Newsgroups: alt.callahans
Subject: Capital punishment (was Re: abortion)
From: olson@husc9.Harvard.EDU (Charles Olson)
Date: 13 Apr 92 22:27:19 EDT
Distribution: world
Organization: Spam-On-A-Rope Inc.

In article <1992Apr13.085204.11735@cco.caltech.edu>, lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals) writes:
|> In article <1992Apr12.125307.10994@husc3.harvard.edu>, olson@husc9.Harvard.EDU (Charles Olson) writes:
|> >"I'm also vehemently, adamantly opposed to the death penalty, in any and all
|> >circumstances.
|> 
|> StM is puzzled by this attitude.  "Let's see.  That means that if we have, say,
|> a mass-murderer whom we are CERTAIN will continue his killing spree first
|> chance he gets (you DID say `any and all circumstances'), that gives us two
|> choices:  We can either let him go on killing, or we can support him (with the
|> best of medical care, of course;  given that we're confining him, to do
|> anything less would amount to a death penalty) for the rest of his life.  I
|> know of very few (if any) people who'd advocate the former course of action.
|> And the latter has the following problem:  Suppose I need some MAJOR medical
|> care, but can't afford it (or, for that matter, suppose I'm unemployable).  If
|> I kill a number of people, I'm assured of food, shelter, clothing, and medical
|> care (all but the last may be somewhat substandard, but remember, I'm facing
|> the prospect of doing without entirely) for the rest of my life.  If I DON'T
|> become a mass-murderer, I'm going to be unable to provide myself with any of
|> these amenities.  This provides me with a pretty damned strong incentive to see
|> how many people I can kill in the shortest possible time.


Castellan parks the forklift he'd borrowed from the construction site across the street,
takes the soapboxes off the pallet and piles them back up again.  "I guess the bonfire
is just going to have to wait a few... To comment on your argument in specific, StM,
I donm't have to become a mass-murderer to live off of society anyway... I can just
rob a few banks, serve my 10 years, rob another bank, and repeat the cycle.  So unless
you institute the death penalty for *all* crimes, you're still going to have to 
support such people.  Besides, prison may provide free food and medical care, but
it isn't exactly a barrel of laughs all the way around... anybody who's content to
live their life under incarceration to avoid working is going to be a leech on
society one way or another in any event.  (I won't even go into how stupid I think
prison is as a way of dealing with society's transgressors; admittedly this is 
partially because I've never been able to come up with a coherent alternative 
proposal)

"But even if there were a significant number of such leeches, I simply refuse to
grant the state the right to judicially take its citizens' lives.  Besides the
potential for wrongful executions (which, by most estimates, happen all the time),
and the fact that capital punishment doesn't deter crime *in the slightest* (why
is it that the states that have the most executions, to wit. Texas and Florida,
also have among the highest murder rates in the country?), the simple fact that
the state thinks it can have life-or-death power over me offends and sickens me.
The U.S. is the *only* "first world" country to have the death penalty-- pretty
damned hypocritical of us to be going on and on about human rights violations
in other countries.  

"Simply put, I don't believe that anybody has the right to condemn another to
death.  I also don't believe that anybody is utterly irredeemable, and I include
the likes of Ted Bundy and Jeff Dahmer in that belief.  And I believe that the
state tying a living, breathing human being into a chair and filling the room
with cyanide gas is every bit as reprehensible as an individual blowing another's
brains out on the street, if not more so."

He takes a few deep breaths and forces himself to calm down, and climbs down 
from the soapboxes.  "This issue always makes me forget how opposed I am to
moralizing... apologies to anyone who felt offended by anything I said."


-- 
-Chip Olson. | olson@husc.harvard.edu | ceo@gnu.ai.mit.edu (seldom used)
"So come all ye lovers of the Good Life, your children playing in the sun,
And set a sympathetic flag a-flying, and be there when the Dutchman comes..."
                                      -Jethro Tull, "Flying Dutchman"