On Fri, 11 Feb 2005 18:28:45 -0600, Matthew Hunter <matthew at infodancer.org> wrote: > 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. So let us not support them. Sentence them to life in prison. If they work and farm their own food, they are allowed to eat it and not die. If they don't, they die. Any extras could be donated to people in the African continent. The plumbing's broken? Train prisoners to repair it themselves if they want it. Disease? Better hope one of them is a doctor, or has the knack for it. This way we're not responsible; if they want to live they have to do everything themselves. However, there should be some system that they could keep in touch with the real world, so if they are truly not guilty they can be reintroduced with minimal penalties. This way we respect their free will and not take anything away. > Now, making sure the person to be executed it actually guilty is > another matter. > > > 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. > > Do you perhaps mean that a nation is backward if it doesn't force > doctors to treat patients regardless of their ability to pay? I think Steve means that a nation is backward if it lets those who cannot afford treatment die simply because they cannot pay outrageous prices for medication and surgeries. > > 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... Don't think there was any argument on that point. However, religion has no place in government, period, because we get Holy Wars. Christians are just as guilty as anyone else in this regard; does the terms "evil empire" or "axis of evil" sound familiar? > > 4. Backward nations generally keep an unreasonable number of their own > > citizens in prison. > > No argument there. I concur. > > 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 existance. No nation is different than any other, just repainted and sold as something completely different. Some have different forms of economies but there are still social classes; some have different forms of government but there are people who still break laws and are never punished. However, there's no way to convince anyone to disarm completely because we all take something Benjamin Franklin once wrote to heart: "Love your neighbor, but don't tear down your hedge." -Louis