Fine, you're entitled to you opinion. You're also entitled to fail at life thinking you can turn the other cheek and survive. Jesus got away with 'turning the other cheek' because he could come back form the dead. Got HIV, nevermind, daddy will cure you. Doesn't work like that for this poor girl in South Africa.
I never mentioned turning the other cheek - but I wouldn't allow myself to be the jury and judge. I'd let the police handle it, and if I thought they weren't handling it appropriately, I'd harass them, work on it myself and generally do everything in my power until it had been handled to my satisfaction. What I would *not* do would be to lower myself to the level of a murderer (which as far as I'm concerned is roughly the equivalent of a rapist).
Do you think justice would have been done by the African police?
Do you have a daughter, or a younger sister?
I have no reason to think justice wouldn't be done. Look at the case of that Indian man who had his wife killed in SA recently - the police seemed to be quite efficient with that case. And no, I don't have either of those - but that doesn't mean I have no perspective on things like this.
Two wrong's don't make a right?
I don't think so - do you? If so, why?
Ironic that you take the moral high ground yet you enjoy a game about killing young, terrified boys in aeroplanes historicaly. Germans invaded Poland, so we went to war. Was that second wrong a mistake also then. Or should we have taken the moral highground and and let the Nazis plough through the whole of Europe?
No offense, but I think that's a massive fallacy. Firstly (this may make me sound like some sort of stereotypical-pacifist-whatever, but I don't care), I'm not sure that all these shoot-them-up games are morally correct - which is partly why I don't play very many of them. But at the end of the day, they aren't anything like the real thing, and I guess it follows that they shouldn't be treated as such. And as for the moral high ground in WWII being inaction - do you really that allowing genocide would be the moral high ground? I think 90% of wars (that figure's a guess, btw) could/should be avoided - but occasionally, a war needs to be fought - I think WWII was one of those instances.
Two wrong don't make a right. The world is not right. Life is not about fair or right. Sometimes the second wrong is the only course of action. It is beliefs like 'turn the other cheek' that cause crime rates to rise. If everyone defended their family with an axe there would be very little crime.
With respect.
I agree that the world isn't right, but if more wrongs were answered with a wrong, the world would be a hell of a lot worse. And the discussion on crime rates would probably be long and way off-topic, but I think your last point would be up for debate. Also, it is worth pointing out IMO that this particular case wasn't actually defense (which would probably be justifiable), but rather revenge - which I don't agree with. And as for what life's about - I guess that's up to the individual, and I agree with you - but I don't think that's a reason to be unfair.
Just to say, I think of revenge as an emotional thing, which generally doesn't solve anything except *possibly* making the person who took revenge feel better. But it also has the effect of creating two 'criminals' (i.e. two killers), and two victims, and all the associated consequences/problems. So I view revenge as basically doubling the number of problems, rather than solving any.
My Idea of Justice?
if we *know* they did it, shoot them, if they twitch, shoot them again.
I am descended from generations of London police, they didnt carry guns and dedicated their lives to keeping people safe. But there were men, evil men such as the Cray's and other gangs and thugs, who murdered, stole, extorted and otherwise made life a misery for people. But we couldnt arrest them due to millions of little technicalities and even harder still was to get a conviction.
So I say, if we have a general consensus that they are guilty of a henious crime, we dispense justice the old fashioned way, with a rope or a gun.
to quote a song by a southern US country singer "if they are guilty, they would swing quickly, not be writing books and smiling on TV"
Fair enough, but at the end of the day you will rarely (if ever)
know for certain who did it, and it's because of that that we have a rather elaborate (and depending on your perspective, frustrating) justice system. And about your example from London - that sucks, but if summary justice were in use worldwide, there would be *a lot* of people who were punished for something they hadn't done. IMO, avoiding all those unfair punishments is worth having a definitely-imperfect justice system.
Sure when someone wrongs me. But when they wrong my daughter in such a terrible way and infect her with HIV, rational thinking departs.
I sort of think that's the crux of the issue. As you said, if someone hurts your daughter like that, rational thinking
would depart. It's for that reason that you should
not play jury, judge and executioner - those people
need to be impartial, since if they're not, there's a very possible chance that you'll kill the wrong person. Hence, I think it follows that you're wrong.
Also, just out of interest, to everyone in this thread: how many of you would actually be willing to change your opinion about this topic based on (logical) arguments you see here?
