(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

[David Stockhoff]

On 4/12/2012 10:59 AM, Marc Aramini wrote:
>
>
> --- On *Wed, 4/11/12, Matthew Knight /<jacobeiserman at gmail.com>/* wrote:
>
>
>     From: Matthew Knight <jacobeiserman at gmail.com>
>     Subject: Re: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires
>     To: "The Urth Mailing List" <urth at lists.urth.net>
>     Date: Wednesday, April 11, 2012, 6:45 PM
>
>     On Wed, Apr 11, 2012 at 7:38 PM, Marc Aramini
>     <marcaramini at yahoo.com
>     <http://us.mc1618.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=marcaramini@yahoo.com>>
>     wrote:
>
>         I think the ultimate detterent from repeat offenses is clearly
>         a quick death not tied up in a too long and costly appeals
>         system.  How can that not be a crime deterrent?  (Remember
>         that some people in charge of the venue were executed for not
>         enough seats at the Rumble in the Jungle between Ali and
>         Foreman - wow!)
>
>         Okay, I've said my conservative "people need to be held
>         accountable" bit, I will run back to the Wolfe short stories now.
>
>
>     OK, veering.  Gwern has already addressed the likelihood of repeat
>     offenses.  But if this remains your position, for justice's sake
>     there has to be not the slightest shred of doubt of the executee's
>     guilt.  Proving this absolutely may be marginally easier than
>     proving that the convicted is "highly likely" to murder again, if
>     you think probability should play a role in the math of deciding
>     who lives and who dies.
>
>
> No argument can sway me from the idea that people choose their 
> actions, and no argument save moral absolutes divinely enforced could 
> ever convince me that humanistic philosophy could overthrow the strong 
> and those in power from imposing their desires and punishments on the 
> relatively weak - the criminal is strong when he commits the crime, 
> and weak when the power of the law descends upon him.  Thus it must be.
>

I can only respond that human laws must always be made in the absence of 
divine inspiration, direction, and enforcement. Thus it not only must be 
but is.