Death Penalty For Cop Killers?
I was vaguely listening to the radio yesterday when an item concerning the death penalty (in Texas, I think) began to air.
I confess that I did not catch the whole piece, but it became quite clear that an American police officer was arguing for the increased use of the death penalty when it comes to child rapists and murderers; and also to “cop killers”. Further along the line, the police officer argued that the range of murderers who should more often get the death penalty should extend to those who murdered medical staff, firefighters and, indeed, to anyone who murdered government workers who “put their lives on the line in the call of their duty.”
Well, in brief, here is my response to these proposals.
1. We are already well on the way to giving far too many special privileges, pay handouts and protections to government workers, and this idea that murdering government workers is, somehow, more heinous a crime than the murdering of anyone else pushes government workers even higher up the pedestal – the pedestal of life itself – something which is clearly very dangerous indeed judging by the history books.
2. Why should the life of a police officer – or any other government worker – be considered to be more valuable than the life of, say, your daughter, your mother, your father, and so on?
3. In addition, if the state accepts that the death penalty is legitimate for the murder of certain people – such as government workers – then it will not be too long before people are demanding the death penalty for the murders of members of other groups; such as ‘women’, ‘homosexuals’ etc. etc.. And it will surely end up being the case that it is only for the murder of white heterosexual men that the death penalty will NOT be forthcoming.
Furthermore, even where such demands were resisted successfully, it would still be the case that people would feel very aggrieved that the murders of some people (especially those of their own loved ones) did not attract the death penalty while others (such as ‘government workers’) did.
The upshot would be a permanent state of fury and anger being directed not only at the system – and those who seemed to benefit from it – but also at those who had, indeed, committed other forms of murder.
Indeed, even abortion is the murder of children – for some people.
Imagine how these people are going to feel towards women who have had abortions if they are indoctrinated into believing that the death penalty is a legitimate punishment for murder.
Even if these people do not actually feel that women who abort their offspring should receive the death penalty, the point here is that they will still likely feel far more malevolent towards them.
And this leads me directly to my next point …
4. The more that we justify the death penalty for others, the more violence among ourselves do we justify within ourselves.
In other words, our tendencies towards violence are ratcheted upwards.
Is this what we really want?
5. It was suggested that government workers who ‘put their lives on the line’ were in need of the ‘greater protection’ that the death penalty would bring them, because the death penalty would help further deter criminals from taking the lives of such government workers.
Well, the notion that the death penalty acts as a good deterrent, in practice, is not very well supported by the evidence, but, for the moment, let us just assume that the death penalty does, indeed, help to deter murderers.
Well, if this is the case, then this takes us all the way back to point 1 – and to all the points that follow it.
In other words, why should we deter more the murderers of some people, but not the murderers of other people?
Why should some people be seen as ’special’ when it comes to deterring murderers?
6. Some time ago, I took a look at the mugshots and the profiles of the inmates of Death Row inside an American prison.
I can summarise them thusly.
They were mostly black, decidedly unintelligent, mentally challenged and, I imagine, never had much of a chance in life.
Furthermore, these individuals mostly had criminal histories that ran to pages upon pages.
And so what we really see going on here is a complete failure of the government to deal with the circumstances, genetic and environmental, that led these murderers to do what they did.
And arguing for the death penalty is just one of the ways in which the politicians and their agencies can pass the buck.
“Nothing to do with us,” they can say. “These murderers are ENTIRELY responsible for what they did.”
Well, I suggest that you, yourself, do a Google search, and so see for yourself the type of individual who typically ends up on Death Row. I think that most of you will see that these individuals had a history that could have been dealt with quite effectively, in most cases, many years before they ended up murdering anybody.
Hence, if government workers such as police officers are so concerned about murder then, perhaps, rather than taking us all down the horrible pathways through which the death penalty leads us, they should seek to persuade the government to adopt policies that would reduce the likelihoods of people becoming murderers in the first place!
For example, reducing the number of single-mother households would reduce the number of murders – as well as the general crime rate – quite significantly.
Bringing more discipline into our schools and on to our streets would also help a great deal.
Reducing excessive immigration would also cut the homicide rate.
There are many, many things that the government could do to reduce the numbers of murders if it really wanted to reduce them.
But governments benefit hugely from murders and from serious crimes, and so they will do very little to decrease their number.
What they will do, however, is forever try to put the blame elsewhere.
7. Of course, we often feel that cold, callous murderers do ‘deserve’ the death penalty. And, in my view, some of them actually deserve far, far worse than the death penalty.
But, in practice, and as indicated above, the death penalty simply poisons us all by increasing our desire for violence across all other circumstances. The evidence does not suggest that it reduces the murder rate. And the death penalty allows the government to keep on passing the buck and to avoid having to address those policies of theirs which lead to a higher murder rate.
Finally, I am not intending to suggest that all lives are equal in value to society. Indeed, this is clearly very much not the case, in my view.
Some human lives are definitely more worthy than others. And some people are just scum.
But my claim is this.
The death penalty poisons us all in very many serious ways; and we would all be much better off without it.
This might not have been true 100 years ago, and it still might not be true in certain countries today.
But, in western countries, at this point in time, I can see no benefits accruing to society from the use of the death penalty, but I can definitely see numerous very serious disadvantages arising from it.
As such, I believe that we should be sentencing those who ‘deserve’ the Death Penalty to life imprisonment – which, in many ways, for many convicts, is probably a stiffer punishment to deal with.
| More from Angry Harry
Stumble It!
November 3rd, 2009 at 2:37 pm
Harry has always been a bleeding heart. I’m amazed that he has the testosterone to operate that magnificent website of his. How in the world do liberals expect to defeat feminism? A feminist has no problem terminating a fetus that is alive and kicking within her, while you guys are gnashing your teeth over the execution of cold-blooded killers. Until you are willing to fight the gender war on their terms, life for western men will continue to spiril downward, one incremental outrage, one bogus feminist statistic, one destroyed man at a time.
Cops. The thin blue line. Meaning they are often the only thing standing between your family and the monsters who would take it all away from you. Regardless of the social conditions that cause criminals to do what they do, like any wild animal, they have a keen survival instinct. And that alone has saved the lives of countless law enforcers.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:50 pm
@ Joe P
Respectfully disagree. I don’t know what Harry’s political leanings are, but as for myself, I refuse to evaluate anything according to a party platform, liberals and conservatives be damned.
But I think your post does speak well to the diversity within the MRM.
All in all, though, I think Harry’s article is spot on. Let’s take a look at truck drivers. They have a lot in common with police. Both are professions that no once can understand without doing them. Both are brutal, largely unappreciated jobs by people who lay life and limb totally on the line to get the job done. And both are jobs that we would quickly suffer immeasurably for if those guys weren’t doing it.
I know this because I myself have driven truckloads of things most people consider indispensable through treacherous mountains passes in the dead of winter.
Is a police officers life more important than mine? Is the thin blue line more vital than the people who bring you food and medicine for your children? I can’t buy an affirmative answer to that one. It just doesn’t make sense to me.
After that, we have the issue of the death penalty itself. I personally don’t have an overarching problem with it, but there is this one teeny little caveat. We have this nasty tendency to put men in prison for things they didn’t do.
I can’t buy a punishment with such finality until we are infallible with it’s application. And not only do we put innocent men away, it is almost exclusively the male and the poor that end up with the needle.
To me, as an MRA, that sucks big. BIG!!
I have been saying for years though, that if people want to end the death penalty, the best way to do that is to start executing people “fairly”
Put a few white women on ice and the death chambers across the western world will shut down overnight. Harry put some really good reasons down to reconsider executions altogether. I came out with even more without referring to Harry’s piece.
But whatever path we take, I can’t imagine that the death penalty, especially in the anti-male way it is administered today, is much of a tool to fight feminism.
November 3rd, 2009 at 3:54 pm
Regarding addressing the issue on the front end-
Freakonomics by Levitt and Dubner goes into the correlation of single mother abortions and violent crime. It’s quite compelling and easy to read. Easily finished in a few sittings. There’s probably a copy at your local library (if it hasn’t been closed due to budget cuts yet).
A thin blue line? Are you joking? Order a pizza and call a cop. See who gets there first. As a policy, in the US, the death penalty is primarily used to kill black men. White women? Not so much (see, e.g., Mary Winkler). The class-based liability Harry brings up is a reality in the US. It is disgraceful.
November 3rd, 2009 at 4:07 pm
I agree Harry. Here in MA a large percentage of murders in Boston go unsolved-oftentimes the paper work is completed and that’s it. There was a recent case where an innocent man spent the majority of his life in prison due to a frame up by the FBI. The FBI agents finally got justice decades later but not until this innocent guy saw much of his life pass by. Corruption (and incompetence) here by the Police Department, the Crime Lab, the Fire Fighter’s, and other government workers is well known. So is their lavish retirement compensations. Mostly the cops in my own town spend a lot of time holding a cup of coffee while another state employee cuts a tree near the telephone lines or fills a pot hole in the road. The “details” as they are called provide for a minimum pay of 4 hours for a detail even if the cop only works 10 minutes. Sometimes a cop will bill for two or more details in a single day in addition to a typical work day. It’s a scam. Needless to say, cops in MA are very well cared for. I don’t have an idealized view of cops-haven’t for a long time. Usually the only chance anyone has is self-defense and not a cop. Cops are agents for the interest of the state and their powers have become too great as can be seen from the VAWA. Cops are now agents for feminism.
And as far as Harry’s testosterone level I would say that it must be quite healthy. His writings and website are highly intelligent, aggressive, and forceful. This from a man who’s masculinity you question? Harry’s work does the speaking for him-he does not need my help in this regard. I haven’t noticed anything from you Joe P. that comes close. Do you have an extensive website and catalogue of great writings? Do tell. Otherwise, maybe you should have your own testosterone levels checked out.
November 3rd, 2009 at 5:04 pm
@ Joe P.
Spit-em out Joe, they ain’t yours.
@ Harry
I just wonder why the death penalty in America and its benefits and/or consequences are any of your concern. I’m not trying to be rude; I just don’t understand your concern.
Don’t you live in England?
It just seems very strange to me, I guess it’s because I could really care less how the people in England deal with the death penalty. I really don’t see where that would be any of my business.
November 3rd, 2009 at 8:21 pm
AHs article is spot on, as well as Paul Elams rendering of it.
IF THE DEATH PENALTY AND IMPRISONMENT OR JAILMENT LEADING UP TO IT WERE EQUAL OPPORTUNITY FOR FEMALES IT WILL BE SEEN AS CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENT AND ABOLISHED.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:35 am
Harry will also be aware of the other side of the equation in so much as the police are almost permitted to kill others with impunity.
Only this week I read of a case where a drunken man was shot six times while he was in his car. He was doing nothing except being drunk and asleep in his stationary car in a car park. But the the blue coated state thug killed him.
November 4th, 2009 at 3:45 am
I totally agree with some of the comments.
Paul
You are so right…almost all people executed are MALE and if they started executing females in any amount greater than the current .00001% the death penalty would be abolished yesterday.
And I totally agree with the idea that a cops life is worth more than anyone elses.
Pizza delivery drivers and convince store workers put their lives on the line and get killed on a regular basis for minimum wage or little more.
But I don’t here anyone calling for the death penalty for the people that kill these workers in their line of duty.
November 4th, 2009 at 5:48 am
There are several very good reasons why we should not have a death penalty. One of them is because it costs too much. The average cost of putting someone to death in this country far exceeds the cost of having them in jail for the rest of their lives. This sounds counter intuitive but consider the appeals process. It costs a fortune in taxpayer money.
But of the many reasons the one that trumps all others is that by having a death penalty we are NECISARILY putting innocent people to death. Our justice system is far from perfect and innocent people get wrongly convicted all the time. Certainly there are people that deserve to die for what they do in life but when you have an irrevocable punishment like death than the cost of a failure of the justice system becomes too great.
November 4th, 2009 at 8:55 am
@Joe P.
“How in the world do liberals expect to defeat feminism?”
All indications point to liberals not wanting to confront feminism in any form. Feminism is one of the left’s allies de jour. Ironically, the left had great help in the last election in the US, by the feminists backing Obama and belittling the McCain/Palin camp. As a matter of fact the left fully supports feminism. Look at the government cabinet on women. Or the vice president’s pinnacle role in the VAWA bill. Or their bail-out purposefully favoring women.
If feminism is to be defeated politically, it may well take the right to start opposing it, and stop backing it’s every bill. Look at how they support feminism’s expansion of the term ‘rape’. The right is willing to cave in on these issues, because of traditionalist chivalry, on their part, and their extreme aggressiveness to criminal behavior. After all, Louisiana is the state that used feminism to legalize ridiculously harsh punishments on anyone, just accused of rape, such as their adoption of castration as a punishment. Both sides gain a little from it, the right get’s more power to police the public and the left gets its precious entitlements; but, hopefully the right will realize there’s more to gain by seeking the male vote, seeing as the female vote, is almost unattainable.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:49 am
Well, I can’t disagree with too much you’ve said, Angry. Special dispensations, punishments, clemencies, should not be tossed about like candy from a pinata. While I have utmost respect for the police and law enforcement (while recognizing that some do assasinate citizens for smoking pot and becoming antsy on airplanes), the endgame will be exactly as you say: a protected species list with more members than known species–minus one.
Yes, the government could do something about crime long before the dead man is walking, but at least they wait until no more cash can be squeezed from him before ignition. Nonetheless, it’s absurd that the death penalty has no deterrent effect–unless it’s carried out 30 years after the crime, and then only selectively. It certainly deters the killer from killing again, or haven’t you heard of repeat offenders?
As for the cost (which rohara cites), of course it costs a million and counting when you keep murders, thugs, and politicians alive and well Hilton style decades past when they no longer remember their convicted crime.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
@jjtaup
” it’s absurd that the death penalty has no deterrent effect–unless it’s carried out 30 years after the crime, and then only selectively.”
Yes, but it also encourages more murder, violence and intimidation from other criminals – usually to avoid being caught. Sexual serial killers, for example, often do their first killing because they are too scared to be identified by their victims. And then, once they have done one killing, why not kill another victim? – especially if there is the death penalty for the first one. After all, it’ll be safer to kill your victims thereafter.
And so, in practice, the following is mostly false, …
” It certainly deters the killer from killing again”
…because you are only really referring to those who have been caught and been let out again; i.e those murderers who would not have been given the death penalty in the first place. So you cannot really count them in the equation.
My view is that many killers deserve the death penalty but, in practice, we and our loved ones don’t deserve to have to pay the price of maintaining it; i.e. a more violent society.
Besides which, a life sentence is pretty grim – and there is death at the end of it.
The death penalty, therefore, almost seems pointless as a punishment.
I would also say that dying from a state execution is a lot better than dying from cancer or from some horrible disease, and you also have the chance to prepare for it – mentally speaking.
Why not let killers who deserve the death penalty rot in jail and suffer from the same diseases and uncertainties of old age like the rest of us do?
Also, it is surely just wrong to kill people, unless there is no other way to prevent very serious harm or death to others.
All in all, therefore, there seem to be so many problems that arise out of the use of the death penalty that the moral and social costs associated with it (and there are many) are just not worth it.
And the notion that this police officer was advocating – that ‘government workers’ should receive special protection – is not only outrageous, it is also very dangerous. Very dangerous indeed.
November 4th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
This thread illustrates the fractured thinking that often comes with polemics.
Liberals will only kill babies. Conservatives will kill anything but babies (excluding the ones they want to bomb overseas)
That is all tongue-in-cheek of course, and there is merit to all sides of these issues. But it was good to see the posts from Rohara and others that actually challenge the orthodoxy involved in all or nothing approaches to any problem.
November 4th, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Harry, I cite two purposes for the death penalty:
(1) To put known murderers and beasts out of society’s misery, i.e., to reduce the chance to 0 that they kill or maim again or require excessive monetary expenditure while maintaining the ever-accruing chance that their sentence will be commuted and they will be released.
(2) To deter others from commiting the similar crimes.
Vengeance is gravy despite a jealous God, and I withold that from no one; but a sane argument hinges upon the above two points, imo.
It seems those advocating for abolishment of capital punishment have answers to both in 36 words or less:
(1) It costs X times as much to carry out capital punishment as it does to give a prisoner room and board for life and some innocent people are convicted; and
(2) The death penalty does not deter others.”
To the second might be added, “It actually increases the violence perpetrated.”
As to the first objection, as stated before, of course it does. First a trial. Then a mistrial. Then a trial. Then an appeal. Then a further appeal. Then a demonstration. Then a few more appeals for good measure. Throw in a hip replacement or two while waiting. Then a lawsuit because it didn’t happen soon enough. Then, voila–a technicality is discovered starting the whole process again. Thirty years later, well, the monster had a vision of redemption, so now we need some marches. And the governor should certainly have a private interview–good for the show. What’s that, you say, guvnor? All 27 death row inmates must now be let free because a DNA test was shown to be flawed in Florida? (Not that this proves the convict wasn’t guilty–just that contamination of the sample can’t be ruled out, while still all of the other evidence points to guilt.) Which proves that we spent allllll that money on people who aren’t even guilty (or so we convince ourselves with our eyes shut). Tsk tsk…ROI = 0%. Too, too expensive. And the one that kills again, or rips the hair out of child again, or cuts off the penis and burns the scrotum of a young man again–hey, at least we’re 100.00000% sure nobody innocent was inadvertantly put into a gentle sleep.
As to the second, it’s a prima facie fair objection. If I were convinced that the death penalty does not deter others I would shrug and say, “Oh well. As long as the ones caught are offed.” If I were convinced furthermore that the death penalty in fact increased the violence–on balance increased the number of women beaten and sliced to ribbons; on balance increased the number of children slammed against concrete walls or drowned in the tub; on balance increased the number of men knifed, run over by cars, or sodomized and strangled; then I would advocate it’s dissolution.
I simply do not believe that, as plausible as you make it sound. What studies have been done summing up the number of repeat crimes (of those I believe should have been killed) and balancing those with the number of crimes commited because the perpetrator didn’t want to face the death penalty? What studies have been done contrasting Murderer X with Would-Be Murderer X given the two different scenarios of capital punishment vs. no capital punishment? The blithe claim that “The Death Penalty Doesn’t Deter Others,” is always offered in vacuo, with no substantiation, no methodological review, and certainly no reference to the bias of those making the claim, whether numbers are involved or not. (I’m referring more to the manner of claims from ghosts past than to yours.) Besides, I don’t feel too exposed believing that the moon is not made out of cheese despite the fact I haven’t been there. Meaning that it really doesn’t take a degree past normal body temperature to infer, induce, deduce, put together, extrapolate, believe, or have a fair degree of confidence in the fact that, yes, for at least a segment of would-be Rippers, the threat of capital punishment prevented a murder.
I guess for sociopaths and those who just don’t care anymore about their own lives because life is a pit of stench, as well lived in or out of prison, it wouldn’t.
Others above have posted about blue-coated thugs, etc. Yes, I know there are bad, overzelous, and idiotic cops. There are doctors who are butchers as well. Show me a perfect world, please. By and large my experience with cops (and doctors) has been good (and I am talking about the times I have either been ticketed or arrested.) They did their job professionally. The greatest evils have been perpetrated by those in political offices: prosecutors like Nifong who would have seen innocent men ruined (who were ruined anyways); a government which pays a bounty for every father they can bounce and, what the heck, splash, if he shows any testosterone. I think the evil done by these far outweighs the technical malfunctions of robocop. The fix is not in discarding punishment altogether, but in removing and punishing these vermin.
November 4th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
My initial rant was in no way meant to denigrate Harry or his wonderful website. And, it was written from a conservative, rather than an MRA point of view. No doubt many MRAs have been the victims of feminism’s enforcers.
That said, I can pretty much guarantee two certainties about the anti-death penalty posters here:
(1) None of you have ever had a loved one murdered;
(2) None of you have ever worked as a prison guard.
There is nothing noble in the liberal naivete about human nature.
Have you all heard the news about the guy in Cleveland who had ten (and counting) dead bodies in his house? Ohio has the death penalty. Lets ask the families of those dead women how they feel about it.
November 4th, 2009 at 3:07 pm
I think the death penalty is wrong for 3 reasons.
1. The harsher the sentence available the harsher the sentence radical feminists are going to want for men caught up in domestic violence and false rape charges.
2. Males have been treated like shit for 40 years and as far as I can tell, if you treat a man like a beast he will become a beast.
3. Always the innocent get caught up in laws that are meant for bad people.
November 4th, 2009 at 7:55 pm
@ Joe P
True, I have never had a loved one murdered. However, I worked in the maximum security facility for the Texas Youth Commission in Giddings, Texas. And please don’t let the term “Youth” fool you. These were hard core gang bangers, all 300 of them there for murder, at least one, and several for multiple murders. I got used to hearing them laugh about what they did to their victims.
It was the greatest concentration of sociopathy I have ever witnessed in my life, and indeed I did leave there harboring fantasies of marauding through the place with automatic weapons doing society a great favor.
I was attacked twice while I was there and saw several co workers injured by these animals, some of them very seriously.
So trust me, my concern about the death penalty is not out of any sympathy for the human refuse that constitutes the majority of people convicted of capitol crimes. And I don’t think for a minute that you were doing anything but disagreeing with Harry about this article.
But as much as I respect your opinion and your writings, I just don’t think that you have presented an effective argument.
To me, if I follow you logic that executions are for the common good, then I have to totally ignore how rigged the system is against the poor and the male. And in all honesty, you haven’t gone near that point. I would also have to ignore that we know with certainty that innocent men are executed. You have not addressed that either.
For the sake of honesty, if we were to fix all that I would still oppose the death penalty. And I certainly wouldn’t support it based on who the victim was or what line of work they happen to be in. I just don’t think it either prevents crime or ameliorates the loss of victims loved ones. Note please that many people who have had loved ones murdered don’t support the death penalty.
I just can’t get behind a system of justice that targets some segments of the overall population to be snuffed out, some of them innocent, but then protects others when they commit the same crimes.
It is not justice, it is a travesty.
So we don’t agree. I don’t think it is required for MRA’s to be a monolith. At least I hope not. We need a lot of different ideas, yours included.
November 4th, 2009 at 9:24 pm
@JoeP
“My initial rant was in no way meant to denigrate Harry or his wonderful website.”
No, I never thought it was – but thank you for saying so.
“(1) None of you have ever had a loved one murdered;”
No, but my father died as a result of a big mistake made by a surgeon – he bled to death – and so I have a slight feel for the situation – because it felt like murder by negligence. And, at the time, I would have happily slit the surgeon’s throat myself.
“(2) None of you have ever worked as a prison guard.
No, but I have seen the truly disgusting depths to which people can sink and also how unbelievably animalistic and unworthy are some people – many of whom are, in fact, brain-damaged. I often think that it would be best to kill them humanely simply to put them out of their own misery and torment, as well as to protect us from them
But I know that crossing this line is dangerous for all of us – because giving the state the authority to kill defenceless people is not a wise idea.
I also think that studying the brains of these people while they are alive will benefit us enormously.
“Have you all heard the news about the guy in Cleveland who had ten (and counting) dead bodies in his house? Ohio has the death penalty.”
Thus proving my point that the death penalty does not really deter killers who have not yet been caught. (Indeed, the death penalty can encourage further murders – to reduce the chance of capture.) Neither does it deter those killers who do not believe that they will be caught – which is most of them; at the time of the killing.
“Lets ask the families of those dead women how they feel about it.”
I would feel the same as them.
But a good justice system takes into account all of us – the millions of us – not just those few unfortunates who happen to have the worst happen to them.
I don’t have much sympathy for cold, callous murderers and, as I said in my piece, some people are just scum. And, for most of my life, I have, in fact, supported the death penalty. But, as I got older, I began to notice the effect that the justifications for the death penalty had on the minds of others, and on society, in general. And, in my view, it just ratchets up everybody’s tendency towards more violence. And it makes our world a grimmer place.
Indeed, can you imaqine what would happen in America if, say, hundreds of black men were being executed every year.
And on what basis do we decide which murderers, exactly, get the death penalty? Why should one murderer get the death penalty, but not the other one?
The whole thing is such a nightmare to solve satisfactorily that, surely, we would just be better off saying, “No, to the death penalty.”
But my piece was mostly to do with the police officer’s view that the death penalty was particularly appropriate for the murder of certain government workers, and I really cannot stomach this idea; because these people are no more worthy than me or you.
And their heads are already mostly big enough, without us giving them the further illusion that their very lives are actually more important than ours.
Overall, however, I would urge supporters of the death penalty to stop focusing their attention on the murderers and the victims themselves (not easy to do, I know) and to think about the effects that its justification and implementation have on the rest of society.
Let me put this more starkly.
Living among people who sincerely believe that ALL human killing is wrong (unless absolutely necessary to save the lives of others) is probably much more pleasant and safer than is living among people who believe that human killing is all right in order to exact revenge and/or to decrease the likelihood of murderers killing.
I do not really think that I am saying that the death penalty is actually ‘wrong’ – for those who deserve it. I just think that, in practice, we would all be better off if we just got rid of it, and if we indoctrinated our people with the view that ALL human killing is wrong – unless absolutely necessary to save the lives of others.
November 4th, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Reading some of the posts above it often appears to me that the word ‘murder’ is used as though it is just one thing. But it isn’t. No woman who kills her husband in the UK will really be regarded as having committed murder. Indeed only recently where we not discussing Harriet Harman’s amendment of the law which would give women a licence to kill their husbands and ‘partners’?
Have not we all said here that men’s lives are cheaply valued by society? This has a double effect. It makes society less concerned about men being murdered and more likely to want to put them to death.
I think for me the ideal would have the death penalty only for women. Well that is not such a strange suggestion as the situation is the opposite now.
It will be a general truth that whatever the law may be then it will be more harshly applied to men which is why I favour no law at all.
November 5th, 2009 at 7:16 am
I thought some of you might be interested in the following excerpt from an article written in 1908 over a century ago.
(d) Murder.
The rule of the Common Law which prescribes hanging as the punishment for murder is practically abolished for females who murder men. The best illustration of the extent of the women’s privilege to murder men will be found in the considera- tion of the number of cases in which women have been hanged during the last quarter of a century for the offence when, by a mere chance, they were convicted. As has been stated, a woman who kills a man is usually acquitted. If she be convicted, it is almost invariably of manslaughter, not murder. If she be by some off- chance convicted of murder, an agitation for her release is usually started. So the murderess escapes the gallows, except once or twice in a quarter of a century.
It was written by Ernest Belfort Bax. You can find more of his words on Wikipedia.
November 5th, 2009 at 7:36 am
@ Paul
Great post.
Capitol punishment has always been about men killing each other.
November 5th, 2009 at 9:23 am
@Paul
Ernest Bax was way ahead of his time, and ironically the times haven’t changed much. When I was reading his books, which I’ll link to below, I couldn’t help feel that nothing has really changed. You can just feel how distraught he was by the misandry of his times, as instigated by the early feminists.
I highly recommend that everyone read the following two books, and the following two articles, by the father of Masculinism, himself:
The Fraud of Feminism
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Fra...
The Legal Subjection of Men
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Leg...
No Misogyny But True Equality
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1...
Women’s Privileges and “Rights”
http://www.marxists.org/archive/bax/1…
November 6th, 2009 at 7:49 am
My wife informed me that yesterday’s Fort Hood shooter hasn’t been killed, but only incapacitated. Don’t know if that’s true, but if not, thank God. Now he’s got four decades of court and medical costs ahead that will be ultimately footed by me and you.
Wouldn’t want to just cap his head after a trial and appeal each lasting no more than two weeks and risk that 1 in a zillion chance that we’re offing a poor innocent minority boy.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:39 am
@jjtaup
Well, surely, this murderer had the same attitude towards killing as you do?
He believed that he was quite justified in executing people whom HE believed deserved to be executed.
Isn’t that YOUR belief, too?
AND THAT’S THE PROBLEM WITH PEOPLE HAVING YOUR BELIEF!!
More people get killed.
LOL!
One day, jjtaup, I think you’ll begin to see more clearly why – even though certain people deserve the death penallty – we might be better off getting rid of it.
November 7th, 2009 at 12:15 am
I USE to be in favor of the death penalty. That was one I was leaning toward the feminist mindset but let me tell you about some kittens to lead up to this.
A young boy and girl had a box of kittens with a sign over them….”Feminist kittens $1.00 each outside a large supermarket. One woman saw them there over a 2 or 3 day period. She then brought several of her friends (the gals from NOW?) to see these feminist kittens. But now the sign just said kittens for sale…$5.00. The woman asked them about the feminist kittens and why the change. The kids said…oh they were feminist..but now they have their eyes open! I thank God that my eyes are opened now. The death penalty helped to that. I remember many years ago, some radical feminist in the area I lived a law that allowed for the execution of males only using the excuse that it was only males that were doing capital crimes. Of course anyone that are not willfully blind can see this is absurd.
However, in reality, these radicals are close to having what they wanted. One reason I do not favor capital punishment now is because it is not applied equally. I also firmly believe that many have been executed that did not do the crime for which they were accused. Texas executed a man who went on a crime spree with his sister. It was his sister who brought a gun and it was she who shot and killed someone but he paid the price for it when the state used her to testify against her brother and gave her a light sentence. In another case in Texas also, a man was executed based upon one person’s testimony and that person was shown to have difficulty seeing during the time the crime was suppose to have occurred. As a pastor, I want to point out that the Bible prohibits capital punishment in the face of only one witness.
We all know that although justice is suppose to be blind, it sure can smell the perfume and it will let many off from crimes based upon their gender.
I do agree that capital punishment is not the deterrent it should be. It would be the rapid carrying out of this rather than having to wait 20 or 30 years that would be more of a deterrent but I sure would not trust our justice system to make sure only the guilty paid this price.
We all know that some will threaten to kill a police officer in an attempt to take their own life. I do understand the pressure the police are under during these times as they never know how far someone will go to get the job done…but I also contend that there is something just as common as “Suicide by Cop that few realize can and does happen. It is Murder by Cop and those who attempt or accomplish it have always gotten away with it!
http://shatterdmen.com/murder.htm
November 7th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Paul Says: The rule of the Common Law which prescribes hanging as the punishment for murder is practically abolished for females who murder men.
To the best of my knowledge no woman was ever executed of her victims were all male.
It is not only in crime that we see the devaluation of men and boys but in society. All we need to do is to watch any mass hostage situation and we will see the first demand is to let the women and children (female children at least) go and once they do, there is far more likelihood of armed force to take the hostage takers out even if innocent men are killed in the process.
Men are expected to put their life on the line for others and they often do but our feminist want equality in everything except in the price tag for freedom. I do have to admit however that they do believe in rights and responsibilities. They have the rights…..men are responsible to assure that they have the rights.
November 7th, 2009 at 3:32 am
@Harry
The murderer at Fort Hood shares little in common with me vis-a-vis attitudes towards killing.
He is following a conviction to convert or kill all who are not of his label. I am following a conviction to kill all who have demonstrated that they cannot live amongst civilized men AND only by whose riddance the safety of society can be guaranteed. (I would be willing to place some killers, butchers, what have you, in lifelong work camps or hospitals were there assurance they would never be let out–which is NEVER the case.)
With his belief, innocent people (no one is innocent, but let’s pretend) are more or less randomly executed: children on busses, partygoers having orgies, firemen, businessmen, politicians engaged in mass destruction of families, church-goers, etc.
With my belief, people who utterly violate others’ rights (which are only God-given) are given the chance to defend themselves in court (in the above post I did allow the man a trial and an appeal) and are then executed if found guilty and not insane and not performing in self-defense.
You may say that I am following my set of beliefs exactly as he is following his set of beliefs, which goes to the heart of what is so horribly misunderstood today: All beliefs, creeds, religions, policies, and governments are not equivalent or equally valid. A political party that takes as one of its fundamental stances that children should be accessible for sex from age 0 onward is not a political party but a criminal enterprise whose members should be removed from society permanently. A religion that teaches one must either be of it or die is not a religion, but an uncivil, dangerous, and totalitarian system that should be illegalized (as long as it is practiced and believed to the fullness of its content).
You have a point worth consideration regarding the death penalty. Perhaps it really does lead to more violence. Without a doubt it is practiced discriminantly.
In the first case, I would like to see more substantial proof than just anecdotes and plausible reasoning. In the second, I would also caution that it is not categorically unjust that any group based upon color, hair length, or toe fungus forms a higher (or lower) percentage of those executed, receiving home loans, or gaining Ph.D.s. Show me that they haven’t committed the crimes or had the good credit or done their homework, THEN I’ll say it’s unjust. Until then, if just being brown with a beard correlates with shooting others in the back on patrol, I won’t condemn a British soldier for walking behind his Afghani “partner.”