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The Forum > Article Comments > Capital punishment still has majority support in Australia > Comments

Capital punishment still has majority support in Australia : Comments

By Sinclair Davidson and Tim Fry, published 16/10/2007

It is not unreasonable for the Australian government to oppose the execution of Australians overseas while opposing the death penalty in Australia.

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To say that some murderers are more deserving of execution because they have abducted and murdered a child is just an emotional reaction.

Why is the murder of a child more despicable than the murder of an adult? That child may have grown up to become a brutal dictator and have been responsible for millions of deaths. In this case you could argue that the murderer has done a 'good' thing by saving all those lives. What about the murder of someone like Victor Chang who could have gone on to save hundreds of lives with his special skills. Should his murderer be held responsible for the lives of all those people Victor Chang would have saved?

You cannot make a decision about the severity of a murder based on the identity of the victim. You cannot place a value on the life of one person over another unless you have some way of measuring that value and comparing it with other values. To make an argument for selective capital punishment on the same grounds is equally unreasonable.

“The lives of the worst kinds of criminals are sacrosanct. Only the lives of the innocent are expendable.” All life is sacrosanct and no lives are expendable. Neither murder or capital punishment will ever change that
Posted by phanto, Friday, 19 October 2007 12:35:54 AM
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Human beings are emotional organisms, Phanto. And we do not like it when people abduct, rape and kill our children.

The reason why the murder of a child is considered more despicable than the murder of an adult is because children are considered innocent, are defenceless against an adult male, and are every societies most precious resource.

We already do make decisions about punishment based upon the identity of a victim. Any criminal who attacks a child or a frail elderly person will not only be more severly punished in the courts, even his fellow criminals in jail will spit on him. And yes, the circumstances of Victor Chang's murder would make the offenders prime candidates for the noose.

If all life is sacrosanct, then we must immediately disarm the Australian Army and replace their Steyr rifles with frying pans.

In Australia today, several hundred mostly young people are dying of heroin overdoses each year. If several hundred Australians were being killed every year by a foreign power, this country would be at war. We would do everything possible to kill our enemies and prevent these attacks upon our citizenry. We would blow our enemies to pieces, burn them to death with napalm, shoot them, and bury them alive. Yet Phanto objects to doing exactly the same thing to the predators who have declared war upon their own society and who actively prey upon it.

As a former soldier, I was given official instruction on how to kill the enemies of my people. Many of the enemy soldiers that I was trained and expected to kill would be decent, brave men just doing their duty. It beggars the mind for anyone in society to claim that it is OK to mow down brave enemy soldiers who fight you face to face.

You can kill them by the thousands. Even in the tens of thousands and get medals for doing it. But when it comes to aeroplane bombers, hired murderers, terrorists, child rapist murderers, serial killers, mob bosses, drug traffickers and traitors, taking their worthless lives is a sin.

Bovine excretia.
Posted by redneck, Friday, 19 October 2007 5:05:20 AM
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Why won't the elites hold a referendum on capital punishment?

Because they know that the electorate supports it. Now, you can't go and let the people push the policies of a nation when a few toffs think they are far better than anybody else, huh? Such is the class distinction filled mantra of these people of the both the Left and Right fields of politics.

I support the death penalty for serious offenders(sex crime offenders, drug dealers, murderes, etc) on their 2nd conviction. Never the first conviction. Unless ofcourse the person in question is so twisted, that it is clear that the sicko is not fit to live due to such an unwell state of mind.

When an Australian goes to another nation, they must face laws and ways of these nations. Expecting to be punished by Australian laws in another nation stenches of arrogance. Australia should only investigate the charges so that should we believe that the person is unfairly or incorrectly charged, then support them. Those caught with drugs in Singapore, Indonesia, etc must be abandoned. We don't need such filth back in Australia to spread their cancerous disease.
Posted by Spider, Friday, 19 October 2007 9:24:39 AM
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Redneck: "The lives of the worst kinds of criminals are sacrosanct. Only the lives of the innocent are expendable. Capital punishment definitely stops repeat offenders."

Actually, the idea is that no lives are expendable. I see your point insofar as releasing offenders risk lives, but you're stretching the point to say anyone is expendable.
Logically speaking - if somebody didn't support anyone being killed, then they wouldn't support the death penalty. Yet you extrapolate that to having an attitude that innocent lives are expendable, when in actuality they oppose killing in all forms.

I'm not sure whether advocates for the death penalty actually believe this, or whether it just makes for colourful invective, but it certainly distorts the debate through a cheap emotive slur.
Posted by TurnRightThenLeft, Friday, 19 October 2007 9:58:38 AM
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Redneck made the comment "Bovine excretia" in reply to the expression of my opinion.

If you real concern is to stop murder and violence in our society you might begin with your own aggression. The need to ridicule someone because they do not agree with you is the sign of someone who does not know how to deal with their anger. Aggression soon enough can become violence and violence can become murder.
Posted by phanto, Friday, 19 October 2007 10:32:30 AM
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Hey Hamlet,

Moral equivalences over the ages are indeed problematic, for instance one can end up linking the Passover tragedy with the tragedy at Beslen - ‘Let my people go or I will slaughter your children’.

In fact most of the commandments - if you apply your reasoning - can be thus diluted. Adultery was wrong but not if it with a slave girl or stealing and lying was wrong unless it is committed against those outside your tribe. Questions of universality aside we even find Jesus effectively neutering the edict about working on the Sabbath.

In the light of today’s moral standards Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, David and a whole host of other biblical figures are little more than immoral, conniving, reprobates. Deceit, murder, adultery, theft and even pimping could be laid at their doorsteps. But for the time they provided spiritual beacons for a dispossessed people struggling for survival.

When Abraham lead his son away to do G-d’s bidding and murder him he was intent on not sinning i.e. disobeying his Lord. Surely this is the difference between sin and morality. If a current religious leader with his son in tow was to walk past you or I with the stated intent of doing the same our moral sense would naturally be to do all we could to prevent what the man from acting out his perceived anointed duty. However in the strictest sense we would be sinning.

Therefore might not the Anglican church, in their translation of this commandment, be placing a modern moral overlay on it, one that we as a modern society, should all strive for and expect nothing less from our government?
Posted by csteele, Friday, 19 October 2007 11:45:00 AM
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