I agree, and I think the confusion starts when people define "good" and "evil' as groups of people instead of actions.

Excellent point Flint.

Thank you. I find a similar confusion concerning the word "freedom" . . .

And by, not accidentally at all, executing the guilty ones, what lesson do we teach?

Understand that we are still on the side of right even when we make mistakes. Errors are to be regretted, but don't ask us to go paralytic. Evil's too tough for us to let up on it.

If there's one thing I cannot in conscience ask for, it's the kind of divine perfection you seem to want. This is a human endeavor.

Rkzen, here your thinking is all wrong. You are misusing the term "murder," and thus setting up a total falsity. The difference between a rightful killing and a wrongful killing has been recognized at least since the Bronze Age. Rkzen, that is an awfully long distance to be behind the curve. Someone who cannot distinguish a rightful killing from a wrongful one is not an enlightened person by any measure, no matter how much he may hope otherwise.

Execution is self defense, extended to the whole of society, at least in the following of just and proper laws. A sign of good government such as ours is that execution is not over-used, in the fashion of the non-democracies. Non-democracies' overuse of death sentences is enough to give the entire thing a bad name, true -- but this should not delegitimize anyone else's efforts at damage control. In the end, that's what an execution is -- it's damage control.

Bad people try to undermine social self-defense. Good people understand it and uphold it.

Murderers are bad mmmkay.

Would it be "right and just" to prosecute and punish a frenchman in English. No, justice should be in the language the defendant understands.

Executing violent criminals is justice in their language. Appropriate response is the true high road. :behead:

And accidentally executing a few innocents is the language of: ???

The only swinging Saddam has in his future is on a swingset.....shooting a rifle into the air laughing. :)

There are no innocents over 2 years old. :cool:

Oh well, as long as they're guilty of something.

"And remember: Evil will always prevail, because Good is dumb."

if it's wrong to kill, then it's wrong to kill.





(checks the ten commandments for the small print)

The ten commandments were a covenant with the Jews. I'm not Jewish.:p

The Commandment proscribes wrongful killing, Jay. Even people who aren't Bible scholars know about that.