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In a democracy yes. But in a Republic such as we have in America every person has a right to life therefor it wouldn't matter if the majority of people wanted human hunting it still could not be legalized. Then again our government now doesn't really give a shit about the constitution or our rights and are all either just a bunch of power grabbers or vote whores so who knows.
That's why i said if we could put it to a vote. A more logical reason would banning of gay marriage. it's illegal even though there's nothing physically wrong with it because the majority are against it.
Actually, not every person does have a right to life. Individuals convicted of first degree murder, treason, or other capital offenses do not have a right to life. Just saying. I would also question whether human hunting really wouldn't be legalized if (somehow) there was strong and particularly partisan support for it.
It is called retributive punishment, and that model is quite obsolete and demonstrably ineffective at addressing crime and social deviance. Furthermore, while you do lose your right to freedom it does not necessarily follow that you lose every other right. To the contrary, the Bill of Rights itself secures certain rights such as freedom from cruel and unusual punishment. Would you really suggest that state sponsored homicide is not cruel? You are also presuming that a social contract notion of rights is the superior model to adhere to, which is not necessarily true.
Some people cannot be reformed and to keep them in prison for the rest of there natural lives would cost money and take up space. Besides if someone kills someone I think it's only fare that they be killed. An eye for an eye that's in the bible.
People do not require reformation, society does. Crime is primarily a consequence of social factors such as poverty rather than innate individual characteristics. For this reason, programs which actually focus upon rehabilitation rather than retribution (e.g. drug recovery, employment skills development, finance education, etc.) have been quite successful in preventing recidivism.
Additionally, the example you give applies to a very small minority of offenders: first degree murderers with clinical pathologies. For such offenders where re-entry is perhaps neither possible nor desirable I would contend that execution is still not justifiable. Your argument stems from financial considerations. Firstly, we spend vastly more money incarcerating people for minor drug crimes and petty theft than we do retaining inmates for life. Secondly, I find it objectionable to make our ethical determinations solely on a question of finance. If we truly value human life then we would foot the bill for actually practicing that value.
Retribution (i.e. an eye for an eye) does not actually make sense. Very few of our criminal punishments actually mimic the original offense (e.g. a mugger is not mugged by the state, a rapist is not raped by the state, etc.), so it does not necessarily follow that murder should be responded to with murder by the state. More importantly, if we truly value human life as we purport to then it is unconscionable to take another life simply because it makes us feel better about what happened (purportedly) or because we think it sets things back in balance (which it does not).
Regarding the Bible, the Sixth Commandment is “Thou shalt not kill.”
Rapeists may not be raped by the state but they are raped by inmates. Anyway the death penalty would still cut costs because we wouldn't be permanently housing murderers on top of those drug addicts. Also I value human life until that human kills another human in cold blood then fuck him his life has now lost all value and he's a worthless peace of trash KILL HIM. So no I don't want to foot that bill thank you.
Rape within correctional facilities is not a form of formal legal or social punishment, and does those who take human rights seriously generally consider such conditions to violate the "cruel and unusual" clause of the Eighth Amendment. Furthermore, my point does still remain that we do not formally institute directly equal punishments on most offenders and killing murderers is more the exception to the rule.
My point regarding the costs of incarcerating people for drugs offenses (not necessarily synonymous with addiction) was not that one saves more money than the other, although more money would be saved by reducing our absurd and aberrant rate of incarceration. My point was that money is clearly not our primary concern with questions of justice, or at the very least that it should not be.
I think we are likely going to have to agree to disagree regarding the death penalty. I am a secular determinist, and so I consider first degree murderers to be a product of their genetic predispositions and improper or inadequate socialization. I also value human life as an absolute, so I find murder for any other reason than the defense of life to be unethical.
Remember that these people killed first therefor they are scum whether its a product of improper socialization or chemical imbalance in the brain or if they are just evil. Murderers are dangerous and reintroduction is dangerous and permanent incarceration is expensive to say it isn't is a lie why should I spend my hard earned money to house, feed, and take care of some low life who took an innocent life? Tell me that.
There are problems with defining democracy in the first place. If 51% of people vote so that the remaining 49% have no right to vote, that would qualify as undemocratic, because the very process of measuring the consent of the governed becomes skewed.
Equally, you can't allow human hunting because it would skew further measurement to favor hillbillies and rednecks so to speak. Some other issue could have gone in favor of the now-extinct hipsters for instance. Hypothetical pure democracies are automatically republics.
Some rights, like the right of private property, can't be directly derived from this though. I think those rights serve as the line between a democracy and a republic.
Well how about human ideas of what's right and wrong. We can call those rights. Do you believe that the majority has all say in what humans say is right?
how are there no such thing as human rights, you yourself said that it isn't freedom, it's a privilege named 'human rights'. besides if there were no such thing as human rights then there would be no freedom of speech, now even tho the government now limits our freedom of speech we can still have debates on here, therefore we have human rights
That's a different argument, I'd happily debate you on it about what I think are rights and privileges, but in regard to what you are saying... if I understood you that is, the privileges that we call our rights, go to the majority. Is my argument. I believe this to be so because the greatest event in history where all the rights have been changed they ere changed base don votes, votes won by the majority.
The reason I said rights, instead of privileges is because it'd be another argument within this argument, I know what my views on rights are, but I left them on the other debate and conformed.
No in democracy this is true but that's why democracy is horrible. In America we have a Republic. In a Republic the individual is ensured certain rights ie the bill of rights that cannot be taken away regardless of how the majority feels.
Please, minority rights have been and continue to be consistently denied and violated simply because the majority does not want to extend or protect those rights. From slavery to segregation to anti-queer sentiment and so forth. There is no society that I am aware of which has ever existed that has afforded its minorities with equal rights.
I mean political minority's. in a democracy the majority can say "oh you support so and so your crazy your delusional your too crazy to vote therefor we all vote to take your voteing rights away" not here though.
An important clarification, but I would maintain quite wholeheartedly that you are still incorrect. The United States (a republic since its origins) has a very consistent and ugly history of disenfranchising its political minorities. In addition to the obvious examples of women's voting and black's voting, you also have a history of property entitlement which has not actually ended (i.e. if you are homeless you have no address with which to register to vote). In many states convicted felons are not allowed to vote. Immigrants are also not allowed to vote. Gerrymandering and voting district manipulation continue to be practiced, which does disenfranchise various political and racial minorities. Political dissidents have been routinely silenced. And so on and so forth.
These were examples of when the majority was in favor of something that was not ensured constitutionally but as majority rule changed so did the laws and thus the rights given.
I was referring mainly to political freedom. In this country today you can support whom ever you want and what ever position you want and no one can take away your right to vote.
Although it's illegal, in the hypothetical sense that it wasn't illegal to vote on taking away women's rights, if the majority voted on it, it would be done.
No one can take away your rights, yes, but what about gaining them? That was voted on, for blacks and women, and it went through because of majority rule.
To think, in the land of the free where everybody has rights, we had to vote on giving rights to some people.
They gained the majority on capital hill it wasn't until they ELECTED enough people sympathetic to their cause that their cause succeeded. In a democracy they would have needed the majority of the people that they did not have.
In every election except for the presidential election the winner is decided by popular vote so indeed they had a majority backing but that's not enough they also needed to motivate their supporters to vote for the proper representatives they need a majority in government in order to really make a difference. How ever reguardles of who is in office the minority shall always retain their rights in a Republic. I hope we remain one.
So you agree rights go to the majority. That statement alone doesn't mean that the minority lose their rights. When they gain rights, they keep them until forced to relinquish such as the case with convicts, but as new opportunities arise to gain more rights, they go to the majority.
No because the statement "rights go to the majority" implies that the minority has no rights because they are not part of the majority and therefor rights do not go to them rights go to the majority still with me? Good rights go to all no matter what.
You do know the majority group changes with opinions right?
What you're saying sounds like circular logic where you just say enough contradictions that it comes back to mean nothing.
What i'm saying is this:
The group of people who represent the largest population, be that in the government or simply among the people, get to decide on what changes, though what they change can't be damaging to any group.
If human nature doesn't allow for people to have power, then distributing the power undemocratically should be expected to yield the same or worse result.
Typically, rights go to whomever the powers that be decide they should go to. Consider me a cynic, but I consider the majority to generally be nothing but a herd. Their views are important to varying degrees depending upon the system of government, however they are easily manipulated. Who has what rights comes down to who has the power and influence to enforce their views of rights. Sometimes that means minority rights are not protected but other times that means minority rights triumph over majority rights.
