{"id":10596,"date":"2011-06-27T09:14:33","date_gmt":"2011-06-27T09:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/06\/27\/capital-punishment-and-deterrence\/"},"modified":"2011-06-27T09:14:33","modified_gmt":"2011-06-27T09:14:33","slug":"capital-punishment-and-deterrence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/06\/27\/capital-punishment-and-deterrence\/","title":{"rendered":"Capital Punishment and Deterrence"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Bill Keezer<\/a> e-mails:<\/span><\/p>\n

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With respect to capital punishment: When I was a lab-tech at Ball State University, one of the professors was telling me about a demonstration of static electricity he did at the state prison in Pendleton, IN. He was using a Van de Graaff generator to create long, spectacular sparks and light neon tubes off the fingers of volunteers. The key thing in what he told me was a con asked him, \u201cCan you fix the chair?\u201d meaning of course could he prevent the electric chair from killing a person.<\/span><\/p>\n

If the death penalty is not a deterrent, then the question is meaningless.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Right.  Of course the death penalty is a deterrent.  The only interesting question is why liberals don't or won't admit it.  Part of the explanation is that liberals won't admit that criminals are for the most part rational, not insane, and that there is such a thing as evil, and what it presupposes, freedom of the will.  It is characteristic of liberals to speak of murders as senseless, as in the case of the mother of one of the Long Island pharmacy shooting<\/a> victims.<\/span><\/p>\n

But the murders made all the sense in the world.  Dead men tell no tales<\/em>.  That piece of folk wisdom supplies an excellent reason to kill witnesses in the absence of any strong incentive not to do so.   In one sense of 'rational,' a rational agent is one who chooses means conducive to the end in view.  If the end in view is to score some swag and not get caught, then it is perfectly reasonable to kill all witnesses to the crime especially given the laxity of a criminal justice system in which the likelihood of severe punishment is low. <\/span><\/p>\n

Liberals are  promiscuous in their use of the 'disease model.'  For example, they typically believe that alcoholism is a disease, a view refuted by Herbert Fingarette in Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease <\/em>(University of California Press, 1988).  They also misuse the word 'addiction' in connection with nictoine use, as if one could be addicted to smoking.  Suppose you smoke a couple packs a day and I offer you a million dollars if you go one month without smoking.  Will you be able to do it?  Of course.  End of discussion. For more on the noble weed, see Alcohol,Tobacco, and Firearms<\/a>.  It is the same on Planet Liberal with criminals: they must be 'sick,' or 'insane.' Nonsense.  Most are eminently sane, just evil.  <\/span><\/p>\n

And because criminals are most of them sane and love life, the death penalty is a deterrent.  That is just common sense and there is a strong, albeit defeasible, presumption in favor of common sense views, a presumption that places the burden of proof on those who would deny it.  I will be told that we need empirical studies.  Supposing I grant that, who will undertake them?  Liberal sociologists and criminologists?  Do you think there just might be a good reason to suspect their objectivity?   In any case, here<\/a> are references to studies which show that CP is a deterrent.<\/span><\/p>\n

But whether CP is a deterrent is not the logically prior question, which is:  what does justice demand?  Deterrent or not, certain crimes demand the death penalty.  Fiat justitia, ruat caelum<\/em>.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bill Keezer e-mails: With respect to capital punishment: When I was a lab-tech at Ball State University, one of the professors was telling me about a demonstration of static electricity he did at the state prison in Pendleton, IN. He was using a Van de Graaff generator to create long, spectacular sparks and light neon … Continue reading “Capital Punishment and Deterrence”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,163],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-leftism-and-political-correctness"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}