American Society Has No Moral Authority to Punish Murder

First of all, I must give my opponent credit for being so good. Now... My opponent has incorrectly stated that I am attempting to promote vigilantism. As cool as Arrow is, that kind of thing doesn't usually end well. What I AM saying is that the Government should eliminate the hypocrisy in its actions before punishing crime. As for my personal beliefs on the Death Penalty, despite my having mentioned it, it shouldn't have any real relevance in this debate. I know that I practically invited it, but that was a borderline personal attack. Please do not repeat it. Anyway, execution is the taking of a life which deserves to die. Executions of innocent people is entirely accidental. If they knew someone was innocent then they wouldn't execute that person. I admitted my sources' bias, yes. However, that does not mean that they are incorrect. A biased source can still be accurate. If not, would anybody watch MSNBC or Fox News? How about humans? Humans are by nature biased. Does that mean everything a human says is untruthful? 1. Abortion Now, about a fetal brain, I did not mean to say (if I said at all) that the fetal brain is fully developed by 9 weeks. Rather, the organ is fully formed. It still has plenty of developing to do, inside and outside of the womb. But I do not see how this undermines the point that I was trying to make. My point is that by 9 weeks a fetus, which allegedly is not a living being, has its own brain. So even if you don't consider it to be human, you must at least acknowledge it as a life form. But this in itself is useless, as we kill and eat many life forms. So I must prove that human fetuses are above nonhuman animals. And I already did this by pointing out that the creature on that list which has the most motor neurons still has less of them than a 10 week human fetus. (The list in question is in my earlier argument.) It'd be considered murder to randomly kill a dolphin, wouldn't it? So how much more should it be considered murder to kill an even higher animal? A fetus has no knowledge of anything. It doesn't know compassion, hate, sorrow, or joy. But in what way does one's ignorance make his or her life less valuable? A developed brain doesn't make your life more valuable if that higher development comes simply from having lived longer. A 20 year old is not more valuable than a 5 year old. Also, I was talking about a period 10-22 weeks into a pregnancy, not 3 weeks into a pregnancy. Personally I feel that abortion at 3 weeks is murder, but that has little relevance here. You said that the act of killing requires malice of forethought. It is true that most mothers bear no ill will towards their children; they simply feel the need to terminate the pregnancy because (insert excuse here). However, if you intentionally killed somebody outside of self-defense yet you felt no ill will for whoever you're killing, it's still murder. Now, abortion is definitely premeditated, so it easily fits that criteria. You said that the Federal Government is not the entity which performs abortions. This may be true, but if you give a killer the gun which he uses to murder his victim, are you not guilty of being an accomplice to murder? This principle applies here because, as I pointed out in the last round, the Government sponsors Planned Parenthood. Also, in 1973 the Federal Government effectively gave (virtually) all Americans permission to have an abortion, in a case called "Roe vs. Wade." http://www.pbs.org... Therefore, abortion is murder. And in round 2 I specified that the assumption (that murderers don't have the right to punish murder) is true. So if I prove that the Government commits murder then I win this debate. 2. Drone Strikes: "The study concludes that most of the militants killed in the (drone) strikes (in Pakistan) have been low level targets whose deaths have failed to make the United States any safer. Just 2% of drone strike victims are said to be top militant leaders." http://www.democracynow.org... Now, if this information is public knowledge, you can bet your *expletive* that the Government knew this long, long ago. Even if they didn't then, they do now...yet they're still carrying out drone strikes! They are knowingly killing civilians, and often it does little to nothing towards the goal of making America safer or saving lives. The Government is guilty of murder!