Christine, in your remark in post 30739
<<I don't believe depraved savages deserve much of my time or attention, and I do not think it damages me spiritually that they die,>>,
you (not I) introduce into the discussion a concept that you have named "spiritual damage." In trying to make sense of a concept foreign to me, "spiritual damage," I interpreted it as religious in nature. I still do, but it doesn't matter.
I did not suggest that the opinion that the anti-death penalty position was an atheist one. It is not.
The anti death penalty position is merely my position, and I am an atheist expressing her cynicism about the very common deluded identification between religion and ethics. I was noting what I feel to be an ironical disjunction between the at least quasi -religious claim of some sort of 'spirituality,' and the statement, "I don't believe depraved savages deserve much of my time for attention and I do not think it damages me spiritually that they die."
But I see from post 30730 that you have a somewhat different position than I had thought, and not so very different from mine, after all, if you mean what you say. You say
<<I would note that I clearly said I was not in favor of executing murderers under the current unfair system of justice. Perhaps you missed that.>>
But again, there appear to be disjunctions and contradictions in your positions. You express contempt for those who protest what you agree are executions performed by a racist, sexist, ageist, classist, system of justice, one which kills the mentally retarded, the insane, executions which you therefore... oppose yourself!
But wait-- although you are "not in favor of executing murderers" under our system, you nonetheless "don't believe depraved savages deserve much of [your] time and attention," and you believe that it would be ideal, if it were practical, to execute rapists, and you don't ever believe in considering remorse or self-redemption, and you believe that "anyone who participates in a crime in which someone is murdered should be executed as well." (You leave very little room for extenuating circumstances or degrees of heinousness, don't you? It all seems so harsh for a person full of love, and so unvengeful, at least to me it does; and also I guess you meant you would advocate such applications of the death penalty only when our system of justice isn't the rigged lottery system it now is, (which is a true and total abstraction, of course) and assumed that major reservation on your part would be understood.)
But... Christine, everywhere one turns in your description of your views on the death penalty one bumps again into what at least feel like contradictions.
You go into quite great detail about the people you want us to execute-- you are in fact on the far right in your positions on this matter, so extreme are your views regarding who should die... but.... you don't want it done unless it can be done fairly. (Christine, you and I might almost agree on that, even; if I could conceive a 'fair' system, 'fair' in practice as well as on paper, and if it were saved for the most heinous murderers, and if it wouldn't absorb funds that could be used to make our streets safe, and if innocent people didn't keep showing up on death row, along with mentally retarded and schizophrenic ones ... but why talk about this!, silly us!, it isn't going to happen that way, ever... is it?)...
As I was saying, we come, everywhere in your discussion of all the people you would like to have executed, if they could only be executed in a 'fair' system, to contradictions. There is this one: "I am absolutely nonviolent, not revengeful, and full of love," on the one hand, and, on the other, "I just think that if someone has murdered, they have violated the most basic laws of being a human being, and no longer deserve my love or protection." Christine, that is the exact position of all who exact violent revenge, the "I just think that if someone has" clause, followed by naming the particular act (murder; adultery; blasphemy; shaming the family,) that justifies their violence, vengefulness, and hate.
But to me the most distressing of your contradictions is this one:
On the one hand you agree that the death penalty is, in spite of all our procedural safeguards, still unfair, still a rigged lottery; and you know also that if it weren't for the costly, time-consuming appeals process, it would be even more rigged-- even more people would be unjustly executed, were this slow process to be speeded up.
And on the other hand, you write this irrelevancy: "I simply think that the death penalty, applied fairly and QUICKLY, is a logical response to predatory behavior."
That is nonsense, Christine. It can't be quicker without being even more unfair. It is not a "logical response to predatory behavior" to go on talking about killing people, naming the new categories in which you'd like to be able to kill them, with your love and spirituality intact, of course, and let's do the killing fairly, but let's do it fast, but let's not give this any of our time and attention, it's only depraved savages dying, oh, sorry, it's innocents too, oh yes, and it's racist, and classist and all that, so the depraved savages are chosen unfairly, and they're killing those insane people, and those people so retarded they save the dessert from their last meal to eat after their execution, but it certainly doesn't deserve any of our valuable time and attention, and let's be contemptuous of those protesters who think that perhaps it does deserve some of theirs, and let's kill those depraved savages, the ones who couldn't afford the Dream Team, let's kill them QUICKLY, that's the main thing, speed, and....
Well, this message is long enough. I'll give only one more quote of yours: "I am saying that I can lead a life full of love and tolerance and happiness and still support the death penalty for murderers."
I am saying that you can't, Christine-- not in this world. Maybe in an ideal one of which you can conceive. But not in this one. It's like communism. Sounds like it could be good. Doesn't work out that way. |
