DP Debate VII

Ned, this isn't about voting for candidates who support state killing. This is about supporting state killing, rather than attempting to end it. You have a legal right to support al-Qaeda & its practice of arresting & beheading, but it would be reasonable to consider you to have the blood of those victims on your hands also, whether you wielded the sword or not. Since you support killing mentally challenged Paul Reid, then, if we kill him, blood is on your hands. We are all in this together. Defending Israel's right ot exist is not the same as defending its arrest & torture & slaughter of Palestinians. As for taking over governments, who runs Iraq but the oily Republicans in the White House. This takes us off the point, however. Since you haven't denied the similarities nor come up w/ compelling differences, then the similarities between the desire of al-Qaeda to kill & the desire of some of the people of Tennessee to kill exist.

I wouldn't say that all truth claims are equal. Those who claim that the earth is flat or that natural selection is w/out scientific basis do not deserve equal time w/ those who state that the earth is round or that natural selection is proven. Comparing the Qu'ran w/ the Bible, however, those are certainly equal. Neither is a document of fact. Each is a statement of belief for a culture or belief community. Each has gone through much revision by anonymous committees attempting to establish a church.

As to national sovereignty, that is not the same as national ignorance or isolation. This is America, part of the planet Earth, one of 193 countries. We do not exist in isolation. The pretense that we do gets us into trouble. In this world of human beings, most do not practice state killing. You & the U.S.A. are in the minority. It doesn't matter, however. The goal is to help those people who still desire to kill to see that such a motivation takes us bckward, not forward.

This notion of flouting the law is just an arbitrary judgment of appeals & motions that you don't like. There is no flouting of the law here. These acts (unlike, say, Bush-Dick's at Guantanamo) are w/in the law. You cannot complain about te way others play the game if they stay w/in the rules. You insist on the rules to deny Sedley Alley a DNA test. Perhaps you'd even defend Tennessee's attempt to stop post-humous DNA testing. I'm not sure waht the basis would be, but if it's w/in the rule of law & due process, then you'd have the right to ind it just as others nave the right to demand it. There's not flouting here.

That "the majority of us believe it's time for [Reid] to be put to death" is not an argument to kill. Justice doesn't work by opinion polls.

What concerns me in your message is how many times words of belief appear. We should move past belief & stick to what we know. One of the beauties of the American legal & governmental systems is that they are secular, not beholden to any belief-system. Personal beliefs have no place here, and using them to justify a desire to kill makes you more like al-Qaeda, not less so.
MJB