Crimes that deserve the death penalty?

[David]

[pietillidie]

^Concern with the need for "respect" has a very dark history, having been vociferously advocated alongside every abuse imaginable, from slavery and child labour, to unregulated factory work and institutional child rape.

Give me rights-based law over respect-based culture anyday.

[Mugwump]

[think positive]

[Mugwump]

[think positive]

ok, i wish he had shot himself, but hes a gutless tool.

[David]

[Mugwump]

[Mugwump]

[pietillidie]

The pretence of deterrence is potentially more problematic. If you can't make a dent in a problem by trading away your highest principle to get at it, what's left but to throw your hands in the air?

[HAL]

I think I do.

[pietillidie]

And if you're trading away principles for no outcomes at high cost, the argument has nothing going for it, being neither principled nor of utility.

[Mugwump]

^ what principle are you trading away ? Thou shalt not kill ? You have already traded away "Thou shalt not abduct and imprison".

These are not principles, they are liberties. Liberty under the law is a principle. The right of parliament, not the monarch, to make laws is a principle. That the punishment should fit the crime is a principle. The specific penalty for transgression is not. Another principle is that an act of crime is a de facto surrender of certain liberties.

There is no principle here, just an historic view regarding proportionality which can be decided in light of the health of society by a justly constituted parliament of the people.

[think positive]

[think positive]