Sign the Moratorium2000 petition!! Ban the Death Penalty worldwide

Nov 21 01:13 UTC 2000

Okay, here's your chance to be heard-- sign the Moratorium 2000 petition.
This year millions of people around the world are signing a petition
calling for a worldwide moratorium on the death penalty.  On December 10,
2000, which is Human Rights Day, all the signatures and letters will
delivered to the United Nations and presented to Secretary General of the
U.N. Kofi Annan, as well as to the U.S.ambassador who will deliver them to
President Clinton.

The leader of the Moratorium 2000 petition drive is Sister Helen Prejean,
author of the autobiographical book "Dead Man Walking" (from which the
movie was made)

This is the beginning of a new century, and the time has come for us to
realize that the taking of human life doesnt solve any problems.  No
civilized society should sanction the execution of another human being.
Be it the death squads in El Salvador or the U.S. courts, its all the
same.
 
December 10th is two weeks away.  If you oppose the death penalty, let
your voice be heard!

You can sign the Moratorium2000 petition at www.moratorium2000.org

response 2 of 129:

Nov 21 01:51 UTC 2000

  Perhaps you might want to do it if you oppose the death penalty.

  On the other hand, perhaps you might not want to.  I oppose the
  death penalty but have no interest in bothering with the petition.
  If the U.S. isn't swayed by the strong anti-capital-punishment
  diplomatic pressure applied by our closest international allies or
  by the moral pressure applied by leaders of some of the world's
  largest (and most influential within the U.S.) religions, then I
  don't see how an on-line petition is going to tip the balance.

  Frankly, capital punishment is one of the issues on which our 
  democratically elected politicians are actually surprisingly in
  tune with the public.  Unfortunately the public position on this
  is pretty clear -- support for the death penalty is overwhelming
  in many parts of the country and even in jurisdictions where 
  capital punishment is not practiced (such as Michigan) a very large
  minority or even a majority of the public are in favor of it.

  As long as politicians who fear being labelled "soft on crime"
  stick to mostly symbolic gestures in their anti-crime platforms
  and as long as the public remains solidly in favor of the death
  penalty, I don't ever expect "moratorium2000" to get anywhere in
  this country regardless of the rightness of their cause.

response 4 of 129:

Nov 21 04:42 UTC 2000

Sorry, guy, but I support the death penalty.  Especially for stupidity.

response 6 of 129:

Nov 21 05:05 UTC 2000

Not to mention that there are statistics that show *glaringly* that
there is a race bias in capital murder cases.  It is a FACT that if you
are up on murder charges, you are more likely to end up on death row if
you are black or other minority.  The process of deciding which convict
gets death and which gets life is VERY selective, and the numbers clearly
show that race plays a factor.  

response 8 of 129:

Nov 21 11:47 UTC 2000

And I question the motivations (possibly quite shallow) which 
are behind most of the sentiments against the death penalty.
How many folks who think it is just plain wrong to execute
someone who has murdered a child would then be proud as punch
to send their young man off to kill for the armed forces?

Agenda is everything here.  It's not about life.

response 10 of 129:

Nov 21 16:26 UTC 2000

How many people actually hold that viewpoint, these days?  The armed forces
do not hold the honorable allure they once did.  My parents, death penalty
opponents, would be happier if I had nothing at all to do with the military.
I don't think anybody in the armed forces is proud of killing people.  Not
the fighters that do it, anyway.

response 12 of 129:

Nov 21 20:34 UTC 2000

I oppose the death penalty because morally I believe the only justification
for taking another human life is self defense. Self defense meaning you
are defending yours or other peoples lives and there is no other
alternative.  

Also the death penalty is not ethical because it is an act that once
carried out, cannot be undone.  There is no redrss of grievance.  You
cannot bring an executed person back to life if you later find them
innocent.  If you are on a jury and you vote to end a person's life you
are playing God, you are making decisions that aren't yours to make.  A
person's life isnt given to them by society, its given them by nature and
fate, and it isnt society's place to take away what they never controlled
in the first place.

And Mary, I think its really arrogant of you to assume that people's views
on life and death are often shallow, just becuase you dont happen to
believe most people are as enlightened as you are.

response 14 of 129:

Nov 22 02:21 UTC 2000

Somehow the phrase "cafeteria-style morality" leads to strange mental 
images, among which is a misbegotten phrase I heard years ago and which 
has stuck with me for no reason I can fathom..."afterbirth on toast."

response 16 of 129:

Nov 22 02:52 UTC 2000

I can't speak for the people Mary has met, but most of the people I've
met who are against the death penalty mention the unfairness and
uncorrectability of the system quite often.  I've heard the parasite
argument before, but not often - I don't think it's one most pro-choice
people would choose to use without some very careful definitions first.
As presented, Mary's argument could easily be extended to infants,
people with various mental disorders, the poor, the rich, housewives,
the elderly, the military, or even all of us including the vegetarians.

Mary's argument regarding the military definitely strikes *me* as pretty
shallow.  It *might* have been a fair description of the Hessians, two
hundred years ago, but even they joined in full expectation of being
used in a war.  Even the Hessians didn't just join because they wanted
to kill, but because conditions really were pretty bad at home (major
depression, inflation, no jobs, food, money), and joining a foreign army
was one of the few paths available to them to get valuable foreign
currency and improve their position in life.  The military is definitely
still being marketed as a means of self-improvement today, and one need
only check out the latest TV ad to see this.  Traditionally at least the
military has aimed mainly for the 18-20 year group, and at that age,
it's a lot easier to ignore the possibilty of being killed or having to
kill, and to assume one will get out before "anything bad" happens.
It's also not a bad assumption: something like 9/10ths of the modern
military is in non-combat related duties like transportation,
maintenance, construction, medicine, and so forth, and a significant
portion of combat related duties are essentially "push-button" warefare
- push a button and someone far away *might* die.  I don't think it's
fair to hold any of these people responsible for the actions they're
taking.  *That* responsibility lies back here, with *OUR* government and
elected leaders, and ultimately with us.

response 18 of 129:

Nov 22 04:58 UTC 2000

I'm not sure, but it seems to me that Mary is looking for a single
implication for the verb "kill". I think the word is too broad to give it
a single meaning in ethics. We kill lots of forms of life with no thought
- bacteria, cattle, beans, trees, etc - but even among those we make
ethical distinctions. We should be "humane", we should avoid killing
"good" bacteria, some cattle are pets, some beans and trees are
endangered. There is no one single morality in regard to killing even in
these non-human categories. It is not surprising that the same thing is
true for human life. We make up rules of morality in regard to the various
ways in which we kill human life. At one extreme, I think no one gives a
hoot about killing an appendix or many other body parts. At the other
extreme, we make fine distinctions about killing whole human organisms. I
don't think we need to rationalize any of that - we make the rules. The
rules need to satisfy as large a proportion of the populace as possible. 
Intentional planned ("cold blooded") killing of an individual by another,
especially if deemed grusome, is most frowned upon. We can sort out other
types of killing along a scale which goes from that to, perhaps,
aggravated self-defence (which hardly anyone says is immoral even if
unfortunate). Abortion fits on this scale, though its position is judged
differently between polarized groups (expected, except at the extremes). 
We don't have to say that a fetus is a "lesser" form of human life - such
rationalizations are irrelevant. The real reason for "choice" is a
majority decision that a woman has this right. There are similar current
majority decisions in regard to warfare, capital punishment, etc, though
since they are also away from the extremes, the opinions are also
distributed.

response 20 of 129:

Nov 22 12:14 UTC 2000

You may have a specific definition of "parasite" in mind.  There are
plenty of people in society who would think nothing of calling the poor
"parasites" on society.  Just before WW2, the germans were quite happy
to define Jews as "parasites".  Like it or not, different people use the
word "parasite" differently, which is why tossing it out like that in a
conversation without a *very* careful definition, is rather like
throwing gasoline on a fire.

It could be those kids are just being "patriotic".  They're taught in
school that being patriotic is a good thing.  They may honestly believe
that the president of the US has their ultimate best interests in mind
when he deploys them on various far-flung missions around the world.
Surely you aren't saying the president doesn't have that task? Also you
said something else quite interesting at the start of that last
paragraph - "(immoral) actions" - now just how do you define "immoral"
in the case of war?  And how might that differ from other people's
definitions?

Personally, I think there are a lot of problems with how our army is run
today, and even more problems with how it is used, and how it has been
used.  Nevertheless, I think it is way oversimplifying things to assert
the army is automatically bad, and that everyone involved with it is
automatically bad.  Or are you asserting that in WW2, we should have
stayed home and let the Germans roast the Jews?

response 22 of 129:

Nov 22 15:45 UTC 2000

        News flash:  you don't retire from those kinds of jobs.

response 24 of 129:

Nov 23 00:08 UTC 2000

Re: #20, "parasite" - 
I think that there's ample contextual evidence to tell mdw that mary
was using "parasite" in the narrow biological/medical sense of the
word.  Someone less educated who didn't know mary very well might be 
excusably confused.  But that nasty folks can attach negative labels
(how about "liberal", "Christian", or "counter-revolutionary"?) to 
folks they don't like as the first step in a purge is hardly news,
and it strikes me as poor reason to qualify my usage of a word that
they've thus abused.