Trial by Fire - a case of death penalty in Texas

[Neil]

Well, I can say two things to this. One is that the Allies themselves ran in to difficulties with the legal ramifications of bombing cities at Nuremburg, after all.

Except they didn't, because they won.  Nuremburg had no legal ramifications.

[Pat]

This is appeal to authority. You are appealing to the authority of the state. Because the state says it's OK, it's OK! And yet, as I pointed out, a dictator's killings are not murder as long as they are legal by his own law. 

This is utter bullshit!  I asked, politely, that you look up "appeal to authority" before you misused the term again, and you turned around and misused the term in exactly the same fashion again.

That's your way of being polite? And who cares about your technical definition? You are appealing to authority. Does the state not have authority? Does the law not have authority? It does, and that is what you are appealing to. You understand perfectly well what I'm saying. Stop pretending like you don't.

A dictator's killings may or may not be murder, based on both domestic and the relevant international law.  The whole "dictator" thing is yet another appeal to emotion. No one here is talking about killings by dictators, we are discussing the death penalty.  If you want to startt a thread about when a dictator's killings are murder, knock yourself out.

More obfuscatory babble.

I take it, then, that it would be "an appeal to emotion" and "intellectually dishonest" and "fucked up" (etc) of me to call this hypothetical dictator a murderer.

This is called a strawman.  You are proposing my arguments for me.  Holmie don't play that game.
[/quote]


As is this. It is not a strawman - it is the logical conclusion of your own argument.

[Pat]

This is appeal to authority. You are appealing to the authority of the state. Because the state says it's OK, it's OK! And yet, as I pointed out, a dictator's killings are not murder as long as they are legal by his own law. I take it, then, that it would be "an appeal to emotion" and "intellectually dishonest" and "fucked up" (etc) of me to call this hypothetical dictator a murderer.

What's wrong with appealing to the authority of the state?  The state has the authority.

I agree the state has this authority. It is right to appeal to this authority in a court of law. It is not right to appeal to this authority in a discussion of morals and say it is intellectually dishonest to deviate from this authority in your personal opinions.

[Agelastus]

Big whoop.  i have been thinking about it even longer than you, and that hasn't made me make up new defintions for common words just so I can justify my position to myself.  My opposition to the death penalty, which I formulated in high school and have never had a need to reconsider, is based on two considerations:
(1) the odds of executing someone wrongly seem, in my mind, to be higher than the odds that, in the absence of the DP, a convicted murderer who would have been executed with the DP would escape and murder again.  Eliminating the DP would thus, in my opinion, reduce the number of innocents who die; and
(2) I do not trust any government enough to grant them the power to impose the ultimate sanction.  If I could, I would also rob them of the power to kill via war, but that isn't anything a single government which I can influence can accomplish, so I stick to the possible.

Note that neither of these reasons are appeals to emotion, and neither of them requires making up private definitions for public words.

Interesting definition of emotion, there. I take it "trust" has no emotional overtones?

I'll grant you that (a) is, on the surface, expressed logically and unemotionally. It also has, to the best of my knowledge, no statistical proof, so you appear to be exercising "faith" here in your own logic without supporting evidence. "Faith" has no emotional overtones, then?

Although, I must say it is good to know that you oppose the death penalty as well, even if our reasoning differs. I could not recall which side you'd been on in previous death penalty threads where I didn't post. My emotional response to that is  .

Maybe 25 years isn't enough for you.

Too long, almost. I am not a criminal, but I definitely have a somewhat dark and vengeful side. I oppose the death penalty, yet as I have posted there have been times when I have caught myself thinking "that fucker needs to die for what he did". I don't think you can separate an element of emotional response from a subject as fundamental as the death penalty.

And when you get right down to it, my considering that the death penalty is effectively equivalent to a state-sponsored murder, and your position that a government should not have the power to impose the ultimate sanction are not that far apart.

I very much doubt that the politicians in your country believe that the President of the United States, or the governors of the applicable US states, are murderers.  Thisis appeal to authority is Teh Fail.

Since I never said they did, I fail to see the purpose of your point. I said that they agreed with me that the death penalty should not exist, not that they shared the same reasoning why it should not exist that I do.

Although, on reflection, from what I know of the abolitionist argument when this was discussed in my country, I think it quite likely some of the more fundamentalist abolitionists probably did, and do.

Nope.  If you say something stupid, I feel no obligation to point out that it is stupid in a polite way.

The absence of one word made it "stupid", which I am now, for a third time, apologising for the omission of.

And stigmatising a personal viewpoint that was made solely as an expression of position as "stupid" is pretty low.  I am sure you noted that I was not responding to anyone elses argument, but merely making my own position on the subject of the death penalty clear. Now I am stuck in yet another interminable "Grumblerisation argument" because you slipped into your standard, knee-jerk response pattern to something you consider to be "stupid". You could have just ignored it, if that was how you felt, rather than making yourself look so arrogant.

Of course, what you did was an emotional reaction as well..

If we are making up new, broader, definitions to "self-defense" than I can just say that execution is society exercising its right of self-defense against a murderer.  Executed murderers will not kill again, while some non-executed ones will.  Thus, whether we use the normal defintion or your universal definition, your "CP is teh murdur" argument fails.

As Miglia has pointed out, as the law stands now in the USA, society has effectively made that decision. It does not mean that I have to believe that the current law is right, or refrain from expressing my own view on the appropriateness of the death penalty.

And self-defence has a very broad definition when it comes to societies, as I am sure you are well aware. I would remind you of the contortions that various governments went through to justify the invasion of Iraq in terms of self-defence.

Self-defence has a much broader definition than you allow when it comes to people as well.

Moreover, moral positions on really fundamental issues to do with human life tend to be longer lasting than most societies laws ("thou shalt not kill" being an obvious expression of a moral position that has endured two thousand years in western thought.)

Please note my deliberate use of the term "fundamental issues" there; I am well aware that the above argument can easily be partially holed by the much more recent phenomena of "animal rights", which now sees various forms of hunting (to use a UK example) that were perfectly acceptable fifty years ago as now being "morally wrong".

[grumbler]

That's your way of being polite?

I didn't say I was asking politely again. Your repeated erroneous insistence that I am "appealing to authority" when I am not is merely mulish.

And who cares about your technical definition? You are appealing to authority. Does the state not have authority? Does the law not have authority? It does, and that is what you are appealing to.

I have no clue as to what you are attempting to argue here.  I am not appealing to "the state" as an authority at all. 

You understand perfectly well what I'm saying. Stop pretending like you don't.

As far as I can tell, you are either engaging in non sequiturs or speaking gibberish.  I won't pretend you are not.  If you have an argument, make it.

More obfuscatory babble.

That is what your whole "appeal to authority" argument is, insofar as I can tell.

As is this. It is not a strawman - it is the logical conclusion of your own argument.

No, it isn't.  Argument by assertion is another logical fallacy.  I never said, and do not believe, that calling a hypothetical dictator a murderer would be "an appeal to emotion" under any circumstances.  If a murderer is executed in North Korea after a fair trial, that doesn't make Kim Jung Il a murderer.  Other acts might, but to argue that any execution does is a mere appeal to emotion.  I specifically noted that whether an act of a dictator is murder depends on the act, and yo deliberately ignored my statement in order to craft your strawman having me argue that no act by a dictator is murder.

[garbon]

So what have we learned here?

miglia is a fool,
Agelastus is a wanker
and Grumbler...he's crumbly.

[Agelastus]

Well, I can say two things to this. One is that the Allies themselves ran in to difficulties with the legal ramifications of bombing cities at Nuremburg, after all.

Except they didn't, because they won.  Nuremburg had no legal ramifications.

I'll have go look it up again, but I was under the impression that the Allies did not bring charges against various Luftwaffe personnel for bombing civilian populations because of the potential legal ramifications for their own campaign of bombing German civilian populations. So it has no legal ramifications because the issue was deliberately avoided.

And unfortunately, I am well aware that Britain was probably the worst offender in this context.

[Neil]

I agree the state has this authority. It is right to appeal to this authority in a court of law. It is not right to appeal to this authority in a discussion of morals and say it is intellectually dishonest to deviate from this authority in your personal opinions.

There's nothing wrong with appealing to the authority of the state in a moral argument.

[Neil]

I'll have go look it up again, but I was under the impression that the Allies did not bring charges against various Luftwaffe personnel for bombing civilian populations because of the potential legal ramifications for their own campaign of bombing German civilian populations. So it has no legal ramifications because the issue was deliberately avoided.

And unfortunately, I am well aware that Britain was probably the worst offender in this context.

And yet they prosecuted the Germans for the Holocaust, despite the fact that the Soviet crimes were far worse.

[Agelastus]

Wait a second.  Are you proposing that a person can lawfully kill another in order to avoid "extreme emotional trauma?"  I know of no jurisdiction where avoiding  "extreme emotional trauma" is defined as the sort of "self-defense" that authorizes lethal force.

Crumbs, Grumbler, that's taking selective quoting too far - the next bit expressly states that I would have difficulty making this a generalisation.

One could make a good argument that "honour killings", which are legal in certain extremely backward jurisdictions, base there legality on exactly the issue of "extreme emotional trauma". Self-defence, in other words in its most basic meaning.

But before you quote this back at me, I am sure we both agree that those societies are a bunch of backwards barbarians.

It may be your opinion that the tightening of gun laws was done merely for emotional reasons, as opposed to a sudden recognition that existing laws allowed things to happen which society wanted to make illegal, but this is mere argument by assertion.

Trust me, they are good examples for my country in this respect. I was old enough to see the hysteria around them both, and also to be able to note how ill thought out some aspects of the laws were, due to how rapidly they were put before parliament. I remember mentioning in another thread that one consequence is that Britain has gone from World Class to World Shit in competitive shooting.

Making laws based on emotion rather than logic has almost always led to tragedy and regret.  The displacement of the US Nisei is a good example of that.

As an aside, I have always been impressed by how many of the Nisei still wanted to fight for America, despite that.

And since emotional responses can't really be separated from lawmaking in democracies, I am not going to retreat from my now assumed position that emotion has a place alongside logic in discussions of the death penalty.

The deliberate killing of civilians is, as you point out, lawful if justified by military necessity, a fact of which you are very well aware

Grumbler, you know what you have written here is untrue. If they were targetting civilians deliberately, they would be committing criminal acts. They are targetting installations that unfortunately can have civilians living nearby (or not even nearby, but shit happens.) I know that you didn't quite mean that as written.

Please learn the meaning of "strawman" lest you continue to misuse the term. 

Nice...since you and I are both well aware that no western democracy's military would get away with deliberately targetting civilians, despite your somewhat imprecise language on the issue (see above), then how is this not a strawman raised by you to obfuscate the issue?

[Agelastus]

I'll have go look it up again, but I was under the impression that the Allies did not bring charges against various Luftwaffe personnel for bombing civilian populations because of the potential legal ramifications for their own campaign of bombing German civilian populations. So it has no legal ramifications because the issue was deliberately avoided.

And unfortunately, I am well aware that Britain was probably the worst offender in this context.

And yet they prosecuted the Germans for the Holocaust, despite the fact that the Soviet crimes were far worse.

Yes, they prosecuted Germans for the Holocaust, as that was something both democratic west and dictatorial Communist East could agree on.

Bombing cities raised enough ethical, moral and legal questions for the democratic west to get uneasy, and to want to drop the issue. The dictatorial Communist East of course, didn't care about this, but was involved in a joint exercise.

And you don't accuse your ally of crimes worse than the Nazis after the sort of war you'd just fought; especially as you were abetting them in these crimes (see the returns of various groups by the British to the Soviet Union, despite knowing these people, including families, would probably be executed.)

1945 was NOT a good year for someone who is proud of being British in some respects.

[Pat]

That's your way of being polite?

I didn't say I was asking politely again. Your repeated erroneous insistence that I am "appealing to authority" when I am not is merely mulish.

I was referring to the first one, "mkay?"

And who cares about your technical definition? You are appealing to authority. Does the state not have authority? Does the law not have authority? It does, and that is what you are appealing to.

I have no clue as to what you are attempting to argue here.  I am not appealing to "the state" as an authority at all. 

Oh please.

You understand perfectly well what I'm saying. Stop pretending like you don't.

As far as I can tell, you are either engaging in non sequiturs or speaking gibberish.  I won't pretend you are not.  If you have an argument, make it.[/quote]

I have made it. You proceed to hide from it.

More obfuscatory babble.

That is what your whole "appeal to authority" argument is, insofar as I can tell.

As is this. It is not a strawman - it is the logical conclusion of your own argument.

No, it isn't.  Argument by assertion is another logical fallacy.  I never said, and do not believe, that calling a hypothetical dictator a murderer would be "an appeal to emotion" under any circumstances.  If a murderer is executed in North Korea after a fair trial, that doesn't make Kim Jung Il a murderer.  Other acts might, but to argue that any execution does is a mere appeal to emotion. [/quote]

I never said any execution. Strawman. 

I specifically noted that whether an act of a dictator is murder depends on the act, and yo deliberately ignored my statement in order to craft your strawman having me argue that no act by a dictator is murder.

I never said you said that no act by a dictator is murder. See, I can play this game too. But I prefer not to, because it's rediculous, and I don't argue to win on technicalities.

This is pointless. I'm going to bed now. And Garbon, no one is impressed by you being just the opposite of the stereotype. Don't pretend you don't know what I'm talking about. Good night everyone.

[Agelastus]

So what have we learned here?

miglia is a fool,
Agelastus is a wanker
and Grumbler...he's crumbly.

Well, I'd disagree with you on Miglia.

And Grumbler...well, he's Grumbler. He's unique.

As for me being a wanker...well, it depends on which meaning of the word you are using, I suppose...

[Agelastus]

Anyway, I need to get some sleep, as I've got an appointment tomorrow morning, and will probably be stuck with relatives for the rest of the day.

So, gentlemen, I bid you adieu, and look forward to continuing this in the early hours of tomorrow morning, my time. :bows:

[grumbler]

Interesting definition of emotion, there. I take it "trust" has no emotional overtones?

Interestig because it is the common one, and not one made up for the sake of an argument?  I suppose you may find that interesting.

I'll grant you that (a) is, on the surface, expressed logically and unemotionally. It also has, to the best of my knowledge, no statistical proof, so you appear to be exercising "faith" here in your own logic without supporting evidence. "Faith" has no emotional overtones, then?

I have no clue as to how you could think you could successfully interject the strawman concept of "faith" here.  I have no "faith" about this issue whatever. 

Although, I must say it is good to know that you oppose the death penalty as well, even if our reasoning differs. I could not recall which side you'd been on in previous death penalty threads where I didn't post. My emotional response to that is  .

I oppose the death penalty precisely because I have thought about it dispassionately, read up on it a great deal, and drew conclusions based on the best evidence I could find.  It isn't an emotional issue with me, and I could be convinced my conclusions are wrong (either because of faulty facts or faulty reasoning).  that is the advantage of being dispassionate about such things.

Too long, almost. I am not a criminal, but I definitely have a somewhat dark and vengeful side. I oppose the death penalty, yet as I have posted there have been times when I have caught myself thinking "that fucker needs to die for what he did". I don't think you can separate an element of emotional response from a subject as fundamental as the death penalty.

You mean you don't think you can separate the emotional from the logical.  I certainly can.  I don't grieve over the executions that take place, and while I am angered by cases of apparent injustice like the one we are discussing, I don't blame the death penalty itself for such occurrences.  I blame the logic-defeating powers of politics and bureaucracy, which is why I want to limit government powers to those unable to be exerted outside government so those political and bureaucratic imperatives cannot work further against my interests.

And when you get right down to it, my considering that the death penalty is effectively equivalent to a state-sponsored murder, and your position that a government should not have the power to impose the ultimate sanction are not that far apart.

They are poles apart, I think.  I oppose state-sponsored murder for very different reasons than I oppose state-sponsored non-murder killings.

Since I never said they did, I fail to see the purpose of your point. I said that they agreed with me that the death penalty should not exist, not that they shared the same reasoning why it should not exist that I do.

Your claim for opposing the DP is that it is murder.  Their reason for opposing it is, by your admission here, different.

And stigmatising a personal viewpoint that was made solely as an expression of position as "stupid" is pretty low.  I am sure you noted that I was not responding to anyone elses argument, but merely making my own position on the subject of the death penalty clear. Now I am stuck in yet another interminable "Grumblerisation argument" because you slipped into your standard, knee-jerk response pattern to something you consider to be "stupid". You could have just ignored it, if that was how you felt, rather than making yourself look so arrogant.

I have no clue as to what you are now arguing.  I made a post that pointed out the absurdity of starting with a "premise" that was totally at odds with the commonly-understood meaning of a word, by showing that if we simply make up our own meanings for the word "murder" we can go so far as to call a posting on languish murder, and the board sponsors and moderators accomplices to murder.  This was clever and effective, and so obviously not "knee-jerk."

It is both stupid and pointless to develop an argument like "the death penalty is murder and those who carry it out are murderers" when the argument depends on a definition of murder that everyone knows is false and easily disproven.

Of course, what you did was an emotional reaction as well..

Not at all, and the whole "I am rubber, you are glue" argument is childish.

As Miglia has pointed out, as the law stands now in the USA, society has effectively made that decision. It does not mean that I have to believe that the current law is right, or refrain from expressing my own view on the appropriateness of the death penalty.

How the law stands in the US or anywhere else is irrelevant to your argument that the DP is murder.  Were you correct, then those who carried out executions in your country or any other before the DP was ended could be tried as murderers, for they had killed people and not in self-defense.

And self-defence has a very broad definition when it comes to societies, as I am sure you are well aware. I would remind you of the contortions that various governments went through to justify the invasion of Iraq in terms of self-defence.

So the DP is then self-defense?  That is the broad definition.  You can choose the broad definition, in which case you are wrong, or the narrow one, in which case you are wrong.  What you cannot do is weasel and say it is just broad enough to include all acts which which even yopu cannot define as murder, but narrow enough to leave the DP alone as murder.

Self-defence has a much broader definition than you allow when it comes to people as well.

No, it does not.  The law recognizes (and should recognize) a difference between self-defense and the defense of others.  In many jurisdictions in the US, for instance, self-defense includes an obligation to retreat, if possible, while defense of others bears no such obligations.

Moreover, moral positions on really fundamental issues to do with human life tend to be longer lasting than most societies laws ("thou shalt not kill" being an obvious expression of a moral position that has endured two thousand years in western thought.)

Wow.  That is a probably the worst example you could have used!    It is one of the most-ignored Biblical injunctions ever!  Rightfully so, of course, because all animals must kill to survive.