I have to ask this because I have wondered for so long on this topic. Why do the conservatives support the death penalty? It makes no sense to me. They are pro-life, which also includes, per Ralph Reed, keeping a human in vegetative state alive by all possible means and absolutely no abortions. How can they be so pro-life, yet still sanction killing someone as punishment? A great many conservatives are Christian so I would think they would also oppose killing another human. I just don't get their reasoning on this.
Pretty simple, really. I'm a conservative and I support it. It's because I see no reason why I should pay to feed, clothe and provide medical attention (not to mention TV and exercise rooms/equipment) for some low-life. Shoot him, hang him, stick a needle in his arm - whatever. Just get him off my payroll!
You'll have to prove THAT claim! Show us some hard numbers on the cost of an execution and the cost per year of keeping someone behind bars.
He is correct. http://www.deathpenaltyinfo.org/article.php?did=108 I don't see the sense in executing someone who is already effectively removed from society as a form of punishment, irrespective of what it costs us. I've never understood why the state should have the authority to take a life if none of its citizens do. Also, the accuracy of our legal system's convictions isn't sufficient for me to feel comfortable trusting it with people's lives. Execution has a place in the case of high profile figures who could have hostages taken to leverage their arrest should they be kept alive. I think executing Saddam Hussein was a good idea. In any case, I regard anyone who declares themselves staunchly pro or con on any issue with the wariness of a religious zealot, because some exception can be found that can sway most rational people over the line.
Got it in one! Yes, an innocent child has a right to live. But a convicted murderer deserves to die. What's so hard to understand? Furthermore, I also support the death penalty because I value life very highly. The punishment for unjustly ending someone's life should be as high as possible. That is, death.
Jail is not punishment for hardened criminals. Our jails are so soft it's like club med. Statesville Prison is considered one of the "toughest" in the nation. Yet: This guy brutally murdered eight nurses, yet he's doing drugs, getting breast implants, having "so much sex in jail that he can't count how many times he's done it." Check out the whole story including the disgusting videos: http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/speck.html One of the best definitions of government is the entity within a givin geographic area with a monopoly on the use of violence to resolve disputes. That's government. Under every law is the threat of violence, even death, if you do not obey. You just said you supported the death penalty in certain cases, are you a zealot? Or is that the exception that makes you rational? I support the death penalty for murder. Murder should have a mandatory minimum of life in prison or death. It really pisses me off to hear of some murderer getting less time than some guy caught with pot.
When did they stop being liberal? It's just a simple hypocrisy: Everyone has a right to life, says the conservative, unless I'm the one who gets to do the killing. People then extend that concept to their community: the state gets to kill the criminal, the country--through our soldiers--gets to kill the bad guys who don't give us everything we want. There are a multitude of variations, from the carryover faith of the fathers to the playing for God's favor. But beneath each version is a basic structure: • Unacceptable: Abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide = murder (e.g. someone else doing the killing or making the decision) • Acceptable: Execution for crime, warfare, shooting a criminal suspect = extension of community (e.g. "we" do the killing or make the decision) It's part of an identity politic. Conservatives take a seemingly natural conceptual division and make from it the laziest, most predictable argument they can. It's all about them exclusively, instead of all of us inclusively. You'll see the pattern all over the history of conservative politics: aspiring to a pretense of civlity in order to retain as much of the brutality of the past as one can make profit of. What I wonder about conservatives, I suppose, is at what point in history they stop being liberal? When did liberalism go just too far? Civil rights? Women's suffrage? The end of child labor? Abolition of slavery? The rights of man? Opposition to the Catholic Church?
I'd believe that putting a human inside of a 10 foot cell in solitary confinement for the rest of their lives is cruel and unusal punisment BUT executing someone isn't because there's cruelity involved, you just inject them or hang them and withing seconds they are dead , no cruelity to it at all.
Just to split a hair, Cosmic, prison may be cruel, but it is quite usual. As to the cruelty of murder ... come on, you're kidding, right? Why not just line the women and children up alongside a ditch, put around through each head. It's not cruel, right? If homicide isn't cruel, what is our standard of measure? If homicide isn't cruel, are we executing murderers for being presumptuous?
A 10 foot cell in which to live you think isn't cruel? Solitary confinement isn't cruel? Well I really don't understand why you can't see them as cruel as I do, as well as many others.
That's only because you bleeding heart liberals keep giving the killers more and more appeals and more and more court time and more and more of everything else!!! If we killed the bastards when we first convict them, the cost would be a single bullet to the head ....damned cheap, huh? Baron Max
Bullshit. Everyone has a right to life, unless they murder someone. Once they unjustly take someone else's life, their own life if forfeit. What's so hard to understand about that? If you steal, you should make good your theft, return was was stolen (at the very least). If you murder someone, you should die. More complete bullshit. No one gets to kill anyone unless the cause is just. It doesn't matter who does the killing, it matters why they did it. Murder is wrong. Self defense or even defense of your property is not. Execution of criminals is justice. And war is just in the nature of man. Bunk. It's about protecting innocent life. That's it. You call us lazy? You, who can not distinguish between the life of a mass murderer and an innocent child? That is the epitome of lazyness. Liberals went bad when they deviated from the ideals of the enlightenment. The ideals of the founding fathers. I consider myself a classical liberal. I believe in the rights of man as set forth in our founding documents and as discussed in the philosophy of Locke, Rousseau and Hobbes (among others).
Then they should also punish the judge, jury and prosecutor if teh man killed is found to be innocent. Otherwise, that statement is humbug.
Why would you think Christians would be against killing bad guys and protecting the lives of innocent people? The whole basis of Christianity is good conquering evil and protecting the innocent. It took legalized abortion to turn society's morality so far on its head that so many people bring this up these days.
13:49 So shall it be at the end of the world: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked from among the just, 13:50 And shall cast them into the furnace of fire: there shall be wailing and gnashing of teeth. The gnashing of teeth part is the coolest.
