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Politics : Long Live The Death Penalty!
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To: louisebaltimore who wrote (290)1/19/2003 8:00:59 PM
From: Solon   of 828
 
"There's an obvious flaw in Van den Haag's reasoning. If an innocent person dies while driving a car, it is ordinarily the result of negligence — an "accident." If an innocent person dies at the execution of a death sentence, it is always deliberate"

"Flawed" is being overly generous, IMO! The fact that free people are willing to VOLUNTARILY drive a car or build a house, risking possible injury or death (against the extreme likelihood of a positive outcome), lends absolutely no support to an argument that the exposure of innocent people to a firing squad (where MANDATORY substitutes for voluntary, and the CERTAINTY of death substitutes for a miniscule risk of injury) is by such specious argument justified.

To pretend that the fact that all human activity entailing risk has any relevance whatsoever to the question of whether or not a PARTICULAR action justifies a PARTICULAR risk is simply to demonstrate a deficiency of thought.

Analogies may be merely misleading or they may be ludicrous. In this instance we have people impressed by the "argument" that SOME people are willing to accept the risk of voluntarily driving a car, therefore any other thing which has risk is supportable! Truly a marriage of the absurd and the gullible!

The question of whether a particular act justifies a particular risk stands alone and apart from the truism that risk is intrinsic to all acts.

So...good response.
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