death penalty because I don't think people "deserve" it.
I am anti-death penalty because I believe as a society we do not have the right to, nor should we, kill people.
Regardless of the certainty of their guilt, or the heinousness of their crime.
[Or, I could have just quoted dkw. ]
Posts: 4393 | Registered: Aug 2003
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posted
Pixiest, to answer your original question, I am absolutely against executing this man or any other man. To me there are several reasons why I oppose the death penalty that have little to do with guilt.
I believe that all life is valuable and that humans should not take the life of others no matter how wonderful they think there reasoning is. If human life is to be valued so much that we have this rage against those who take it, why then would we not want to protect that life as well?
The death penalty teaches the wrong lesson to everyone. Nothing is gained by the death of this other. It doesn't bring anyone back. It doesn't create any more good in society. It doesn't demonstrate who to deal with those who wrong us. Violence begets more violence. States with the death penalty have higher rates of violence. Immediately following an execution there are statistically signficant increases in the rates of violent crimes. People who witness violence are more likely to commit violence themselves. Justifying situational violence blurs the line for people between right and wrong.
There is nothing to be learned from a dead man. Keeping people alive and attempting to discover what is causing the violence against innocence and how best to avoid it in the future is a far better use.
Finally, there is absolutely no way to draft a statute that only allows the guilty to get the deathpenalty and never gets a falsely accused person in the crosshairs. I know that any one case there can be overwhelming evidence but there is no way to know exactly where to draw that line. If I line was created, I have a feeling it would like create an incentive for the criminal to do even more damage to prevent the death penalty from happening such as killing witnesses. If even one innocent person is put to death, the death penalty in my book is a miserable failur.
Posts: 416 | Registered: May 2005
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quote: If you cannot hate evil men and the evil that they do, if you cannot hate terrorists like Moussaoui and BenLadeen, then how firm can one's purpose be?
Let's have a look at people like Hitler and bin Laden. Their actions are driven by hate, therefore, I would pose the question, what good does hating them back do? Does it make you a better person? Does it stop their actions? Would any actions driven by your/our own hatred stop their hatred, or prevent hatred from festering among their sympathizers?
Understand, I am not saying that I enjoy what people like them do, but I strongly believe in one of the Buddha's sayings:
"Hate never yet dispelled hate, only love can dispell hate.
All love life, all fear death Knowing this, why do you quarrel?"
And furthermore, how is extreme dislike or antipathy not derived from fear or sense of injury? (Again, trying to understand, not insult)
Posts: 681 | Registered: Feb 2004
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posted
Hate cannot dispel hate, that is true. But hatred, like all human emotions, has its uses. A strongly motivated hatred can lead to the accomplishment of many things, Epictetus.
Suggesting it does not harms your argument that hatred is ineffective and a bad choice, because obviously it's not useless. It does have its merits. Rather you might have better luck if you point out that the results of hatred are rarely if ever short-term, often harmful in the long-run, and very very risky.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
And when he kills again, as he has sworn to do what then?
If we lock him up for life, what happens when he kills someone in prison? Maybe someone guilty of a lesser crime (most crimes are lesser than mass murder.) Maybe someone innocent all together.
Ethically, you are complicit in their murders.
Posts: 7085 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
There are ways to keep him away from the general population.
How are we not also ethically complicit in all prison murders? Is it only "mass murderers" who are likely to kill in prison? Rapists, gang bangers and garden variety murderers never do? Or do you advocate the death penalty for all who have the potential to murder in prison?
Posts: 6394 | Registered: Dec 1999
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quote:Originally posted by dkw: My opposition to the death penalty has nothing to do with whether or not the criminal "deserves" it. So no, I would not make an exception in this case.
quote:And when he kills again, as he has sworn to do what then?
If we lock him up for life, what happens when he kills someone in prison? Maybe someone guilty of a lesser crime (most crimes are lesser than mass murder.) Maybe someone innocent all together.
Ethically, you are complicit in their murders.
I thought you were an ethical libertarian, Pix? On that approach, there is no ethical obligation to protect others unless you've entered a binding agreement to do so.
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Refusing to execute someone who has sworn to kill others and then does so, despite your trying short of their execution, does not make you complicit in the murders which happen.
Posts: 17164 | Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
I know of 5 reasons to consider the death penalty for Mousaui. Please correct me if there are more.
1) Revenge. He helped kill thousands of people. It is only fitting, some beleive, that we kill him back.
I am not a firm believer in revenge, especially not revenge for its own sake. As such, let us move on.
2) Deterence. Killing a killer convinces others not to kill. This assumes that most murderers do their own rationale cost benefits analysis and decide what is best. If I kill Joe, then the odds are I will die too. Obvious, this is not the case for Suicide Terrorists. Even for sane and rational murderers, the true odds for such an analysis are not taken into account. They often either do not think, or think that they will get away with it.
3) As an anti-terrorist manuever. In this particular case, being hard on terrorists is not a deterent for individuals. What we are striving to do is prove that we are not soft on terror. Both Ben Laden and Hussein have reportedly considered the US a paper tiger, all gruff and no guts. They did not think we had the guts to fight them and kill them. Allowing Mousaui to live many officials fear, will reinforce the US is Weak attitude.
I believe that a better political answer is to keep Mousaui alive, and treat him as the pathetic, humourous, laughing stock that he has become. Let him rant and rave all he wants, weaving delusional fantasies to be reported around the world. Just make sure we add the context that this is average for an Al-Queda terrorist, that only fools and idiots join and die for them. We have not a silver bullet to end Al-Queda, but one small lever to cut into their recruiting drive. Don't kill it, use it.
4) Cost: It is cheaper to kill Mousaui than to allow him to live in prison. I can't argue against this one unless we get into the political costs.
5)He will kill again. This is the last argument made by Pixiest. It states that if you allow A to live, and A kills B then you are responsible for B's death.
There are several problems with this logic. It requires us to kill A not for what A has done, but for what A might do. At what murderous potential do we kill another person? Do we kill A if he says he will kill again? If he has killed in the past? If we think that "his type" is prone to kill? How do we know if A will ever murder anyone? And if we are wrong, if A will have never killed B, then we are the guilty one.
Does that give A the right to kill us, because he knows, or believes, that we will kill him because we know or believe that he will kill B?
That is the logic of every hate-mongering group I've ever seen. White Supremicists do not recruit members by saying that other races are beneath them, well, not any longer. They recruit by saying "We gotta kill them because they are planning on killing us. Do you want to be responsible for the deaths of your family because you didn't kill them first?"
And the African American gangs say the same thing, just changing whom is going to kill whom first. The same goes for the Latino's and the others. In Rowanda the machette's were swung not to prove one tribe better than the other, but in order to save one group from the known murderous tendancies of the other. Shi'ite's are killing Sunni's in Iraq out of the fear that the Sunni's are killing Shi'ites.
No, going over my list, I see only two true reasons that Mousaui should die--Revenge and Money. Neither seem morally superior.
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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quote:Although it must be done with care, I see no more harm done in executing such a person than in dismantling a nuclear bomb. Or, perhaps more accurately, excising and "killing" a cancerous tumor--such a tumor is life, in one sense, but death in another, more important one.
But nuclear bombs and tumors are not people, and have no value independent of their usefulness. But people do have a great inherent value, distinct from their usefulness to the rest of us. And thus killing a person costs the inherent value of that person, while destroying a tumor or bomb costs us nothing but whatever use that tumor or bomb may have had to us. This is why I think executing a person is much much more harmful.
If you could be certain a person would kill again, and that there is no possible other alternative way to stop them from doing so, then it might be worthwhile to execute people. But because these people tend to look a lot like other seemingly dangerous people who actually are not planning on killing again, and because lesser punishments almost always are sufficient to stop a person from being a threat, I don't believe that human beings are capable of figuring out how to separate cases where execution would be productive from the many more cases where execution mere appears productive to the non-omniscient.
Posts: 8120 | Registered: Jul 2000
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Justice. He helped kill thousands of people. It is only fitting that he lose his life for doing so.
I don't see how the third sentence follows from the second, nor how it would be inherently unjust not to kill him (as your rephrase implies).
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Yeah, what's so just about bad things happening to bad people?
A lot of people seem to have this feeling MPH just expressed, that independent of any considerations about deterrence or prevention of future crime, it's good to harm people who've done wrong. Though I share the gut feeling to a certain extent, I don't see the rationale for it.
If you know that someone will never commit another crime, and that hurting him won't create an example for anyone, how can it be just to hurt or kill him anyway? It won't make anyone freer, or prevent the infringement of anyone's freedom. It won't increase the amount of happiness in the world -- indeed, it will only decrease it.
I guess that as I see it, the only way to justify hurting or killing someone is by pointing out that it serves some important purpose. Just acts are acts that make the world better in some way. How does hurting or killing Mousaui make the world any better?
Posts: 4600 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Dagonee, the situations not being exactly the same, your question is an interesting one. But with an easy answer.
Prison should not be about punishing, it should be about rehabilitation. If that sounded like a soudbite it is becouse I have given up hope on this discusion, wherin people do not even seem to read eachothers posts.
Posts: 1332 | Registered: Apr 2005
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posted
That doesn't really help me understand. Destineer's post is apt, as are his questions.
"If you break the rules, you suffer the consequences" does not in any way imply that execution is the only just consequence for certain crimes.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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posted
Some people think that the proper punishment for killing people is death, and that since he killed people, it is justice for him to die.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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quote:Some people think that the proper punishment for killing people is death...
Why do they think this? That's the question I'm asking. I don't take "an eye for an eye" as axiomatic.
Posts: 10886 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote:Originally posted by Pelegius: Dagonee, the situations not being exactly the same, your question is an interesting one. But with an easy answer.
Prison should not be about punishing, it should be about rehabilitation. If that sounded like a soudbite it is becouse I have given up hope on this discusion, wherin people do not even seem to read eachothers posts.
If you're interested in the topic, you might want to check out the Crime and Mental Illness for a pretty good discussion on the purposes of punishment.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:One concept of justice is that if you break the rules, you suffer the consequences.
This is one of those cases where we determine the consequences.
____
Aside: I do think, to an alarming degree, we've annexed too many of our unattractive characteristics to institutions. You can call it the division of labor. If a business perpetrates a fraud to increase its profits, it's habit not to blame the people running the business as much as taking for granted that, "That's what businesses do." Salesmen and advertising people are notorious for this, and availing themselves of that excuse. We give these dispensations to politicians and military soldiers, also.
I'm not going to debate the existence of this phenomenon. It's simply the case. I am a little hazy on why we do it. I think the reason we are so quick to shunt all of the humanity's morally deficient characteristics to a procedure or bureaucracy is because that way, the people who inhabit those institutions can still go home and have a healthy conception of themselves.
If Mousaoui is executed, it's because we killed him.
Posts: 5600 | Registered: Jul 2001
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quote:Originally posted by mr_porteiro_head: Some people think that the proper punishment for killing people is death, and that since he killed people, it is justice for him to die.
Even if you go with this, though, he did not kill anyone. You've moved from "helped kill perople" to "killed people." I realize it's a matter of opinion, to an extent, if he helped or not. . . I personally think that statement is still to strong. But there is no way you can say he actually killed anyone. If we're going for an eye for an eye, you have no justification for putting him to death. I'm sure he would have liked to have been on one of the planes. But how can you justify killing someone for wanting to kill others?
I'm arguing morality, not legality. There is obviously a legal argument for the death penalty in this case. But even if I believed in capital punishment for murders, I could not support the death penalty for a man who didn't actually murder anyone.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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Can the people's need for "justice" be served without the death of the offender?
I submit it can. Seems to me that that the word "justice" is very often confounded with retribution and is used to condone state-sponsored acts that are not necessary nor are they in the people's best interest.
I think that only the human need for revenge (or rather, retribution) requires that the consequences of causing a death are death.
Posts: 22497 | Registered: Sep 2000
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posted
Of course not. I'm making a more general statement about the seeming misunderstanding of what retribution is. It is not vengeance, it's intricately wound up with justice, and yet it keeps being almost casually dismissed as obviously wrong.
Whether death is just retribution is another question. But the fact that death can only serve retribution is not enough to make the death unjust.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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quote:Err, no it's not. It's part of some theories of justice, but it's not part of many others.
It is unless you've redefined the word.
It means "that which is justly deserved."
If you think something isn't justly deserved, then that thing isn't retribution.
It doesn't mean "vengence." It doesn't mean "punishment."
In other words, some theorists might propose that retribution doesn't exist. But that can't say things that are retribution aren't justice.
Posts: 26071 | Registered: Oct 2003
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