Just venting on a pet peeve...
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060222/ap_on_re_us/california_execution
Waah, waah. We're not being nice enough to people who kill babies and cops when we punish them.America should bring back the firing squad. Sure, it's not very pleasant. But ( Read more... )
Waah, waah. We're not being nice enough to people who kill babies and cops when we punish them.America should bring back the firing squad. Sure, it's not very pleasant. But ( Read more... )
Nobody wants human beings to suffer, not even me (conservative as I am...ooh evil!). However, society has no other way of protecting the rights of the individuals living within it than to punish people who infringe upon those rights. When we put someone in prison, we as a society are in effect saying "What you did was wrong, and because of that we are taking away your freedom." If we as a society cannot punish by taking life, then by the same token, how can we punish by taking away freedom, a right valued far more by some people than even life? Both are done by the same justification.
As far as the firing squad--I would imagine that I would rather die quickly and painfully than to lie strapped to a table for ten minutes and be drugged to death. I suppose it's all a matter of perspective, really.
It's quite simple, really (in theory..heh). Each and every human being has the same rights, and the responsibility to respect the rights of others. If one person violates the rights of another, society can take away some of the violator's rights. This discourages people from exploiting or otherwise hurting each other. But until a human being commits an offense, his/her rights are protected by society. Thus, a baby has a right to live, because it has done no wrong, nor has it conspired to do wrong, nor can we prove that it ever will do wrong. A criminal sentenced to death has chosen to either extremely and/or repeatedly violate the rights of others, and therefore the criminal forefeits his/her right to live, (lest they or their peers so grievously violate someone again). It's not a terribly pleasant way of living, but that's how society works.
I gtg, but I look forward to your reply...and sorry if I got to wordy or complicated with vocabulary or whatnot.
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forgive me if repeat myself, but i tend to do that. a lot.
1st off, the firing squad thing- me not being a fan of this goes back to the thing of me not believing we have the right to end anyones life. i'm not a fan of lethal injection either. i just don't like the death penalty. at all.
i do believe that yes, if someone has done something wrong, they should be punished. yeah, let's put them in prison, let's take away some of their most basic rights because they violated someone else's basic rights. totally. i certaintly don't want criminals wandering around the streets being allowed to do whatever they want.
i am so not into anarchy.
i just have a really big problem with us thinking we can decide when to end someones life.
what crime is "bad" enough to warrant the death penalty? a murderer? a child molestor? someone who robbed a bank? what? i don't even know where you would draw the line.
should we just eliminate all who ever committed any sort of crime? that would certaintly encourage people to not disobey the law. but then if we killed everyone who ever went to prison, some of the people i know would be dead now. some teenagers i know would never have been born because their father was in prison before he met and married their mother. and he's a really good guy now.
and i assume you are not saying we should just go murdering every criminal, oops, i mean sentencing them to death.
maybe i'm a softie, but i just hate the idea of us ending people's lives. it comes down to the thing i've said like 9 trillion times now, i do not believe it is right for us to take someones life, regardless of what they've done.
remember columbine? yeah, i'm sure you do. i was grieved that the shooters took their own lives in the end. not because i wanted them punished, but because i wanted redemption for them or something. they must have been terribly pained people to do something like that, and i just wished they could have at least had a chance to redeem themselves, to be happy. and i suppose you might think they don't deserve it, but i guess we all suck and none of us deserve anything good ever.
yeah, so i think i'll stop rambling now.
but its been nice to have an intelligent conversation where people don't just get angry and yell at you because they have different believes (strangely enough, i get that both at houghton and at my old non christian college with all my "secular" friends...life is so special sometimes)
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