Very few deserve to be totally abandoned.

Even Charlie Manson serves a purpose when he comes up for parole occasionally - don’t be that psychopath.  Dead, he’d be totally forgotten about by now. 

Unless he were within a multitude of other corpses hung out on the walls of prisons. Again, the idea that someone might be truly innocent and be convicted guilty is a problem with the process. The myriad stupid things that are criminal in the US? I have problems with those too. I just don’t have much of a problem with whatever you choose to do with criminals once convicted, and all the guesswork and claims of innocence in the world can’t change the fact that they were tried and found guilty by due process. I think a lot less people should probably be in prison than are. I’m all for rehabilitation as a personal preference. I just don’t agree that there is an enormous, sympathy-increasing, credible difference between locked in a hole forever and buried in a hole forever and heads on pikes littering the White House lawn.

Maybe that’s because I claim our dead in a different way than other people, and I consider permanent isolation from society to be merely a construct designed to make society feel better and not the criminal. I agree with the sentiments that those people who are so unhinged that they’d nearly always commit the crime no matter what the deterrent won’t be dissuaded by much of anything, but I think that putting someone away forever and injecting them with painless poisons removes the humanity from murder just as much, even if it’s a state-sanctioned murder. And I don’t have an automatic problem with nations murdering people either, because everything deserves a context.

If it makes you feel any better, consider that if people really had to nail people up on crosses and watch them slowly die and then bloat in the sun and ripen as a consequence of their choices to condemn someone to the highest punishments, then maybe people would have a little more empathy about the subject. I’m not saying the penal system is a walk in the park right now, or that I even think that people would automatically shy away from that horrible punishment out of the intrinsic goodness of the human heart. I’m saying that I think it’s a debatable issue and we have a unique criminalization of society happening in America which means that to properly consider a solution to that problem I’m willing to consider all possible solutions.

Rome lasted a very long time, before I condemn Rome for the brutality of their criminal justice system or who they nailed up or why, I need to consider it compared to the relative successes and failures of Roman society and culture.

MM: And I don’t have an automatic problem with nations murdering people either, because everything deserves a context.

So basically, the Jews who died (were callously murdered) in the holocaust deserved to die because they were born Jews (the crime they were condemned for).
Fair enough. 

You understand the distinction between “not automatically” and “always”, right? Use that distinction.

I don’t know about all y’all, but I always and automatically have a problem with people getting murdered.

I always and automatically have a problem with people getting murdered.

Sigh.  Just like a lib’rool. 

Just heard on the radio the Dutch parliment have voted to ban the burka in public (ALL public).  After the cartoon thing for Denmark, you may all want to consider not wearing Orange.

you may all want to consider not wearing Orange.

I won’t be wearing orange in Austria anyway because
1) it’s the color of the BZÖ, which is the moderate wing of the neo-fascist party, and
2) orange is for pumpkins.

“Moderate wing of the neo-fascist party” sounds like they couldn’t make up their mind.  From a USian viewpoint, looking at their policies listed on Wikipedia it appears that their policies are all over the board. 

Examples:

# Compulsory German lessons for the children of immigrants
# Support for organic farming
# The renationalisation of agriculture
# The abolition of inheritance tax

The picture on the BZÖ website makes Peter Westenthaler look pathetic.

I’m closing this thread as I’ve started a replacement for it.