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It is funny that the sentiment that nothing excuses a murder is being circulated in the US - a country that still carried out death sentences.
by tossandthrow 2y ago
It is funny that the sentiment that nothing excuses a murder is being circulated in the US - a country that still carried out death sentences.
- xyzzy4747 2y agoIt's a little different when a jury of your peers convicts you of a crime which was democratically passed by a legislature, versus a lone gunman who feels he is the judge, jury, and executioner.
- mrbungie 2y agoThe point here is that "democratically passed legislature" is not at people's service.
- xyzzy4747 2y agoIt's the least bad system.
- analog31 2y agoAn elected legislature is a pipe dream in a country with gerrymandering.
- SauciestGNU 2y agoForget gerrymandering, a representative government is impossible as long as the Senate still gives the same weight to the 15 people in North Dakota as it does the 40 million in California.
- tossandthrow 2y agoWhy? Apparently something excused murder in the death row case? So expressing the sentiment that nothiong excuses murder and still having a death row is just I congruent and wrong.
- xyzzy4747 2y agoIn the death row case, the capital punishment isn't murder if you use classic definitions. If you change the definitions then it's only murder if you equate all homicide to murder. And yes, both the will of the people and tradition can justify capital punishment.
- tossandthrow 2y agoThat's fair. And in that vein the current killing of the ceo can not rightfully be deemed a murder as no one have been convicted of such. But then again, the society apparently defines the quality of a killing - only future history will tell if this is a murder, and thst can go back and forth a lot depending on public sentiment.
- mdanger007 2y agoAmerica is the land of stand your ground laws in which a citizen may legally take a life if they feel endangered. Let's not forget the 1000 or so police kill every year.
- foul 2y agoIt's justified when the committee is large enough and regulated enough?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- jimbokun 2y agoI understand what you're saying. But a murder carried out by a random citizen is still worse than a death sentence after a fair trial and convicted by a jury of your peers.
- tossandthrow 2y agoIt was not the justification of murder I was talking about. Simply the fact that murder as a solution is absolutely accepted in the US.
- tedivm 2y agoMurder isn't the same as homicide. By definition the death penalty isn't murder, because it's state sanctioned. Self defense, another example of legal killing, also isn't murder and most people who are against murder would consider a death in self defense to be justified and not murder.
- psychoslave 2y agoSelf defense can give mitigating circumstances in some legal systems, but it’s not an ethical joker to kill whoever we self-decreed feels as representing a threat. For example, we can go into treacherous schemes that pushes our neighbors into paths where the only obvious option they can still perceive as a way to escape our shenanigans is an attempt to kill us, and as they come with this very real intention to kill us, press the button we had prepared to trigger some mortal trap.
- philipov 2y agoWhen all the acceptable solutions are taken off the table, people start turning to unacceptable solutions. It's not good, because the erosion of social institutions will worsen the situation for everyone, but the only way to deal with this is to put the acceptable solutions back on the table. If we don't want to live and die through the inevitable consequences, our government needs to stop the corporate abuse of power that has led to this.
- boxed 2y ago
- TimTheTinker 2y agoIn the 20th century, I think the death sentence was only ever applied for first-degree murder and for treason. A claim denial that results in denial of life-saving treatment could never be counted as either of those charges.
- boxed 2y ago> A claim denial that results in denial of life-saving treatment could never be counted as either of those charges. First-degree murder is when you willingly, and with forethought, plans and carries out the killing of a human. Which seems to me to be 100% what you described.
- seneca 2y agoDenying a claim can not kill someone. Disease and injury killing a person. Claim denial prevents financial support for intervention in resolving a disease or injury. That is not the same thing, and equivocating them is sophistry.
- wat10000 2y agoI’d say that not equivocating them is sophistry. In both cases, someone takes a deliberate action that they know will result in an innocent person’s death. I fail to see why the exact mechanism should be so important.
- kstrauser 2y agoIf you’re shot, and I pull up a chair and watch you die without saying a word or helping in any way, especially if I get paid extra for refusing, I’m not sure if I’d call it murder, exactly, but I bet your family and friends would describe me as a killer.
- harimau777 2y agoPulling a trigger can not kill someone. Bullets kill people. /s
- joejohnson 2y agoAnd which is currently fighting multiple wars around the world, or justifying support of many proxy wars which are killing thousands daily.
- drweevil 2y agoThis. The cognitive dissonance is jarring. And no "that's different!" is no argument. Like it or not, our government leads by example. And the example is not a good one.
- seneca 2y agoThe act of killing a human being is not inherently murder. It specifically communicates an unlawful killing, which the death penalty inherently is not.
- athenot 2y agoThis is because the US is not one homogenous system of thought, but rather a mosaic of people with differing views. (This goes for any other country or population for that matter.) A more constructive observation would be to consider the overlap in groups of people who (1) hold that murder is indefensible in any case, and (2) hold that death sentences are appropriate for crimes. While not sharing that view myself, I could think of a few factors that may lead others to espouse it, such as: - an implicit trust in authority and deterrents (follow rule, "or else"); - feeling of being mostly immune to errors in the justice system ("this would never happen to me"); - a propensity to desire revenge but only when it pertains to "others" ("I'm a good person, we must punish the bad people")...
- ahupp 2y agoMurder is by definition an unlawful homicide. This isn’t just pedantry; it’s the most parsimonious explanation for why someone would support the death penalty and object to something like the assassination.
- tossandthrow 2y agoIt becomes pedantry of the law is not right. Eg. If the law is based on an oligarchy over a democracy.
- psychoslave 2y agoUntil the day we can point to a country that implements a direct democracy with a fair way to obtain citizenship for whoever is involved in its society, all laws will always remain a tool of a minority to arbitrarily rule a majority. The concern is not whether laws are rights or wrongs, but which privileges and which hurts they reinforce for which classes in the society where the national myth is eager to present them as the applied rules.
- Dracophoenix 2y ago> Until the day we can point to a country that implements a direct democracy with a fair way to obtain citizenship for whoever is involved in its society, all laws will always remain a tool of a minority to arbitrarily rule a majority. There's Switzerland.
- psychoslave 2y agoSwitzerland definitely shows interesting political paths, they nonetheless don’t pretend to be a direct democracy. https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/swiss-democracy-in-an-international-context_the-perfect-democracy-does-not-exist-not-even-in-switzerland/45578888 https://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/democracy/swiss-democracy-in-an...
- 2y ago
- pessimizer 2y agoNot to mention that we happily do extrajudicial assassinations outside of our borders, and the news falls all over themselves to celebrate them. Everybody knows that plenty excuses a murder, we live in murderous states and in murderous times. The question is whether this murder is excusable, and one's opinion on it is probably dependent on whether one wishes they had that guy's job. Most people wouldn't do it for any price, but plenty would.