KingofChaos wrote:VMI77 wrote:
Wow, what a stunning and insulting non sequitur. Should I conclude from your illogical leap that you don't think there are people the world would be better off without? You're OK with say, a Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot? You think anyone saying a world without them would be a better world is a nut who wants to kill people? I want to say more but I can't, your lack of logic leaves me speechless.
Are you kidding me? What lack of logic? You said:
In fact, I think some some people's lives may have a negative value --that the "world," so to speak, would be better off without them. You said that there are people who currently exist who you feel should be dead, because they do nothing for the world. I'll get directly to the matter, there is nothing about you that makes you qualified to unilaterally start assigning "value" to human lives. No one has that right, period. And if you think you do, then you're very much like like Hitler and Stalin; two of the people who you mentioned that you would have had no problem getting rid of. You clearly said that there are people in this world who should be
dead for actions that you feel are wrong,
I asked if you be man enough to kill them if you had the ability. Unless you know some other way for people to be dead? I love order and the rule of law, and you say you do too, but I can't tell by what you're saying. We have a criminal justice system in place with rules and procedures that try to make things as objective as possible. You aren't being objective and are condemning people based on your
opinion of their actions. That is not the law, the law is the standard by which we all agree. And to subvert the law is not being a friend of it. In particular, you said
VMI77 wrote:Really? Regardless of the "human?" Someone, say, out on parole, for rape, murder, assault, home invasion...etc?
You feel that someone who committed assault or home invasion has a life less valuable than a dog, and that you would rather your dog live than them. None of these are even crimes that you could be executed for under the justice system. Though we did try to add child rape in Texas, and the SC made a terrible decisions, but that's irrelevant.
The legal system does not agree that your dog is more "valuable" than these people. It also appears to not agree with you that you should use deadly force against them to stop them from attacking your dog. I'm simply going by the things that you said. I already said that maybe you meant something different, and that my interpretation was flawed. Don't blame me for your lack of clarity. Also, people do have free will and should be held accountable for their actions, no where did I say that I didn't support punishing criminals. But to ignore that external factors shape a person is inane.
To suggest that anyone posting here is like Hitler or Stalin is just plain silly talk. The whole point in the analogy is that Hitler and Stalin both had great power and were able to destroy the lives of millions of people --in other words, to serve as an example of a human being that caused untold misery and destruction that affected the entire world. Perhaps it will reassure you to discover that I have no such power over the lives of others.
The lack of logic is your ASSUMPTION, based on nothing more than conjecture and apparent emotional attachment to a misguided philosophical concept, that because I said the world would be better off without some people, that I feel entitled to determine who those people are and kill them. It's not exactly the same, but similar to saying that people who say drugs should be legalized want to smoke pot and snort coke. Also, you are apparently very confused about what it means to be a man if you are able to equate killing people with manhood, as you do in your remarks above. Killing people does not make you a man. Your assertion that by not killing people I am less of a man is so ridiculous that it isn't even insulting.
I note that you never directly answer the question about how your value system deals with a Mao, Stalin, or Pol Pot, but you imply that killing them would be immoral. I unequivocally state that not killing such a person is immoral. By your logic, Von Stauffenberg and his co-plotters acted immorally by trying to kill Hitler. I find this ludicrous and warped and I sincerely hope that I never have to live in a world of such perverse morality. If you truly believe that every life is equal no matter what, as you suggest, then you have no business owning a gun or using it in self-defense, because if your life or the life of your loved ones is of no greater value than the life of a thug breaking into your home it makes no sense to defend yourself against them. By killing such a person in self-defense you are valuing your life and the life of your loved ones more than the life of the person you kill.
You assert of me: "You clearly said that there are people in this world who should be
dead for actions that you feel are wrong." To be clear, I absolutely did say and do say that. Apparently the law, in Texas at least, agrees with me, since Texas still has capital punishment. Juries and judges decide all the time that people should be dead for actions they feel are wrong and contrary to the law, and sentence them to death for those actions. Furthermore, the US government decides that there are people in this world who should be dead for actions that are wrong, and that such judgements also justify killing people who have done no wrong in the process --we call it collateral damage. So by your logic, I guess there is also no distinction between the US government and the government of Hitler or Stalin or Mao?
Finally, in spite of your apparent desire to police my thoughts, I absolutely do have the right, as does every other person in the world, to make my own judgements about the value of my, and other people's lives. I value the life of my wife and children higher than the life of a thug kicking my door in and I will defend them as necessary. Except where allowed by law in self-defense, what I don't have the right to do is to enforce my judgement of such value upon other people ---something I never advocated or even suggested. You're free not to defend yourself or your family because you don't consider the lives of your family to be more valuable than the life of a thug attacking them. I have heard anti-gun liberals express such a pacifistic principle many times, and some of them claim they would never take another life even if self-defense. This expression is usually a smug claim of moral superiority but I have encountered a few people who seem sincere in making it. I find this attitude abhorrent but if you're willing to die for such a belief more power to you --at least it is consistent with the philosophy you espouse.
People are posting here in an internet forum not writing treatises on philosophy and morality, when we say certain things we expect a certain level of knowledge and understanding --to explain every nuance of every expression would be a tiresome and impossible undertaking. So yes, sometimes there are miscommunications, and sometimes remarks need to be clarified. I don't believe that to be the case here though. It seems to me that you are interpreting my remarks though the lens of an emotional attachment to an illogical concept, as illustrated by your assertion that killing people would make me more of a man.
Finally I note that you dodged all of my substantive questions so I'll repeat them: 1) do you believe the life of a Stalin or a Hitler is of equal value to your own life and the lives of those you love?; 2) if bad people are the product of unfortunate circumstances, how come the billions of people who lead lives of poverty and misery aren't all out raping, stealing, and murdering?'; and 3) are you saying you'd also torture, rape, and murder, if you'd been brought up in the same circumstances as Richard Speck?
Edited to add this:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... chens.html
The primary notion that you're espousing leads slowly but directly to social disintegration and then ultimately the kind of chaos just witnessed in London. From the Peter Hitchens essay linked above:
"All this piffle enshrines the official (and hopelessly wrong) view that crime is caused by circumstances and background, not by unleashed human evil. It is precisely because of this windy falsehood that the cells are crammed with young men who broke the law because they felt like it."
