reply to robert, who writes - In regard to the topic at hand I'm not convinced that we should be butting in on our neighbours choices when there are no clean alternatives. We have made a different choice to some of our neighbours on how to deal with a very difficult problem.

dudley responds -- we get a lot of people butting into the US position on the death penalty, all the time. that doesn't mean the criticisim is warranted or accurate or responible. However, such criticism has existed forever even when different jurisdictions meant our neighbor in the next cave. Nothing will ever stop it. It certainly doesn't bother me, although it does bother many others. As a member of the human family, I believe we all have a duty to voice our praise and condemnation, where we believe it is warranted.

Robert continues -- Now it's my turn
(D) R I'm sorry I misrepresented you.
(R) Apology accepted D.

Dudley reply - it is not acceptable for you to speak for me, ever. I believe I responded to your exact comments, as I reposted your words. However, if I used some one elses words or misunderstood your wrods, I do apologize for that, of course. However, I am unaware that I did either.

sincerely, dudley

Dudley, apology accepted.

Agreed that I should not speak for you - doing so was a very specific and I thought obvious attempt to get you to think about your actions in attempting to speak for me. I'm fairly confident that the content in that short piece did not misrepresent your approach to the subject of the thread or provide much opportunity to be mislead the casual reader.

Please try a search for some of the quotes you attributed to me across the postings. Go the top of the page and do a "Find on this page" search. The couple I tried were from JustDan not from myself, I did not test them all but am fairly confident that most are not mine.

Cheers
R0bert

Well,Robert, I think all the quotes were Justdan's.

My sincere apologies. It appears I just thought there were all yours, for some reason.

As Roseanne Roseannadanna would say, Never mind.

sorry to the board, as well. dudley

Well well :)

I've read most of the posts here, and its quite the illuminating experience.

I observe that the more passionate Dudley is, the more 'intolerant' and 'bigoted' and 'hateful' are some of the views of certain people who disagree with him. That characteristic is one I observe in other threads from the same people who, it appears feel that disagreeing with 'them' is some kind of personal attack.

The other thing I observe, as if it was written in the big blue by a sky-writing aeroplane, is the abundance of 'moral relativism' here.
The classic symptom of this is a) lack of a moral reference for such a position, and b) Vitriolic attacks on Dudly for his position. They kind of go-together. Natural buddies so to speak.

If you don't have a foundation or moral anchor for ones life, then the only way to persuade people is to 'bludgeon' them with 'Your a racist blah blah' )

The Biblical view of the death penalty and Justice in general was 'do the crime, pay the price.' Tooth= tooth (not tooth+leg ) Life=Life. The elders who meet at the gate, would assess the mitigating factors of self defence or outright malicious murder. But the law is the law, everyone knows it.
The eye for eye was not about vengance, it was about justice and if anything LIMITED the punishment. If you steal $20, u repay $20 not $5.
Its not rocket science.

I would not have a problem with the death penalty per se, but I would reserve it for absolute, incontrovertable unambiguous evidence based outcomes.

The idea that the 'state' is reduced to the level of murderer is only applicable in a 'morally relative' universe, and raises the question ''what' level ? is it a good level or a bad level, righteous or evil. If 'evil' ...why so ?

Moral relativism, -takes a thread like this with no 'bible bashers' (till now) for it to be seen for what it is. "untenable"

Should Australia be doing more to encourage our neighbours to abandon the death penalty?

Absolutely.

How? By example. Australia can set the pace for humane and compassionate treatment of all people. For who are we to dictate or presume to judge.

"If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable."
Louis D. Brandeis

Regarding capital punishment, the problem is that there are too many mistakes made by the courts. Recent analysis of DNA found under the fingernails of victims of the backpacker murderer have shown that this DNA does not belong to any Milat family member nor any victim. Ivan Milat has always professed his innocence and there has always been suspicion of police planting evidence. Advances in DNA technology have meant further tests have been able to be carried out on a number of items found in Belanglo. There is no evidence Ivan Milat was ever there. The media has demonised the whole Milat family and defamed them to the point that it is well nigh impossible for members of the public to look at the alternative evidence. More details can be found on the website of the late great Brian Raven:
http://users.tpg.com.au/brianrav/FIRM_Intro.htm
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