> > 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
>
>
> 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.
>
> jul"anyone familiar with Maslov's pyramid?"ian


Nothing personal, but I disagree horribly with the idea behind this. :) Maybe it's on account of being in my callow youth, or raised in a conservative Christian environment, or whatever, but I have a tough time swallowing the idea that practical considerations "outweigh" moral considerations and that the purpose of moral standards is to contribute to quality of life.

In my mind, moral standards are the reason we even *have* such things as "practical considerations" and "quality of life." (Sorry about all the quotes, but I'm trying to get across that "practical" and "quality" are defined terms based on axiomatic principles, not axiomatic in and of themselves.)

If I had no "moral principles", to use an inadequate term, then I for one would have no problem with buying a machine gun, putting several rounds of lead in everyone who's made a nasty face at me, then offing myself. It would seem perfectly reasonable to me. So would stripping down to the buff and lying in a field contemplating the dandelion. Or sitting in a padded cell beating my head against the wall for the rest of my life. Or never getting out of bed until I starved to death.

Here's a hint: stability of society *is* a moral principle. So is avoiding unnecessary loss of life. The definition of necessary loss of life is as well a moral principle. As is the definition of stability. (Remember the med school lesson: The only *really* stable patients are deceased.) Everything boils down to a few "moral principles" or axioms in the end, from which all else stems.

And if we've got conflicting moral principles, then we've got nothing to talk about. Or, rather, we've got plenty to talk about and even plenty to learn from each other just by looking at how our different principles work, but no way to truly ultimately prove each other wrong, any more than Euclidean geometry can "disprove" the existence of hyperbolic geometry. (Or like arguments with my sister: "How come you don't like chocolate? What is it you don't like about it?" "It tastes like chocolate! What do you like so much about it?" "Well... it tastes like chocolate!" No argument.)

Of course, some axioms are right (fit reality) while others are wrong (self-inconsistent, or consistent but don't fit reality); 2+2=4 as opposed to 2+2=5. But to know which is which depends on intuition. (And I have a little theory about intuition... but that's another abstract spiritual principle itself, of course.)

And, of course, what we intuitively call "practical" considerations usually jibe with the moral principles we pick; that's part of fitting our belief systems to reality. It would hardly seem to make sense if our minds told us one thing and our survival instincts told us something utterly different. But such instincts only go so far. ("But *why* should I give a crap whether the species survives or not? And how does not having sex with someone who's not my wife protect the species? Doesn't it help transmit my genes faster?") I choose to think of survival instincts as a partial reflection of true morality, not the other way around. Hence I think of humans as more than animals.

After all, wasn't Timothy McVeigh thinking about "practical" considerations over moral ones? "Here I must overthrow the federal government, because if I do so it will be beneficial for society overall according to my analysis of the Constitution. It would be a great moral crime to kill all these innocent civilians, of course, but pragmatism must override ethics at some point. Ends justify the means. Collateral damage. Let's rock and roll."

Obviously, of course, the practical/moral dichotomy is a strawman; what it really means is that you think *one* moral principle (avoiding future deaths, a sense of evenhanded justice, freedom from federal tyranny) is of enough greater importance than the others (the sanctity of human life) to justify its overriding the others to the point where it is no longer a "moral", personal choice but an all-encompassing, universally-defined practical necessity, as real as 2+2, and everything else is just what your mother thought was right and wrong.

Nothing wrong with that, though I think the word "practical" is misleading precisely because it defines something as universal that is hardly that. I view sanctity of human life as one of the highest moral principles, since it defines most of the others (including, in part, freedom from tyranny; why is freedom important if the lives of those you free aren't?), though not *the* highest (human life is sacred because it reflects its Creator and its Creator's love for humanity). To me, that makes more sense than making one of the others higher; sure, I could fight for a stable society, but *why* do I want a stable society? For whose benefit? And who gets to pick what's acceptable as stable?

As for practicality, I believe in being "practical" about enforcing that principle, that is, doing something real about it other than sitting around talking. That means locking criminals up so they can't take more life, *and* it means doing our level best to rehabilitate them, find out where the darkness is inside them and use all the tools we have to heal it. I think of that as our duty. (If saving money is your overriding moral principle, then of course shooting them all is faster and easier. But then, so is not doing anything at all and letting them kill people. I think a lot of people, though probably not the majority, who support DP because of "convenience" are fence-sitters; "I hate crime but I want to get rid of it in the way that spends the fewest of my tax dollars", without genuinely investigating what's most effective in getting rid of crime or what our purpose is in "getting rid" of crime anyway.)

Capital punishment is not "practical", to me, any more than burning down one's house to kill the cockroaches in it; it defeats the purpose you were trying to be practical about in the first place, revering, protecting, and supporting the growth and development of human life.

But again, that may just be me. I am glad to hear you speak out on this, though. At least we agree on one basic point, even if we diverge on how it's applied. :) Hope to hear more from you.