but what if it IS part of his religion?
fuming with rage at the disgusting liberalness of my school
Whats wrong with this, sounds like you've got a sound bunch of kids right there,
Anyway, the idea of the death penalty under anarchism isn;t the best idea, Afterall whose going to have the executive powers to be signing the death sentence and carrying out the execution? Can't really see any benefit in the death penalty in an anarchist society to be honest.
man the whole try-hard reactionary thing on here does get annoying after a while.
like, if you believe in the death penalty then whatever. but calling it "disgusting" when someone thinks killing people is wrong, no matter what they've done, is just crazy. i'd rather be in a school with a buncha liberals who try and have some empathy than with a buncha conservative taxi drivers who want to bring hanging back. basically.
Liberal. 
What you going to do, give them a Chinese burn?
It's a man's life in a libertarian communist society.
Or to put it (slightly) more seriously, my big problem with the death penalty is that it's the ultimate expression of the State monopoly on violence. Mob justice. Oh yeah. 
Jesus christ. I was expecting this forum to be anarcho-reactionary enough support me on this. My original post is a bit over the top because I was pretty mad when I wrote it.
As GDID said, decisions do not have to be made by executives and can be made by councils. If I trust a council/committee/assembly enough to make decisions about agriculture or military operations (decisions that could claim millions of lives if poorly executed), then I trust them with the life of one person.
Again, how does a person who poisons five random people, one of which is a five year old child, and expresses zero remorse, deserve anything except a bullet to the head? How should an anarchist society deal with such a person? Yes, life in prison removes the person from society, more or less solving the problem, but they still get to live the rest of their life (admittedly under terrible conditions), an option which the murderers five can never have.
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like, if you believe in the death penalty then whatever. but calling it "disgusting" when someone thinks killing people is wrong, no matter what they've done, is just crazy. i'd rather be in a school with a buncha liberals who try and have some empathy than with a buncha conservative taxi drivers who want to bring hanging back. basically.
At least the conservatives have some kind of realistic view of human nature (ie the ingrained tendency towards violence) and distinguish between killing/violence for some kind of constructive and positive end and unnecessary violence. It may sound horrible phrased like that but this is basically what revolution is; violence and killing to (hopefully) realize a positive end. The thing that pisses me off the most about liberals and pacifists is the fact that their is no distinguishing between different types of violence, between violence being used to further liberty and violence that is done to further oppression. Also, almost everyone admits that killing in self defense is justified, etc so it's clearly not true that "all violence/killing is wrong". I may sound like a reactionary because I support the death penalty (although only in the most extreme cases i.e. serial killer and such and not when it is administered by the state), but pacifism itself is a reactionary ideology that implicitly supports the oppression of most of the world by taking the option of violence off the table.
Forgive me if I sound like a grieving brother on America's Most Wanted.
well you do a bit. bit of a strawman to bring up pacifism though. i believe violence in some situations is perfectly acceptable. but strapping someone down to a chair and premeditating their death is a whole nother thing completely. i dunno, might be the most hippie thing about me (other than not working much and smoking too much weed), i just think we're an advanced enough species to come up with something a bit better than just exterminating troublesome people and maybe looking after the fuck ups of society.
Actually i think prisons in a free society should basically be asylums for people who are so crazy that they are dangerous to society, and seem incurable. I think they should have excellent conditions, not horrible ones.
Everyone else can either be rehabilitated or shot.
tastybrain wrote:
As GDID said, decisions do not have to be made by executives and can be made by councils. If I trust a council/committee/assembly enough to make decisions about agriculture or military operations (decisions that could claim millions of lives if poorly executed), then I trust them with the life of one person.
.
So a trial would be conducted by a council? Which council, and how on earth would this even function?
In a contemorary high court trial a jury decides the guilt of a defendent and then a magistrate or series of magistrates decides the sentence, sometimes acting on the jury's advice depending on where this is taking place.Are you and GDID rcommending that the jury alone decides the sentence?
If anything criticisms about who gets executive powers to dole out the death penalty are only made worse by your rather bizarre assumption that the same ''councils'' that handle economic affairs would handle judiciary matters. I mean the concept of a politically ndependent judiciary is a fairly rational one. I wouldn;t be keen on handing over the power to kill to the local residents council or whatever that just seems like a recipe for disaster.
At the end of the day, no offence meat here but i think your talk about the death penalty here is just pointless macho nonsense, as shown by GDID's talk about there being ''far more dirty jobs to be allocated''. Seriously can you think of a more dirty job than working on death row day in day out guarding people who are waiting to die and admnistering letal injections? I mean how exactly are you going to ''allocate'' doctors to oversee executions for example when most of them refuse to do so because its quite plainly against the hipocratic oath, hence the US practice of administering several injections can often be a painful and horrific way to die because their are no medical staff available to supervise it properly.
Talk about pacificism is just a strawman, no-ones advicating non-violence or letting criminals go free, its just that tey think the death penalty is barbaric and pointless and has no place in a stable civilised society.
cantdocartwheels wrote:
In a contemorary high court trial a jury decides the guilt of a defendent and then a magistrate or series of magistrates decides the sentence, sometimes acting on the jury's advice depending on where this is taking place.
Just to pull you up. Nothing to add to the actual debate.
Crown court.
Judge and Jury.
Magistrates Court.
3 x magistrates (not trained in law) our peers don't you know, advised on law by clerk
or 1 stipendury magistrate (trained in law).
let the families decide and carry out the justice, see if they can stomach putting a gun to his head and pulling the trigger.
TBH though this is all discriminatory against babykillers they should be treated like other people, you never know that five yo may have been the reincarnation of Hitler
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If anything criticisms about who gets executive powers to dole out the death penalty are only made worse by your rather bizarre assumption that the same ''councils'' that handle economic affairs would handle judiciary matters. I mean the concept of a politically ndependent judiciary is a fairly rational one. I wouldn;t be keen on handing over the power to kill to the local residents council or whatever that just seems like a recipe for disaster.
I didn't say that the same councils carrying out economic functions would be in charge of judicial ones, only that decisions regarding the death penalty could be made in some sort of direct democratic manner, the same way other decisions are reached.
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Talk about pacificism is just a strawman, no-ones advicating non-violence or letting criminals go free, its just that tey think the death penalty is barbaric and pointless and has no place in a stable civilised society.
To me it seems nonsensical to claim that ending someone's life should be an option during revolution, but is suddenly unacceptable in a 'stable civilised society'. In fact, it seems much more just to execute someone after months of deliberation, looking at evidence, argument both ways, etc then to simply shoot whatever random cop or soldier is standing between us and a free society. I don't understand how there is somehow a good reason for the latter but the former is completely unacceptable.
We have an event at my school every year called "law day" in which we consider a legal/ethical issue. This year we did the death penalty. At the end of the day everyone divides up into simulated juries and we consider different cases. One of the cases was a guy who confessed to poisoning 5 people, on of whom was a 5 year old. He is of sound mind and expresses no remorse.
And so, lo and behold, EVERY JURY at my school decides against the death penalty. In my group we had a variety of bullshit, such as "God put everyone on the earth for a reason", "killing someone to show that killing is wrong just doesn't make sense", "we don't know what the circumstances were. Maybe he was having a bad day" and my favorite "what if it's part of his religion". WHAT THE FUCK???
(By the way, I don't support the death penalty in our present legal system what with the massive racism, incompetence, etc, but on principle I think someone who murders 5 people, one of whom is a 5 year old, doesn't deserve to live)