> > Timothy Mcviegh will die tomorrow at 8:00am EST. What are your thoughts on this? He committed a horrible crime but does it give the government the right to take his life? My mom used to always say, "two wrongs don't make a right" when my excuse for hitting my sister was "she hit me first", but its very true. The government (or anyone else for that matter) has no right to take anyone's life, no matter how horrible the crime. Life is precious, and most don't realize it until it has been lost.
> >
> > ht"realizing how inappropriate his Sn is for this topic"aeD
>
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> My feeling is that what is going to happen is the right thing.
> I also think that your mother was absolutely right.
> How do I reconcile these to views? I take both practical and moral views into consideration. As far as I'm concerned, a person who willfuly (sp?) kills several other, to him/her unknown, human beings simply has to go: It's a matter of preservation of our species. Sacrifice one life to preserve potentially many others.
> Morally, no-one has any more right than any other to take lives, but if it has to be done (as in this case), I'd say that the government has the obligation to do it, being the highest authority in the country.
>
> The problem with moral standards is that they don't scale infinitely: There must be limits, where purely practical considerations take over. On the other hand, moral standards contribute immensely to quality of life - of both our community's and our own - when we are within reasonably limits.
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> jul"anyone familiar with Maslov's pyramid?"ian

That makes sense; at least, in huge cases like this one. On the other hand, is it going to help? Besides yours, there's two main arguments people use in favour of the death penalty:

1.) The "example" theory, or whatever you want to call it. This means that death penalties are supposed to deter potential murderers. Yet, the murder rate in the US isn't really all that low. If statistics show anything, then it's that after an execution, brutality goes rather up than down. I'll try to find the study that showed this, I've still got the newspaper (one you can trust, not one of those tabloid thingies) where I read it lying around somewhere, I think.

2.) The "justice" theory. According to this, murderers should be murdered/killed themselves because they deserve it. There are some that demand the same policy about other crimes (I could link to several discussions in other forums), but really: What's the use? Is it going to bring the victims back? Is it going to teach the murderer a lesson about what life is worth? If so, what good does that do if he only has a few seconds to think about it?

That wasn't all, I'm willing to discuss this and related issues further.

Fuzz"internet café, can't write too much right now"pilz