Matthew Hunter wrote: >> 1. Backward nations have not yet abandoned the barbaric practice of >> capital punishment. > > There's nothing barbaric about executing people who have > committed sufficiently dire crimes. Society has no obligation > to support them once they have proven themselves unwilling to > live by even the most basic rules of society. To be honest, it's > an option that should be a lot *easier* than it is presently. > For example, I think it would be reasonable to apply the death > penalty to any case of deliberate, premeditated murder. I don't think the death penalty is cruel, and it certainly wasn't unusual when the Constitution was written. But it is final. > Now, making sure the person to be executed it actually guilty is > another matter. Which is one danger of using it. The other danger, which has been of historical interest is when it is used to get rid of political opposition. That said, if I were falsely convicted of murder, and sent to life in prison, nobody except my immediate family would be trying to clear me. If I was on death row, more people would be searching for the real killer. >> 2. Backward nations are still unable to provide their own citizens >> with health care. > > Gee, people who can pay for the health care they desire get the > best health care in the world here in the USA. My brother is dead right now because our flavor of socialized medicine is designed for employed people. He was between jobs when he noticed a cough, and by the time he was re-employed (he was an executive), his cancer had gone too far. > Do you perhaps mean that a nation is backward if it doesn't force > doctors to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay? We have socialized medicine in the USA right now. It just has funny gaps. I'd like to see what would happen if someone in power decided that veterans needed full Medicare coverage even if they lived in small towns without VA hospitals. >> 3. Backward nations usually have an enormous percentage of the wealth >> concentrated in the hands of very few, which few exercise more and >> more direct political power in defense of that wealth (usually under >> the cover some sort of religious doctrine combined with blatant >> militarism). > > You mean like the Saudi royal family, or the Iranian "Death to > America!" legislature? Of course Saddam was a marvel of secular > humanism... That's a valid example of what he meant. >> 4. Backward nations generally keep an unreasonable number of their >> own citizens in prison. > > No argument there. > >> There are others, of course. But I think most people would agree >> that a nation that displays those characteristics ought not to >> trusted with weapons of terror. > > No nation can be trusted with "weapons of terror", because such > weapons are inherently evil. Nuclear weapons are not inherently > evil. They are merely inherently very, very destructive and > include nasty side effects. I don't think that I would pick any > nation as being "trustable" with nuclear weapons. No government > can be trusted with that amount of power. Unfortunately, waving > the magic wand won't make the missiles go away. > > I can, however, easily separate out a list of nations that I > would not under any circumstances trust with nuclear weapons. > I can make an even shorter list of nations for which I would put > my life on the line in a military action to prevent their > acquisition of a nuclear weapon, or to destroy such capability > already in existence. But eventually we will need a different strategy as technology and wealth makes WMD easier to acquire and deploy.