American Society Has No Moral Authority to Punish Murder

Thank you. Note two things: 1) According to rules, I was not permitted to rebut last round, and 2) Literally none of my arguments have been refuted. Please extend all of my arguments about the philosophical and constitutional grounding for the moral authority to punish. Secondly, I have not misunderstood the case. The case was, simply, that the American government has no moral authority to punish murder. I have demonstrated the contrary is true, and this argumentation has not been refuted at all. Now, even if my opponent's arguments were true, that would not affirm the resolution. Pro first has to prove a link between actors within a state engaging in a behavior and the state not having the authority to punish this behavior. Pro has not done this. Pro, however, CONDONES the death penalty, surely as akin to murder as any act the American government could possibly commit; it is the premeditated ending of another's life. This completely denegrates the entirety of Pro's constructive, showing that the government CAN engage in some quasi-immoral behaviors without losing its monopoly on force. Finally, while the government may or may not engage in immoral activities, the moral calculus and the Constitution demand that the government punish murderers. Pro's laughable attempt to promote vigilantism is clearly misguided, as this would surely lead to more rights abuses. I shall now move to specific refutations. AbortionFirstly, note that individual citizens conduct abortions, not the state. Secondly, my refutation will center around the idea that a fetus is not an independent human being. Before presenting evidence to support this, I would like to note that, by Pro's own admission, the sources employed by Pro are bogus and biased. Moreover, they do not even say what Pro claims; nowhere does the evidence claim that a fetus has a completely developed brain capable of full cognition and sentience and 12 weeks. A person is "one (as a human being, a partnership, or a corporation) that is recognized by law as the subject of rights and duties" [1]. Of course, this person must be recognized as a human being. Murder is "the crime of unlawfully killing a person especially with malice aforethought" [2]. Thus, to qualify for the definition of murder, a person has to be maliciously killed. An abortion clearly does not meet this burden. The reason this is the case can be seen in the definition of a person as a subject of rights and duties, as human. To be human, one has to have cognitive abilities, that is, sentience [3] [4]. This ability to have sentience, to reason, is the result of evolution, which caused humans to develop a frontal cortex to allow for sentience, reason, thoughts, emotions, etc. A fetus at three weeks does not have this. At 3 weeks fetal development, a fetus barely has arms or legs, and certainly does not have a developed brain [5]. The absence of this cognitive ability is clearly acceptable grounds for termination, as a human being has not formed yet. We see this standard come into play when we allow for the unplugging of braindead patients on life support. They have lost all cognitive ability, their brain is not functioning, and, as a result, they lose derivative right to life claims. Thus, they can be unplugged, terminating their existence, though, by that time, they are already dead. If we similarly apply this standard, we can clearly see that a fetus does not have the same rights claims that human beings do because they lack sentience and cognitive abilities that rights are designed to protect in the first place. Thus, since I have demonstrated that a fetus is not a person, abortion, at least in some instances, is not first degree murder.Now, I have refuted Pro's stance that abortion is murder, even though it is non-responsive to the case construct. DronesI am not going to spend too much time on drone strikes, because, though innocent lives may be ended, that serves to protect more human lives on balance. Numerous terror plots have been thwarted by the assassinations of the perpetrators. The number of lives saved is, then, greater than those ended [6]. Thus, under a utilitarian calculus, these strikes are moral. Thus, the resolution has been negated and Pro's case has be refuted. Pro must present more substantive argumentation to even come close to meeting his BOP. I look forward to future argumentation. Sources 1. http://www.merriam-webster.com......2. http://www.merriam-webster.com......3. http://www.sciencedaily.com......4. http://science.howstuffworks.com......5. http://americanpregnancy.org......6. http://www.slate.com...