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  1. MODERATORS!!! LET THIS LAST POST THROUGH Almost all of you are pseudo-objectivists. You think about as mush as the average christian. To everything you say you attach this label, "rational" You think that by putting that word along with any absurd comment it makes it rational. You should re-examine yourselves. You have accepted Ayn Rand's philosophy on blind faith as it shines through whenever you discuss a topic that was not discussed by Rand herself. RationalCop thinks that he's right about the death penalty, with no reason at all, but he attaches the word rational and therefore thinks it's so. We can't both be right, that's what you people don't understand. Betsy said that she thinks we should have the death penalty regarless of the consequences. This sounds like a statement from the Dark Ages. How can one be more foolish. See? Unsupported assertions. The worst is that they don't think that they need to be supported as long as they think it's their self-interest, with the word rational thrown in front of it with no desire or need to justify the word's presence. although justification is the only reason the word should be there. Betsy THAT was simply a ridiculous unsupported assertion. As for GC who moderates this board with an iron fist, I respect your right to do this as you own the board. However, I do have a question. How do you obtain "board-pull" like some others have? I DON"T say anything offensive I get warned. (by the way, I am asking this to you here because you failed to address it in the PM) Others have called me a "12 year old little SHIT" and a "F-ing idiot" the worst I had done was simply state that elle didn't understand the transition between morality and politics, which was not meant to be rude or anything like it. I you want to kick me off of this site, of course you can, because you own it. But I will not give you "the sanction of the victim"
  2. I believe that a genius is over 140 or 145. So you're not a genius. I took tickle and scored a 155. Iq tests are taken wayyyyyy too seriously. I don't think they are accurate at all. "Ziggy: try iqtest if you wish." On that test I scored a 172. None of them are accurate at all.
  3. What are you talking about GC? Then... You said that it is likely that an innocent man will be put to death, but then you say that It should be advocated regardless. Now how are you not advocating his sacrifice? I misunderstand, do I? How? sac·ri·fice ( P ) Pronunciation Key (skr-fs) n. 1. 1. The act of offering something to a deity in propitiation or homage, especially the ritual slaughter of an animal or a person. 2. A victim offered in this way. 2. 1. Forfeiture of something highly valued for the sake of one considered to have a greater value or claim. 2. Something so forfeited. 3. 1. Relinquishment of something at less than its presumed value. 2. Something so relinquished. 3. A loss so sustained. You still support it. So how have I misunderstood? I think it is you who has misunderstood. Don't think I am trying to be rude, I am not. I respect your right to this forum, I mearly disagree with you. It may annoy you but you are the one who isn't getting it. You have not shown me one way that I am wrong, only you state that I am wrong, and you expect me to "understand"
  4. If you showed me, GC, that you can justify an innocent individual's life being sacrificed so that the guilty can get what they deserve, it would be an acheivement greater than Galt's speech and motor combined. You would be tampering with some fundamentals of Objectivism. I will await your revolutionary theory.
  5. Death Penalty Facts DETERRENCE The Death Penalty Is Not a Deterrent. A New York Times survey, released in September 2000, found that during the last 20 years, the homicide rate in states with the death penalty has been 48 percent to 101 percent higher than in states without the death penalty. FBI data showed that 10 of the 12 states without capital punishment have homicide rates below the national average. The threat of execution at some future date is unlikely to enter the minds of killers acting under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol, or who are in the grip of fear or rage, or who are panicking while committing another crime (such as a robbery), or who suffer from mental illness or mental retardation and do not fully understand the gravity of their crime. Likewise, children and young people are less likely to reflect upon or genuinely comprehend the consequences of their actions. Recent studies cast further doubt that the death penalty has any deterrent effect. Rather, these studies found support for the theory that the death penalty has a brutalizing effect. * An examination of homicides in Los Angeles before and after the execution of Robert Harris in 1992, California’s first execution in 25 years, revealed slight increases in homicides during the eight months following Harris’ execution. * A comparison of murder rates and rates of sub-types of murder (felony-murder; stranger robbery-related murder; stranger non-felony murder; argument-related murder) in Oklahoma between 1989 and 1991 uncovered no evidence of a deterrent effect. Researchers did find a significant increase in stranger killings (both felony and non-felony) after Oklahoma resumed executions after a 25-year moratorium. * Researchers Keith Harries and Derral Cheatwood studied differences in homicides in 293 counties that were paired based on factors such as geographic location and demographic and economic variables. The pairs shared a contiguous border, but differed on use of capital punishment. The authors found no support for a deterrent effect. They did find higher violent crime rates in death penalty counties. "I have inquired for most of my adult life about studies that might show that the death penalty is a deterrent. And I have not seen any research that would substantiate that point." - Former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, January 2000 It is an irrelevent position. I have have given up on you understanding my posts, so I figured on attacking your cited reasons you want the death penalty. You have yet to tell me why you would sacrifice even yourself for people that now think as you do. If you were falsely convicted and sentenced to death, you would say, "It was all worth it?" See?
  6. Inmate kills for death penalty News24.com 27/05/2004 14:58 - (SA) Print article email story Starke, Florida - A man who said he killed a fellow prison inmate so the state of Florida would give him the death penalty has been executed. John Blackwelder, 49, received an injection of chemicals at Florida State Prison on Wednesday, a spokesperson for Governor Jeb Bush said. Blackwelder was convicted in the May 2000 strangling of Raymond Wigley, 39, who was serving a life term for murder. At the time, Blackwelder faced life without parole for a series of sex convictions. He said he killed Wigley and pleaded guilty to first-degree murder because he wanted to die but couldn't bring himself to commit suicide. "I'm glad I get to go home," Blackwelder said after being strapped to his gurney. "I'm proud to be a Christian, and I thank Jesus for saving me and allowing me to go home. Amen." Blackwelder's execution was delayed 24 hours after a prison inmate said he'd heard a second-hand claim that another inmate had confessed to Wigley's killing. The Florida Department of Law Enforcement used DNA evidence to disprove the claim, Bush said. "I felt in an abundance of caution that there should be extra work done, which was done overnight," he said. Blackwelder said he lured Wigley into his cell at Columbia Correctional Institution with the promise of a sex act, then tied him to the bed and killed him as Wigley begged for mercy. He claimed he was innocent of sexually assaulting a 10-year-old boy. Blackwelder was the second inmate to be executed in Florida this year and the 59th since the state resumed executions in 1979. Six of the last 10 executions in Florida were of inmates who, like Blackwelder, dropped appeals to speed their deaths.
  7. Recent USA state-killing rates: Through May 24, the rate of capital punishment in the US in 2004 will have been 39% less than this country's rate for 1999, which, with 98 killed, was the record-worst year since 1951. (This figure is the average of the 2 unrounded percentages below, and is shown graphically.) US Bureau of Justice Statistics This indicates that the US may have a record low number of "executions" in 2004, since 1999. Through May 24, there will have been 25 executions in the US in 2004. This represents a rate of 63 per year, 36% less than the 98 killed in this country in 1999. Considering that, in recent years, US state killings have been chronically weighted early in the calendar year, another way of figuring the current rate is that through May 24, 1999, there had been 44 state murders in the US that year; so 25/44 times 98 equals 56 projected for 2004 (43% less than 1999). There were 85 executions in the US in 2000 (13% less than 1999), 66 in 2001 (33% less than 1999), 71 in 2002 (28% less than 1999), and 65 in 2003 (34% less than 1999). International statistics: (numbers are murder rates per 100,000 people per year) The Amnesty International Website Against the Death Penalty, link "Facts and Figures on the Death Penalty", has the following information: -- More than 3 countries a year, on average, have abolished the death penalty for all crimes in the last decade -- A United Nations survey of research findings, conducted in 1988 and updated in 1996, found no evidence of the death penalty being a more effective deterrent than other penalties -- Canada abolished the death penalty in 1976, and Canada's murder rate dropped 43% in 24 years, from 3.09 in 1975 to 1.76 in 1999 -- The only countries which execute as many people as the United States in a year are China, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and Congo (all dictatorships) -- Since 1990, the United States has executed more people who were under 18 at the time of their offense than any other country in the world (as far is as known to AI) During the 1990s, while the US execution rate grew markedly, the amount that the murder rates of the US states with the death penalty, were higher than the rates of the US states without the death penalty, grew markedly as well; and, while the murder rates of the death penalty states declined markedly during that period, the murder rates of the abolitionist states declined considerably more -- with no pattern, in the changes in the murder rates, apparent, when the states are listed in the order of the ratios of the numbers of executions they have had, to their populations. US Murder Rates Relative to the Death Penalty Mexico has effectively abolished the death penalty since 1937. The last country in western Europe to carry out the death penalty was France (in 1977). Abolition of the death penalty is required for membership in the European Union (15 countries), and effective abolition is required by the Council of Europe (43 countries). 60% of the countries in the world have now effectively abolished the death penalty. Why do I protest the death penalty? I will cite the basic fact that there is no evidence that the death penalty lowers the murder rate more than the threat of life without parole.
  8. I oppose the death penalty. In one sense, it is morally legitimate to execute murderers. A murderer is a direct threat to my ultimate value, my life. If somebody is, in fact, a murderer, then it is in my rational self-interest for him to be dead. A murderer has no right to life as he has abdicated himself from the sphere of human rights by violating the rights and destroying the ultimate value of his victim. Strictly on moral grounds, there appears to be no doubt that the death penalty is a good thing. However, the simplicity of the moral argument is deceptive. The hard question is not a purely moral one, but an epistemological one. How do we establish standards of evidence that ensure that we don't execute innocent persons as murderers? When we make a mistake, for whatever reason (in the investigation, the trial...), an innocent person is falsely convicted of murder. To make this IRREVERSABLE sentence of death, the evidence has to stack up to a new legal standard; absolute proof (not just "beyond a reasonable doubt."). No system of justice has ever established such standards, and I am doubtful that we can. To get the evidence for this kind of proof could cause all kinds of legal difficulties for law enforcement without violating our rights against search and seizure, speedy trials, trial by jury; ultimately our right to our private life and not to harassed by the government. Also, a misplaced trust is given to every single person who takes part in the investigation and trial. There are simply too many uncontrolled variables in a justice system, much like an economic system. Perfection in a justice system is not measured by the ability to find absolute proof, but the ability to protect peoples rights. An alternative punishment for murder, life in prison, serves the purpose of protecting me from murderers without invoking the risk of doing irreversible harm. This, in very brief summary, is why I oppose the death penalty.</span>
  9. \ On what kind of a discussion forum can you not argue? The people who hold that the death penalty should be used now, have not addressed my last point. Their position contradicts some of the fundamentals of objectivism, which I hold as irrational. They want to sacrifice other's rights for themselves. This has NOT been addressed. I don't appreciate GC's unsupported claims. However it is his site, and his rules, and I respect these facts. As the Owner he can tell me himself not to argue with him, and I will not. I respect his rights to this site, the question is, will he respect an innocent man's right to life?
  10. Minimize isn't enough. Eliminate would be what it would take, which is impossible. Like I have said to rationalcop, I think anyone who thinks that sacrificing an innocent man's life for the sake of personal comfort or enjoyment or "sense" of security, to be a completely EVIL, irrational, piece of (substitute 4 letter word for) garbage! The Argument from Intimidation/The Argument from Rand is God Please come up with something on your own. Start by addressing my posts. Explain to me why it is rational to sacrifice a few individual's lives for a personal sense of security, or personal comfort, like air conditioning. Edit to say: This time try to focus on "SACRIFICING AN INNOCENT INDIVIDUAL LIFE FOR PERSONAL COMFORT" Edit again to add: It is irrelevent, but Ayn Rand also said that capital punishment was legaly dangerous! Failed to include that didn't you?
  11. I oppose the death penalty. In one sense, it is morally legitimate to execute murderers. A murderer is a direct threat to my ultimate value, my life. If somebody is, in fact, a murderer, then it is in my rational self-interest for him to be dead. A murderer has no right to life as he has abdicated himself from the sphere of human rights by violating the rights and destroying the ultimate value of his victim. Strictly on moral grounds, there appears to be no doubt that the death penalty is a good thing. However, the simplicity of the moral argument is deceptive. The hard question is not a purely moral one, but an epistemological one. How do we establish standards of evidence that ensure that we don't execute innocent persons as murderers? When we make a mistake, for whatever reason (in the investigation, the trial...), an innocent person is falsely convicted of murder. To make this irreversible sentence of death, the evidence has to stack up to a new legal standard; absolute proof (not just "beyond a reasonable doubt."). No system of justice has ever established such standards, and I am doubtful that we can. To get the evidence for this kind of proof could cause all kinds of legal difficulties for law enforcement without violating our rights against search and seizure, speedy trials, trial by jury; ultimately our right to our private life and not to harassed by the government. Also, a misplaced trust is given to every single person who takes part in the investigation and trial. There are simply too many uncontrolled variables in a justice system, much like an economic system. Perfection in a justice system is not measured by the ability to find absolute proof, but the ability to protect peoples rights. An alternative punishment for murder, life in prison, serves the purpose of protecting me from murderers without invoking the risk of doing irreversible harm. This, in very brief summary, is why I oppose the death penalty. Insults or arguments? I'm betting on insults.
  12. the drudge report isn't too bad
  13. Precision to what degree? Most certainly not absolute 100% of the time! That is what it would take to justify the death penalty. Like I have said to rationalcop, I think anyone who thinks that sacrificing an innocent man's life for the sake of personal comfort or enjoyment or "sense" of security, to be a completely EVIL, irrational, piece of (substitute 4 letter word for) garbage! !
  14. Same here. I will be taking Calc 1 in the fall, but not sure which other classes I need. I am getting a degree in electrical engineering. What degree are you looking to obtain?
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