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Old 12-09-2006, 03:58 PM   #21 (permalink)
Seaver
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Location: Fort Worth, TX
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Is someone forcing them to be prison guards? If every prisoner serving a life term for murder was trying to kill prison guards, there would be no prison guards. Are you now proposing that we kill every person in prison on capital murder charges, whether they would ever attempt to take another life or not, just in case they try to kill a prison guard? Again this is a rationalization that does not support the death penalty, nor does it address my argument.
Actually, I believe it does support the death penalty. Your argument is about the humanity of the convicted. It is not about the wrongly convicted, as that is a completely separate argument about civil legal system.

My argument is that these killers knowingly gave up their right to humanity by killing innocent people. These killers are no longer innocent of taking another person's life, the majority of their rights as citizens was knowingly forfitted. The fact that the state is employed to end their life is not a contradiction in morality, as I believe that for the greater good murderers should be executed.

You attempt to divide justice and vengence. This is a misguided argument because justice is simply an institutionalized repayment in some manner. For more petty crimes fines or jail time is sought, one pays money or his freedoms for an amount of time to make ammends to the society. The greater good is not served when we put someone away for life, it is more cruel to the prisoner (in my opinion), and it creates a much more dangerous atmosphere for those who have not committed such violent crimes.

Your argument about forced prison guards is not valid either. There are much higher penalties for killing a police officer on duty than an average citizen. Are they forced to be Police Officers? Are their lives worth more than the average persons? No, it is because they volunteer to do a dangerous job that is needed. But according to your argument is that no guards are ever killed on duty because no one then would be a prison guard.

And no, your attempt to diffuse the argument by asking if we seek every murderer the death penalty does not work. By extending far beyond the argument into realms never even stipulated it does not lend itself to being a diffusion. An equivilant would be to say that since you do not believe that capital punishment is moral, do you suggest we let every prisoner out of prison?

The argument that I put forward is capital punishment is valid because of the greater good. Prisoners on capital crimes create only sorrow, havoc, and fear. While in prison they still only provide these, as life sentences provide them an opportunity to justify that they can not be punished in any other way and therefore are effectively immune from punishment. The danger they do to hard working individuals, and the pain they could cause by injuring or killing a prison guard is not worth the risk in my opinion.

Of course you will try to misconstrue my argument to say that everyone who does not give good to a society should be executed, that is not what I'm saying to do not even go down that route. You say our arguments do not address or defeat your argument, though conveniently yours completely defeats ours. Do you not think that this may be because you have an opinion which you would rather not change because of your beliefs about those who do support capital punishment?
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