The Atlantic - Latest Comments in A cold, cold world

Re: A cold, cold world

Pippi — Sat, 08 Nov 2008 18:02:09 -0000

There is no usefulness in talking about the military "training people to be killers" as having any relevance in this situation. Lots and lots and lots of Marines never kill anyone (while serving or in 'regular life'), yeah? Some Marines are bad people and do heinous things; some civilians are bad people and do heinous things. Unles you can show that military personnel or veterans have a higher incidence of violent crime than the civilian population, the fact that these monsters were Marines has nothing to do with it.

Re: A cold, cold world

Paul gilmartin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 23:21:19 -0000

Asher, I appreciate the clarification. I combined 2 thoughts when using the "2 wrongs don't make a right" argument. My main point was meant to address the fact that the death penalty, for many, has come to represent a vengeful redressing of the balance when a "wrong", i.e. murder, is committed. We carry out a state-sponsored "wrong" to punish the perpetrator(s). This is particulary galling in light of the fact that the majority of our population practice (or claim to practice) christianity and revenge is something that jesus condemned (I'm not trying to get all religious on you, just pointing out a fact that many people choose to ignore about their faith).

I take your point that "wrong" is not limited to the death penalty and also that, prior to being found innocent, an inmate may indeed die while in prison (disease, natural causes, violence etc.).

So if the argument is "2 wrongs don't make a right", and we take the original crime to be a "wrong" then absolutely nothing can make it a "right". Execution, life in prison without the possibility of parole etc. are, as you said, in and of themselves wrongs, but no matter what you do, the original wrong cannot be changed. On this basis, the 2 wrongs don't make a right argument is, indeed, a fallacy.

My take on it, however, is from the viewpoint of the message that capital punishment sends to the citizenry. We claim to live in a civilized society and yet we execute criminals in the name of justice. In essence saying, killing is wrong, unless the government is doing it. Liza made a similar point upthread. Imprisonment, in and of itself is a "wrong", but a far more palatable and civilized option for punishing criminals than execution.

To conclude, I would say that the argument of 2 wrongs don't make a right is overly simplistic but that the basis of it has merit.

Re: A cold, cold world

ed — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 22:20:49 -0000

I agree with this, although my hesistation to support the death penalty is the fact that all other forms of punishment are, to some extent, reversible. Once you've executed someone, you can't exactly give them their life back.

Indeed. Why is this a difficult concept?

Re: A cold, cold world

Joel — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:51:10 -0000

But for prisoners who will someday be released. I understand the desire to punish, and I think punishment has some utility. But to take a person who has their moral compass askew, and most of them don't have a lot going for them otherwise, and socially isolate them for extended periods of time, and then when they're done, just... let them go... sounds like a recipie for more crime.

On the other hand, widespread social interaction among prisoners isn't exactly rehabilitative. Prison gangs and other criminal assemblies have to be destroyed before you can address the issue of rehabilitation in my book.

Re: A cold, cold world

Joel — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:45:43 -0000

Never gotten this argument. Killing someone is a wrong, but locking people up in tiny cells by themselves is... not a wrong? Punishments are, by their nature, bad things. Things that would be wrong to do to innocent people. Even fines are wrongs. So yeah, any time you punish someone, you're "carrying out another wrong." The idea, though, is that the fact of the criminal's guilt makes these wrongs rights.

Re: A cold, cold world

bread & roses — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:15:20 -0000

oh, and another thing:

Joel wants prisons to be more punishing. For capital and life prisoners, okay, I'll let that point go.

But for prisoners who will someday be released. I understand the desire to punish, and I think punishment has some utility. But to take a person who has their moral compass askew, and most of them don't have a lot going for them otherwise, and socially isolate them for extended periods of time, and then when they're done, just... let them go... sounds like a recipie for more crime. Society has an interest in protecting itself, and a person with not enough compassion, who does wrong things, I think will rarely develop more compassion by being punished and isolated.

Perhaps we need a punishment phase and a rehabilitation phase of imprisonment. But as morally appealing as punishment is, it's just not going to produce reformed criminals most of the time. I have an acquaintance who served 10 years for robbery and kidnapping, and who emerged much better for it, with a much stricter sense of ethics and limits. So it happens. But he's a rare bird.

Re: A cold, cold world

renegademom3 — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:08:40 -0000

you ask, where were their fathers?

it is so much MORE than that question. As a single mother, I struggle every day to raise my sons AND my daughter to respect themselves and others. Would a father help? The RIGHT father would. Otherwise, no.

I have no answers, and I have no hate. I have tremendous grief, and compassion..........weird, I know, but true.

Re: A cold, cold world

bread & roses — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:03:01 -0000

TNC, I really enjoy the thoughtfulness of the discussion you spark.

I have lots of thoughts here.

Tom says society is getting more violent; I want to see some data there. I am suspicious.

I am usually unilaterally opposed to the death penalty- I do agree that some people deserve it, but very few, and I don't think you can draw any bright line between those who do and those who don't. So I was suprised to find myself agreeing with Elmo. But he says:

it's just statistically inevitable that you're going to convict more innocent people for petty crimes than you are for really awful murders. Because there just aren't that many really awful murders every year.

I disagree. The pressure to convict someone is much, much, much higher with a heinous and highly publicized crime. With a petty crime where the evidence is murky, the case may be thrown out of court or never prosecuted. In a high-profile heinous crime, the trial will go forward if there is ANYTHING to try it on. The strength of emotion we have about some crimes generates a level of attention and passion that is detrimental to the dispassionate investigation of what happened. It also creates a much higher incentive for those involved to pin it on the other guy, for those not arrested but accessory to cover things up, and so on. It's just harder to find the truth when everyone's looking so hard for vengeance. If we had a magic truth-o-meter I am quite sure that we would find innocent people convicted at all levels of the court system, but more of them at the capital level.

As sorn and others' points that that you can't undo an execution: true, true, and this is a basis for my opposition to the death penalty. But you can't undo 10 years in prison either. The person is let out; but those 10 years are lost. Time in prison is irrevocable. And those wrongfully convicted people who have been released from death row? They are let out. They just go. Go on, son, you're free do do as you please, at 47, having spent your entire adult life in a twisted and inhumane world, with no job skills, no money, an only a sad story to tell to the world. I understand it's better than death for those people, and that exoneration must be sweet. But the error of the state, in executing an innocent, is only a matter of degree greater than the error of wrongfully imprisoning an innocent for years and years.

Re: A cold, cold world

ed — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 20:02:41 -0000

The average prisoner [at the Colorado Super Max] goes insane and dies within 15 years. It's absolute hell on earth.

This sounds less humane than the death penalty itself. And also seems to undermine the "innocent people get executed" argument. If you end the death penalty, innocent people get sent to maximum security prisons, live in isolation, and are driven crazy. Is that really that much better?

There are myriad problems with specific prisons, like the SuperMaxen, but that answer to our question is: Yes, a zillion times yes. To repeat: you can't unkill someone if/when you make a mistake. You can take them out of prison and try to rehab them. Why is this a difficult concept?

Re: A cold, cold world

Jim — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:29:21 -0000

Off with their heads too.

No sympathy is needed for them, no excuses about a father missing etc. No sob stories excuse this. I would get going on the whole Marines training young men to be killers, but I'll stop at that.

Re: A cold, cold world

Asher — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:28:28 -0000

Paul, now you're making an entirely different argument, and, I should add, a totally reasonable one (although people's life expectancies are shortened by long stays in prison, you know - it isn't always the case that we can just let them out once they're exonerated, they might be dead by then). I'm just saying that the two wrongs don't make a right argument against the death penalty is silly. All punishments are "wrongs" when taken out of context.

Re: A cold, cold world

Liza — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:26:12 -0000

I agree that psychopaths test our convictions.

But so do neo-conservative warmongers who kill hundreds of thousands of civilians while experimenting with global hegemony. And not a single one of them will pay. They will write books, give lectures, eat steak, and live the good life until they die.

I have become very confused about the value of human life, and why collateral damage is alright even when it is associated with a war that was not justified.

These young men have to dealt with, obviously, but it is hard to say what happened to them. If we continue to teach people that killing is wrong except when it isn't, then expect there to be some percentage of people who cannot separate the two. Who knows why? I suppose there are a lot of reasons.

We need to acknowledge our share of the responsibility. It takes a village to raise a child.

Re: A cold, cold world

Watson — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 19:06:29 -0000

how exactly do we meet in the middle?

That reminds me of what the ANC used to say about negotiating with the apartheid regime: it’s like a whale talking to an elephant, where do they meet?

Re: A cold, cold world

Paul Gilmartin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:49:23 -0000

Asher- False equivalency alert!!!

If we lock someone up and find out later that he is innocent, we can set him free. I'm not discounting the anguish and lost time he has spent behind bars but if we put someone to death and later find that they were innocent - oops, too late. Is locking someone up for the rest of their lives cruel or wrong, perhaps but that's no reason to institute the death penalty. And equating them both as "wrongs" is short-sighted.

Tom- I'm usually all for conciliation, you typically don't get anywhere by taking an absolute position. However, in this case, how exactly do we meet in the middle?

"In this case, it likely includes some form of gun control as well as stricter penalties including capital punishment"

That doesn't sound very conciliatory to me!

Re: A cold, cold world

Watson — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:32:00 -0000

Yeah, Galleymac. We’re warehousing a lot of mentally ill people in prisons. Their inability to function on the outside gets them locked up, and their inability to function on the inside gets them put in super max, where the social and sensory deprivation makes you crazy if you aren’t already.

It’s my understanding that, largely because of the ascendancy of sanctimonious religious fundamentalism, there is also relatively little research into pedophilia.

And Tom, this is snark, but sometimes I think that the way to get gun control would be to appeal to many conservatives’ enthusiasm for authoritarianism and the death penalty: no-warrant, no-knock searches, and anyone caught with a gun gets the chair.

Re: A cold, cold world

Tom — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 18:17:32 -0000

The comment above gives a good example of my point.

In the same way that you are saying capital punishment is "WRONG, WORNG, WRONG" and can never be done, Conservatives say:

- sex education is school is wrong and you should teach nothing but abstinence in schools

- restrictions on gun control are wrong because the father gave us freedoms to bear arms

Both sides have their reasons, which I no doubt think they passionately care about. We must be able to make concessions (reasonable and intelligent of course) if we really want to solve our problems. Absolute policies in a large and diverse nation as we have with large and diverse problems do not provide the multi-layered solutions we need. In this case, it likely includes some form of gun control as well as stricter penalties including capital punishment (other items like better comprehensive education im ignoring for the purposes of this point). You can see how both sides need to make a concession. And even if you feel as though capital punishment wont help, many conservatives do, so you will never get anywhere on gun control, as a solution if you are going to try and completely prohibit any capital punishment.

Re: A cold, cold world

Galleymac — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:36:02 -0000

I knew a guy in High School who said he wanted to kill people. He meant it.

He joined the Marines, just like he said he would, where (in his words) "It'd be socially acceptable to kill people."

I'm not for the death penalty either, yet I don't know what we should do with psychos like these.

Maybe we shouldn't help create them in the first place?

Interesting piece in the New Yorker recently on pyschopaths mentioned the fact that little research money is allocated to the study of socio and psychopathy, in comparison with the funds spent on schizophrenia, when schizophrenics are far less harmful to society and commit far less crime.

I've often suspected if more study was done into mental illness it would seriously cut down on events like this, and possibly eradicate the school shooting phenomenon.

Re: A cold, cold world

sv — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 17:35:47 -0000

That these particular devils deserve to be deprived of their lives does not make the case that the government should do that - in my view the only really, completely morally sanctioned killing of people in a decent society is in self-defense specifically, or in a war (okay, so there's a whole big can of worms) which is collectively self-defense.

But don't worry for a moment - God will punish them far more severely than we ever could or would.

Re: A cold, cold world

Asher — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:56:10 -0000

"One barbarous act is not remedied by perpetrating another.

The death penalty is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

I'm not usually so definitive but I (obviously) feel very strongly about this. I say again, you cannot rectify a wrong by carrying out another wrong. If theese guys are executed, their victims remain dead! It really is as simple as that."

Never gotten this argument. Killing someone is a wrong, but locking people up in tiny cells by themselves is... not a wrong? Punishments are, by their nature, bad things. Things that would be wrong to do to innocent people. Even fines are wrongs. So yeah, any time you punish someone, you're "carrying out another wrong." The idea, though, is that the fact of the criminal's guilt makes these wrongs rights.

Re: A cold, cold world

Deborah — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 16:51:00 -0000

I'm pretty certain that our society is not growing more violent; what's different is that we now have cable news 24 hours to cover everything, and it's not a long look into the details of tax law that draws viewers. Sort of like sexual abuse of children always happened, but now it's actually reported rather than hidden, so the perception is that it never happened in 1940 and now is epidemic.

As for the deterrent effect when some communities respect prison time, they respect a few years. What you get for a minor offense. Are we going to put everyone to death, not just murderers? If you're 18, the idea that you might hypothetically be respected more after getting out of prison in 20-30 years doesn't make much sense as an inducement.

Re: A cold, cold world

Paul Gilmartin — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 15:15:54 -0000

One barbarous act is not remedied by perpetrating another.

The death penalty is WRONG, WRONG, WRONG!

I'm not usually so definitive but I (obviously) feel very strongly about this. I say again, you cannot rectify a wrong by carrying out another wrong. If theese guys are executed, their victims remain dead! It really is as simple as that.

As for the insane notion that the death penalty is somehow a "deterrant" against violent crime, I ask "What's the murder rate in Texas?". Since they execute so many people there, their murder rate should be pretty close to 0, right?

What about the other argument "well if your wife and children were murdered, wouldn't you want the killer to pay the ultimate price?". Well, I'm sure I would want to exact revenge but does that make it right? As I said above, in this scenario, my family would still be dead.

Quite simply, a society that deems itself civilized does not execute people no matter what crimes they may have committed.

Re: A cold, cold world

elmo — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:57:36 -0000

Jordan, I'm all for that. ALLLLL for it. Especially the part about the drug laws. But unless we do repeal our drug laws, and lots of others, we just have too many prisoners and not enough prisons to separate the petty from the monsters.

Re: A cold, cold world

JordanT — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:47:37 -0000

I'm more interested in the thousands upon thousands of non-violent, petty criminals -- and the innocent people wrongly convicted as such -- whom we as a society force to live with murderers and thugs.

Instead of killing the thugs, how about we don't put non-violent, petty criminals into the same prisons with murderers? How about we have drug laws that don't put petty criminals into prison at all?

Re: A cold, cold world

Watson — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:41:49 -0000

BTW, it’s a myth that death row prisoners postpone their sentences indefinitely, tying the courts in knots by filing numerous appeals. The fact is that there are only a handful of lawyers who do capital cases. Example: Scott Peterson. He paid Geragos a million for his trial, now he’s penniless like virtually everyone on death row, waiting for assigned counsel.

Re: A cold, cold world

Brianz — Fri, 07 Nov 2008 14:41:41 -0000

When you look seriously at the things people do, it's hard not to feel that some people have forfeited any claim on humanity. That doesn't mean that we have to kill them, though. Leaving aside the inevitable problems with the practice of capital punishment, one moral reason for not killing is about us, not them. About proving that those of us who act like human beings are better.

That's my point of view -- but let me throw something else into the mix.

I used to work for an organization that did prisoners' rights advocacy. There are a lot of innocent people in prison, and there are a lot of people in prison who haven't done much harm to anyone but themselves, but if you're going to do that work you need to be down with sticking up for the rights of the guilty. If a prison guard beat down one of these guys in Brooklyn -- took it upon himself to do back a small portion of what they dealt out -- it would still be wrong, and I respect the people morally tough enough to stand up for the rights of even people like this.