From: ednclark@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (Jeffrey Clark)
Subject: Re: morality????????
Organization: ITC, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia
Date: 11 Nov 92 01:35:52 GMT

bobb@vice.ICO.TEK.COM (Robert Beauchaine) writes:

>In article <ednclark.720775515@kraken> ednclark@kraken.itc.gu.edu.au (Jeffrey Clark) writes:
>>
>>Once someone has committed a crime of impinging the rights of another person
>>to such a severity that the idea of capital punishment becomes an option
>>that person has forfeited their right to rights. 


>  Witness recent attempts at legislating the death penalty for drug
>  dealers.  How far down do we lower the bar?  Why not mandate the
>  death penalty for any felony?  Or misdemeanor?  Once the criminal
>  has decided to violate my rights, he has abrogated his own.
>  Including his right to life.  Give me a break.

Drug-dealers are scum, but until they authorise some form of violence
against a person they have not violated a person's rights. A lot of drug
sealers are just peddling some illegal substance, they do not force a person
to take the drug or buy it (the drug does that). There is no up or down that
the bar must be moved, there is a clear cutposition that it can sit. If a
person has, under no provocation, caused intentional physical harm to
another person they have forfeited their right to live in our society.
>  Again, the only way you can justify the death penalty is to assume
>  the criminal sub human.  Can't go around slaughtering perfectly
>  functional human beings, now can we?

Yep, if they make life more than an accidental risk they don't deserve the
benefits that society gives them.
>>Criminals de-humanise
>>themselves by acting so blatently anti-socially, and no amount of "they had
>>a bad childhood" or some such bleeding heart crapola cuts ice with me. 


>  Sounds a lot like the recent war over homosexuality.  "Those damn
>  faggots are behaving anti-socially by dehumanising themselves
>  through anal intercourse".  Why do we always need a scapegoat? Do
>  you really think that most murderers go through a rational thought
>  process whereby they realize the full implications of what they
>  are doing?  

I can't see how homosexuals have anything to do with this, what they do is
between mutually consenting adults there is no physical harm done to anybody
(in fact quite the opposite).  What am I using murderers and rapists as a
scapegoat for, murder and rape? Who else is responsible? I don't care what
form of thought process they go through, unless there is mitigating
circumstances (such as physical abuse by a husband upon a family even after
other measures have been attempted to stop it and then the wife kills the
asshole), they can and often do do it again, regardless of treatment, and
therefore it is not fair when they act against the society that provides so
much for them that they should be allowed to continue with those privileges.
Personally, I prefer exiling the scum, but if that's not an option we'll
just kill them.



>/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ 

>Bob Beauchaine bobb@vice.ICO.TEK.COM 

>"Look, I tried the cat experiment.  On the third trial, the cat was
>dead.  On each of the subsequent 413 trials, it remained dead.  Am I
>doing something wrong?"
>			James Nicoll

>Q.  How many Heisenbergs does it take to screw in a light bulb?
>A.  If you know the number, you don't know where the light bulb is!

Jeff.
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