[BigV]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

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"Objections to the death penalty seem to me without wisdom, on three counts.

First, those who object to the death penalty are unable to distinguish a rightful killing from a wrongful one.

Wrong. As usual, you presume much and understand little. The ability to distinguish a rightful from a wrongful killing is not a prerequisite for opposition to the death penalty. It is in no way a condition for opposition to the death penalty. It is neither sufficient nor necessary. Nor does the contrary argument apply, that opposition to the death penalty precludes the ability to distinguish rightful from wrongful killing. Neither point has any causative influence on the other.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

In this, these people completely miss a moral point that has been clearly understood since the Bronze Age. No one of any depth of wisdom speaks against killing an unlawful, murderously inclined attacker in self-defense, and what is the death penalty but extending that inalienable right to society at large? If killing in self-defense is right, so is execution.

More baloney. Why? Because state execution is not killing in self defense, it is in the most deliberate way imaginable, pre-meditated killing. No one with with any sense considers premediated killing self defense; it's murder. Look it up.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Second, the objectors do not appreciate the value of damage control. Dead murderers murder no more, period. Isn't that what we want? I want murders to stop more than I want murderers to keep breathing. Is this somehow not sensible?

Damage control? Oookaaay, you're off to a possibly good start, but you trip and fall on your face right away in your extrapolation. You and I agree that stopping murders is desirable, sensible. But if the prevention of murder is what we're striving for, and killing is our method (how freakin orwellian is that "logic"?), then why stop there? Sure, some murderers kill again, but a much much larger pool of potential murderers can be found in the general population. Of all the people who commit murder, most of them are first timers. Why not just abort them all? Or if bulk killing is your emphasis, then how about assasination? Think how many deaths would be prevented then! Absurd, you say. Yeah, killing to stop killing is pretty absurd.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

Third, opponents of the death penalty are unwilling to fight evil to the last extremity; their commitment to human goodness comes short of mine, and short of what it should be. This lapse is deplorable, and I say it is insupportable. Why demand that evil not be fully atoned for? Where is our valuation of four innocent lives wrongly taken, in [all this] 'Save Tookie'? Nowhere that I can see."

I will, for the time being, leave aside your pompous ravings of your superiority, and your evaluation of my "commitment to human goodness".

Atonement is a big word, a big idea. If atonement is your goal, do you consider execution as atonement? I don't. What if, as in this case and others, if the condemned goes down to die continually protesting his innocence? What of the case of the conspicuous absence of remorse or contrition? Where is the atonement then? Can atonement be extracted? Or can it only be accepted? And how can you measure the fullness of atonement? You've selected a good and important aspect of this process, but you try to make it do something it can't do: be measured, be taken.

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

The long time on Death Row for the condemned actually isn't the minus some make it out to be. It is a measure of how carefully we try to ensure we're doing right -- this society tries to check its decision to kill some evildoer in the name of the public good in every way humanly possible. A couple of decades is not an unreasonable span of time for new evidence, exculpatory or condemnatory, to come forward.
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On this point, we agree. It is true that the long delay between sentencing and execution has some costs and complications, but it's worth it.

However.

I have an increasingly hard time imagining you as a real person. The high handed language, the raucous exclamations of your superiority, your blanket condemnations of everyone opposed to your postion, these make for incandescent campaign rhetoric, but it is not the language thinking people use to exchange ideas. You, hmm, your posts portray you as a training bot, a sparring mannequin to sharpen my own thoughts, my own ability to articulate my ideas. That's worthwhile and I'm happy for it. But I just can't get my head around someone who contends that opposition to the death penalty is evidence of a deplorable deficit in one's commitment to human goodness. You have got to be kidding me.