Sodomized by a false premise
October 21, 2017 § 109 Comments
No matter how heinous the crime, if society can protect itself without ending a human life, it should do so.
—USCCB, A Culture of Life and the Penalty of Death
In 2001, Human Rights Watch estimated that at least 140,000 inmates had been raped while incarcerated in the United States. — Wikipedia, retrieved 10/21/2017
The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that the death penalty is licit, not simply as a matter of proximate justice carried out on the perpetrator of a heinous crime, but when it is directed at the preservation and security of human life. This is echoed in the current Catechism. Many people seem to believe that it is possible to secure and preserve human life without resort to the death penalty.
While that may be an abstract possibility in hypothetical stories, it has yet to be demonstrated an actual possibility in reality.
Zippy Catholic 
There was a book written a while back about the Catholic priest and Lutheran minister sent to minister to the German officials being tried at Nuremberg (those being the birth denominations of those on trial).
One of the ideas in the book is that when a man is condemned to death, he is not actually in the worst place to prepare his soul. He can’t put off the inevitability we all face or lie to himself any further. He also has warning at the hour of his death, which is more than most of us get.
The turn on this strikes me as closer to the radical reformation than anything else. Sort of a species of pacifism.
That made me look the catechism of Trent for usury, I was not disapointed :
<>
http://www.cin.org/users/james/ebooks/master/trent/tcomm07.htm
I was wondering if you’d have anything to say about the death penalty in light of recent events. I’m reading Feser’s book now. It’s pretty good so far.
I’m in favor of capital punishment but I’m not sure prison rape stats advance the ball. We’d need to know that prison rapes are likely to be committed by those imprisoned for crimes deserving death. If, I don’t know, check kiters are the most likely rapists it doesnt say much about whether to execute murderers.
I forgot that there was tag ><
same comment with the text this time :
Hence the question, "What is usury ?" was answered: "What is murder?" And, indeed, he who lends at usury sells the same thing twice, or sells that which has no real existence.
http://www.cin.org/users/james/ebooks/master/trent/tcomm07.htm
CJ:
Maybe a compromise of sorts is possible by very publicly executing those who commit prison rape, or other heinous crimes, while imprisoned.
NoTrueCatholic:
The whole quote is great:
I was a bit afraid by “who by their exorbitant rates of interest”, I found the ending much more metaphysically sound and showing that there is a good understanding of usury versus licit lending. Thereby I insisted mainly on it.
Not that anyone cares, but I remain opposed to the DP. I’m also somewhat opposed to legal solutions for abortion, rape, abuse. These things are heart matters,they are spiritual issues and you just can’t legislate morality. I also believe God’s justice is restorative and not punitive and so our human efforts to control behavior through fear and intimidation often fall flat. This is especially true in the US where we just keep building more prisons, never really addressing the heart of the matter.
There is the additional issue of corruption ,of the incredible expense of DP incarcerations and trials. We waste tax payer money, spending millions in order to execute people,when it is far cheaper to simply keep them locked up for life. Those millions could be spent on victims,on something more life affirming than the DP.
I am against the DP in all but the most heinous and manifest cases, for the record.
Like cases of prison rape.
We’re I the authority is probably limit the DP to unrepentant heresy or similar, as that is really damaging to society.
I think I’m in favor of public death – penalty or no; we moderns as so protected from death that it’s become unreal to us. Nobody and nothing dies anymore, it’s all offstage and unseen, like people who just move away. And so we continue to try to remove anything that reminds us that we too, shall eventually suffer the penalty of death; for if God and Mary did, how shall we escape?
What do you mean by “legal solutions?” Do you mean you think these things should not be punishable by law? And its really impossible to not legislate morality. We have to, or society will collapse.
I am against the DP in all but the most heinous and manifest cases, for the record.
Like cases of prison rape.
Yes, it does seem that this is the most reasonable position. I also wish the government would bring back hard labor; for heinous but not quite death-penalty worthy crimes, it seems a fitting and just punishment.
Perhaps it’s something like legal solutions alone – for rape, murder, and such are already illegal but are not completely gone.
But clearly legalizing those things will make it worse, not better.
“Like cases of prison rape.”
Rape culture is a real thing in the world, perhaps not in the way feminism has hijacked it, but it exists within men, this idea that might makes right and the biological urge for sexual dominance made all the more complex by high testosterone levels. I can relate to it and empathize in the context of murder, meaning without saving grace and some morality, by nature the sin of murder can be easily rationalized in a similar way. Somebody smart once told me, at the bottom of who we really are, “men rape and women murder.”
Sometimes I think we don’t fully understand how truly depraved we really are, how given the right circumstances, the vast majority of us quickly become much worse than animals.
Tim Finnegan:
It’s not just that society *will collapse* if we don’t legislate morality, it is that society wouldn’t be society at all in such a (hypothetical) case. Legislating morality is *hard wired* (i.e., inescapable) into the human “condition.” I have tried to point this out many many times, but not sure anyone quite “gets it.”
Leftists are the world’s worst about saying “you can’t legislate morality.” All the statement means in reality is that ‘you can’t legislate universal moral virtue, but you most assuredly *can* legislate *someone’s* sense of morality.’ Indeed we *must*! All laws are morally based!
insanitybytes22:
In my view that is almost the exact opposite of the truth.
The most primal power of men is violence. Therefore the besetting sins of incontinent men tend to be sins of violence primarily, and to involve sex only circumstantially/accidentally.
The most primal power of women is sex. Therefore the besetting sins of incontinent women tend to be sins of sex primarily, and to involve violence only circumstantially/accidentally.
This is reflected in prison populations, which are mostly men, because our society is still willing to punish crimes of violence but is not willing to punish crimes of sex.
Related:
https://zippycatholic.wordpress.com/2017/08/08/the-dirt-nap-gap/
[…] Source: Zippy Catholic […]
“In my view that is almost the exact opposite of the truth.”
I’m aware of that Zippy and yet I have learned that we have it backwards, that it is a bit of worldly folklore, a narrative that fits in nicely with our romantic notions of men and women.
Take a deeper look at the world however and observe human behavior. You don’t have to teach women how to kill, look at the ease in which we can have abortions. In contrast you do have to teach men how to kill. It takes a lot of psychological training to make a soldier, for example. Rape however, men already know how to do, in fact, they are taught, trained up in social mores which establish their sexual boundaries.
Conversely, women who rape actually have to learn how and it’s play acting, it’s an imitation stemming from mental health disorders, brokenness. Women are not sexually driven like men are, there is no biological push at play.
insanitybytes22:
Your view seems to be fact resistant and question begging. Public cameltoe (just for example) is a pervasive form of sexual assault, perpetrated by women for their own purposes.
Re: ib22
So men aren’t natural murderers, because they have to be taught. But with rape they are natural rapists, “in fact, they are taught.” So being taught is evidence both against and for it being a natural vice.
What?
You might be right about which vices are most natural to which sexes, but you’ll have to do better than that.
Who’s the victim of public camel toe? The woman herself? those who see it? Or both?
The victims of female immodesty are everyone in her vicinity.
“Your view seems to be fact resistant and question begging. Public cameltoe (just for example) is a pervasive form of sexual assault, perpetrated by women for their own purposes.”
Sure,if one believes they are hapless victim of an elaborate conspiracy to lead you astray and steal all your stuff. We also know that manspreading is an elaborate conspiracy to hog all the space in the world. Or we could reject such silliness.
I think the tinge of empathy I have seen towards old Harvey reveals the truth of the matter, a whole lot of men envy him, want to be him. Rather than speaking the truth about this,all the blame,sin, sexual shame gets transfered onto the women. Rape and power is a very seductive idea for men and so they assume it is the same for women.
ib22:
I don’t have the slightest measure of either empathy or sympathy for Harvey Weinstein. I find him a simultaneously pathetic and despicable figure. But if it helps your narrative of women as helpless innocent victims who are not responsible for their own deliberate choices, by all means continue to fantasize.
“But if it helps your narrative of women as helpless innocent victims who are not responsible for their own deliberate choices, by all means continue to fantasize.”
Truth be told, I’d much prefer to be a femme fatale, with such sexual power I can incapacitate men and steal all their stuff, as the narrative suggests. Alas,I think that’s more of a male fantasy then a female one.
I bet your prison rape victims are often forced to make hard choices given their circumstances. I bet they lie cheat, steal, set other people up. While sin is sin, I still think it would be way off base to say something like,”well if you didn’t want to be raped you shouldn’t have gotten yourself sent to prison. It’s totally your fault Bubba thinks you’re cute. Obviously you made a deliberate choice by wiggling in the shower like you did. You’re actually the one using Bubba, aren’t you?”
ib22:
I’m sure your self reporting is accurate.
Also, yes, i’d definitely say that if men don’t want to get raped in prison, they should avoid going to prison. It’s one of the risks of imprisonment.
Just like I’d say that if women don’t want to get raped, they shouldn’t get drunk at those sad, vicious affairs called ‘parties’ where the whole purpose is to get drunk and end up having drunken sex with some stochastically-chosen stranger.
In neither case, however, would I say “It’s totally your fault!” which is, I think, where your blind spot lies in this discussion.
I guess feminist have a difficult time with good advice. For example, don’t walk alone at night in bad neighborhoods because you might be mugged.
ib22:
Two suggestions
1) Both in this thread and in “Blaming the Victim,” your objections seem to be less to what’s actually said and more to the feelings you imagine to be driving what’s said (hate, envy, misplaced sympathy, etc.). Stop.
2) I really would recommend asking your husband to have a gander at these discussions if he’s got time, see what he thinks of them. As it stands things are going nowhere fast, and he might be able to help bridge the communication gap.
Zippy, wouldn’t giving the death penalty to rapists be going overboard? It seems to me that the penalty in that case would be greater than the crime.
“I really would recommend asking your husband to have a gander at these discussions if he’s got time, see what he thinks of them.”
With all good humor, I assure you my husband is far less charitable about these matters then I am, far less polite about it, and rather than taking your side, he would probably chide me for even attempting to communicate with you at all.
Then maybe you shouldn’t be?
ib22,
Put it to the test, and if your husband wishes you to withdraw, then so be it. It’s not like we’re making much progress as things stand, anyway.
Re: Alex
Capital punishment was the Mosaic punishment for rape, at least when it occurred under circumstances where the fact that it was rape could be reliably established. It may not always be the best punishment for the crime under every circumstance, but it would be very hard to make the case that it’s not at least generally suitable.
Zippy, wouldn’t giving the death penalty to rapists be going overboard? It seems to me that the penalty in that case would be greater than the crime.
Homosexual rape is two sins rolled up into one, and carries all of the risk of heterosexual rape + a much greater risk of lasting, serious physical damage. If you are unfamiliar with why violent homosexual rape is significantly more risky to long term health, I strongly urge you to not Google it.
“It’s not like we’re making much progress as things stand, anyway.”
Sure we have. Zippy, you and some others have just demonstrated that to rape a man is worthy of the death penalty, but Hollywood whores have less value and worth than convicted male felons and deserve everything they get.
Also, I did learn that camel toe is a form of sexual assault, so there is that too.
but Hollywood whores have less value and worth than convicted male felons and deserve everything they get.
Alright, you owe us a straight answer on this one…
Do you seriously believe that being told the only way you’re going to break into showbiz is to have sex with a skeezy producer is comparable to being held down and violently butt f#$%ed in a prison?
but Hollywood whores have less value and worth than convicted male felons and deserve everything they get.
Good Lord, who here has said such a thing??
I realize you are convinced that this follows logically from our stated arguments but you have yet to even attempt to demonstrate that this is so. At this point you are just hurling unsubstantiated and, quite frankly, calumnious accusations.
Donnie,
Taken at face value, she thinks a prison gang running a train on a poor male prisoner is the male equivalent of being passed around between execs as part of grooming into the industry. And she wonders why “red pill bigotry” (bigotry for the sake of argument) is exploding.
FWIW (and I can’t even believe this needs to be stated) if Harvey Weinstein is guilty of rape he deserves to be hanged. Period.
Whatever his victims sins are, none of them deserve to be hanged.
Kapish?
“The Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches that the death penalty is licit, not simply as a matter of proximate justice carried out on the perpetrator of a heinous crime, but when it is directed at the preservation and security of human life. ”
I disagree with the The Catechism of the Council of Trent on account of the fact that some lives seem to have greater worth and value than others, and that “the preservation and security of human life,” seems to be a very subjective thing.
I would say the alleged morality behind the DP has just been “sodomized by false pretenses” six ways past Sunday in this very thread.
IB,
I disagree with the The Catechism of the Council of Trent on account of the fact that some lives seem to have greater worth and value than others
Would you mind pointing out in the Roman Catechism – or any single Church document for that matter – a single statement to back up your claim?
Who wants to take bets she won’t give a straight answer to the question I asked?
IB,
You are so very deluded if you can read what Zippy has written, say, about the atomic bombs or torture (for example) and conclude that “some lives have greater worth.” Your feminism is telling and you just can’t rest until Eve gets a pat on the head and a hardy “there, there”
ib22,
Your comment demonstrates the exact opposite of your claim. If we were making progress, you would not still, after well over 100 comments in the two threads, be so thoroughly misunderstanding our positions in pretty much the same way you did at the beginning.
It is possible that we might all be wrong, but even if we are, you are not so much as understanding, let alone refuting, the error. And if you are not even willing to seek a second opinion from a relevant authority whose judgement you (presumably) trust, then I don’t see much hope of things improving.
Wood,
I believe she is inferring that we place less value on the life of the criminal in question.
FWIW, my own view on the subject: While every human soul is, being eternal, worth infinitely (not necessarily equally) much, that doesn’t necessarily mean their temporal life is. I have seen it plausibly argued and am not prepared to deny that capital punishment, done properly and administered justly, can be for the good of the soul even of the condemned.
“It is possible that we might all be wrong, but even if we are, you are not so much as understanding, let alone refuting, the error.”
You are wrong, I fully understand your error, and I can’t refute it because it is an error you are unwilling to look at. Ironically it’s also an error that always keeps me away from the Catholic church,so it’s been a fruitful discussion for me.
I do understand your positions. I understand them to be thoroughly wrong. I have no illusions about my ability to change them.
ib,
I believe you’re still being sodomized by a false premise.
Ib,
You literally have not stated any of our positions correctly even *once*.
Hrodgar,
You’re likely more charitable and correct. But IB is crossing the line if she’s asserting this place of all places is taking liberties with some sort of “subjective” value of human life. I dare say more has been written here calling men to the carpet than women. And yet, when women are called to own the consequences of their choices certain women become the incarnation of the “woman scorned” joke. Nothing could be further from the truth of the motivation of the OP. But the truth doesn’t matter. What matters is a pat on the head.
Let the record show that she has almost certainly seen my challenge to give a straight answer on the matter before us, and she blithely refuses.
Note that the US accepts prison rape as a cost of doing business, but it isn’t necessary, if we were to add staff and resources to prisons. Look at Norway. The prison rape rate there is very near to 0%.
ib22,
If absolutely everybody is insisting that you are misunderstanding them, consistently flabbergasted at your rephrasing of their claims, and repeatedly denying that they are saying what you claim their saying…
Well, you might be right, but the burden of proof is very much on you. It might help if you broke out your reasoning step by step. And it’s good to a second opinion from someone you trust, even in matters of merely physical health, let alone before throwing out spiritual diagnoses of strangers on the internet.
Perhaps a list of some stated positions would help:
1) Rape is a crime for which, when it can be established as actual rape, death is a suitable punishment, regardless of the sex of the victim.
1) a) Apart from (possibly) Alex, I doubt any of the commenters here would take much issue with this.
2) A woman who fornicates is guilty of sin, and warrants punishment, not only as retribution, but for the sake of her own soul. This applies even if such fornication was necessary to avoid starvation, let alone merely advance one’s acting career or hang out with the in-crowd.
2) a) Mitigating factors may reduce culpability/guilt, but nothing short of fully invincible ignorance can eliminate it.
3) A man who fornicates is also guilty of sin, and likewise warrants punishment.
3) a) No one here has disputed this.
4) In either case, the more pressure and/or enticement offered to get the partner to cooperate, the greater the sin on the part of the one doing the offering. I’m not exactly widely experienced in such matters, but is seems very likely to me that by and large men do more of this.
5) Perfect equity of blame is, I suspect, about as common as identical snowflakes. It does seem to me probable that, all else being equal, the man will generally be more culpable, but the woman still sins gravely when she commits fornication.
5) a) This is, as far as I can tell, relatively uncontroversial in these parts (Rhetocrates laid this out very nicely towards the end of the last thread), but I have noticed 3 commenters contend (albeit in one case very tentatively) that both are equally to blame.
6) I doubt many of us think all lives are equal, but certainly, being eternal, they are ultimately of immeasurable value.
6) a) The very fact that man was made in the image of God is precisely the reason given for the Divine institution of the death penalty in Genesis 9.
6) b) Given the direct divine institution of capital punishment, at the very least it cannot ALWAYS be wrong.
What exactly do you disagree with among these, and why?
P.S. While the Mosaic law is no longer binding, it still provides a useful point of reference. In particular, the latter half or so of Deuteronomy 22 might be worth a look; it deals with the punishments for rape and adultery, among other things.
Regarding 2) a) in my comment above, I don’t think that’s actually strictly correct. My understanding is that even invincible ignorance only makes it a venial sin, rather than mortal.
Also used a their instead of they’re in the first sentence.
ib22: The problem with holding women accountable for their actions is that it rationalizes away the immorality of the man who has a greater moral responsibility than the woman.
Everyone else: No, it doesn’t do that it all. It simply treats women as moral agents, which they are. The immorality of the man is still exactly as grievous as it was when we started.
ib22: No, women cannot be treated as moral agents because the cultural dynamic which men are responsible for considers them to be whores and so they act like whores. They cannot be responsible for acting like whores, the failed moral leadership of men exculpates them of their decisions.
Correct me if this doesn’t succinctly summarize the difference at the heart of this 100+ comment combox disagreement.
Assuming I’ve got it right, seems to me there ought to be a very simple answer to this debate which everyone ought to be able to agree with.
Men should take back the reigns of moral leadership by:
1) Instilling in their daughters a sense of inherent self-worth as a woman and a child of God made Imago Dei
2) Instructing their daughters on the importance of modesty and chastity from a young age and holding them to a standard of virtue as they mature
3) Reshaping the broader culture so that the virtues of modesty and chastity for both sexes are held in high esteem
4) Reshaping the broader culture so that the vices of immodesty and unchastity for both sexes are punished via social shaming
insanitybytes22 – any issues with the above?
If you swap men and women for whites and blacks, you’ve created a spectacularly racist view.
Got that backwards, but y’all get the point…
I think after this I’m gonna leave this alone ’til tomorrow at least, I’m not thinking through all my ideas and making too many typos.
Anyway, on further consideration of point 4) in my wall of text above, I’m doubting men being guilty of more pressure for/enticement to fornication. It might be true, but given rampant female immodesty it’s far from obvious. I’m afraid I got carried away in conceding (what seem to me) relatively trivial points, and went a bit further than I should have. Maybe I should become a Jesuit.
“insanitybytes22 – any issues with the above?”
No donnie,I think your list is quite good.I think this is it exactly, “Men should take back the reigns of moral leadership by.”
But I’d fight you myself if the DP was anywhere on the table.
Death penalty only for those who support the Death penalty!
insanitybytes22,
Well then I think we made some progress finally. For the record, I interpreted Zippy’s “Blaming the Victim” post as relating to point #4 of my list above – vices of immodesty and unchastity need to punished at the societal level (e.g. via social shaming). Clearly you took the post to mean something entirely different, but it’s good that we finally know where our common ground lies.
But I’d fight you myself if the DP was anywhere on the table.
That’s fine. I stated above that if Harvey Weinstein is in fact a rapist he deserves to be hanged (and I do believe that death is a just punishment for the crime of rape), but I could be persuaded that in the spirit of Christian mercy and forgiveness it is more virtuous to spare his life and seek other ways of executing justice.
Reshaping the culture is not going to be possible until the modern legal relationship between men and women changes as well. That is why every right-liberal who gets the vapors over the idea of enshrining formal patriarchy into the laws (ex. giving a husband the ability to order his wife to stop working such that the employer must listen to him, not her) is not going to work. Any system based on simply changing women’s hearts is not going to work; men must be given actual legal authority over their wives and kids that is one directional as it was for a very long time.
donnie:
That actually goes further than the “Blaming the Victim” post itself, which was merely a parable about how our society calls it “blaming the victim” when the perfectly predictable consequences of the choices of many women – and the concomitant imprudence of those choices – are pointed out.
But it is true that incontinent and imprudent female misbehavior has to be punished in some way by society if that society hopes to survive.
Pretty interesting discussion y’all have going here!
Donnie:
The DP should be used extremely sparingly in my view, and only for the worst, most heinous crimes, obviously. But it *must* be an option for certain crimes (i.e., “on the table.”).
That insanitybytes22 would “fight you” herself if the DP were anywhere on the table is just female emotionalism overtaking her better sense. Well, I should say it is a little more than just female emotionalism; she also believes herself morally superior to anyone who believes the DP *should* in fact be on the table. Her moral superiority thusly puts her in a position (to her mind) to rule it over the rest of us on the question. Catholics in particular, apparently. Note that she is so thoroughly convinced she is right on the point that she will not even discuss the possibility she might be wrong.
‘We spend millions blah blah’ executing the most heinous criminals when it would ‘be much cheaper to incarcerate them for life’ is just more female emotionalism on display. There is no need for executions to be vastly more expensive to perform than to incarcerate the worst sorts of criminals for life. In fact, it should be the exact opposite.
“‘We spend millions blah blah’ executing the most heinous criminals when it would ‘be much cheaper to incarcerate them for life’ is just more female emotionalism on display.”
Any argument I attempt to make, one actually based on verifiable facts,is simply going to be dismissed as “female emotionalism.” That’s a rigged system,one in which I can have no voice.
“There is no need for executions to be vastly more expensive to perform than to incarcerate the worst sorts of criminals for life.”
There is clearly a need,in part so you don’t jump the gun and execute innocent people. Regardless, the criminal justice system run primarily by men has made it so. So for you to say there is no “need” for it to be so,is not only false, but it is completely irrelevant since it already IS true.
” ….she also believes herself morally superior to anyone who believes the DP.”
Indeed, I do. If I didn’t trust it to be a morally superior position, I wouldn’t bother to argue against it.
There is clearly a need,in part so you don’t jump the gun and execute innocent people.
Anti-DP activists always seem to miss the fact that the vast majority of injustices that they are worried about are the result of worshiping due process instead of actually fixing the many holes in it. You could start with the fact that judges are powerless to summarily punish perjury, prosecutorial misconduct, etc. in the very court session where it has shown to have happened.
To wit, if “Officer Murphy” is shown by the defense to have planted a gun on Tyrone, the constable doesn’t need to have his own trial. Allowing the jury to find him immediately guilty of various charges and the judge to sentence him on the spot would be the correct action.
The fact that there are people like Mike in the world who have a completely boneheaded understanding of due process, is simply more evidence of how we as a people are totally unqualified to carry out the DP in a moral way
The fact that we executed a sin free, innocent man, in the most horrific manner possible should give us all pause as to the ability of humans to render justice in a moral way.
If you don’t mind my asking, what do you think we ought to do with criminals then? Do you find it more just to lock an innocent man in a cell with violent thugs for the rest of his life? Or to fine him into poverty? Or whip him close to death? Or should we just go easy/not punish those who we think are criminals?
People who think this is arguing, rather than a rhetorical analog to a monkey flinging its own #$%^ should be wary of accusing others of being “boneheaded…”
AWALT, remember? Dalrock,remember? I mean, I couldn’t possibly be a woman who has any idea WTH I am talking about. I am just a canned stereotype,a meaningless clump of cells. It’s not like I’ve been married for decades or I have grandchildren. And as Zippy has already said, even my faith is just superficial “shacking up.”
So, in red pill world, women can never be anything but clueless Hollywood whores, can we? That is the very essence of misogyny, the injustice of the world and the fruit of male arrogance. No wonder feminism is such a thing in the world.
I am honestly curious how you interpret Genesis 9. I don’t see how you can get around allowing it to be an at least theoretically licit option.
Also, it seems to me that if we concede that it is impossible for men to morally render justice, what follows is not to eliminate the death penalty, but give up on justice. In which case we’re basically utilitarians, and the death penalty ends up right back on the table, only now without any moral restraints.
The best answer to the OT arguments are that it’s OT – “hardness of their hearts” as it were, and that we don’t do it anymore. Moses allowed divorce, now God doesn’t allow divorce.
Or just make it so you can’t death penalty a baptized person or something. There’s an argument that can be made, but nobody is making it.
I don’t have an issue with people being opposed to the DP generally speaking (with the caveat that I believe the Church has taught that the DP is not intrinsically immoral). But I do have a problem with this proggy notion of “well we moderns know better now. We moderns know that innocent people are sometimes killed, and therefore the DP is wrong. We moderns are more compassionate.” Was the possibility that innocent people could be erroneously killed in the DP unknown or unconsidered previously? I don’t know, but I’m very skeptical of any claim that DP is wrong or should be abolished simply because modernity is smarter than prior societies.
It’s especially rich when you consider that our due process procedures have huge, gaping holes in them that a legal code developed 3,500 years ago addressed elegantly. Contra IB, most of our DP problems are precisely because of the massive problems we have with our code of due process which is way too dependent on government agents doing the right thing and hamstrings the judiciary in punishing them.
“I’m very skeptical of any claim that DP is wrong or should be abolished simply because modernity is smarter than prior societies.”
It’s not “modernity” that is supposed to be smarter,more moral than ancient Romans,it is that Christians are supposed to be smarter and more moral! I am seeing very little evidence of that in the world.
Obviously I am the bigger moron since I am totally wasting my time attempting to argue against the alleged morality of state sanctioned murder and in Mike’s case, against the alleged morality of the Christian red pill concept of banging hot chicks and running God game.
I give.I surrender. You win.
IB,
Christians have approved the death penalty for over a thousand years; that plane does not fly.
Now calm down. I get it, you’re getting teamed up on and it’s frustrating. Silly comments like that are why, not because you’re a woman. Again – Again! – you attribute to us views not even *close* to what anyone here holds. You are hysterical; whether or not it is because you’re a woman I don’t care about.
What on earth do you want us to do?
The only thing I can see here that might satisfy you is if we all lie and say we’re doing the things you’ryou’re accusing of us, then admit those things are bad.
We think those things are bad; we just refuse to lie.
IB22:
One way you know you’ve lost the argument is when you keep insisting that white is black.
Insanitybytes22:
Okay, there is a need to be cautious. I already acknowledged that.
Correction: the criminal justice system run primarily by emasculated men has made it so. You disagree with that?
Oh, that. That a thing *already is* means it cannot be changed and to say otherwise is therefore “irrelevant”. Gotcha.
in Mike’s case, against the alleged morality of the Christian red pill concept of banging hot chicks and running God game.
It’s amazing you haven’t accidentally driven to Argentina, given how poor your ability to read is.
T. Morris,
Correction: the criminal justice system run primarily by emasculated men has made it so. You disagree with that?
Federal courts typically won’t even name and shame a prosecutor for violating the Brady Rule. If that is not emasculation, I don’t know what is.
The anti-DP arguments are mainly an emotional, quasi-religious thing (in the pejorative sense). Anyone who has actually followed civil liberties news for a long time knows damn well that abolishing the death penalty is not going to have the slightest impact on substantially reducing legal injustice because it doesn’t address the process or people who commit it.
For example, what does IB propose we do about police and prosecutors who get stuck on stupid with one suspect to the point where there is practically a neon sign pointing at another guy and they just won’t budge? I don’t know, but I know she almost certainly doesn’t know. However, I’d say that as a matter of empowering the system to flexibly mete out justice the judiciary should have laws in place that allow them to directly sanction negligence of a great many types including that type.
After taking some time off to think things over, I’m pretty sure more than one commenter here is in “There’s someone wrong on the internet!” mode. Possibly myself included; it’s always hard to tell when it involves yourself.
I don’t think we’ll have a fruitful discussion unless/until that stops.
Rhetocrates,
I’m not sure what responses are really possible here. If you choose to take part in a discussion but refuse to take anything they say at face value, where do you go from there?
There are still some interesting things that arise from discussions like this, but they’re mostly negative. For example, when I ran into a comment thread on Facebook like this recently, the women behaved exactly like IB. Shrieking, “I’m just a woman, what would I know” and plenty of similar rhetorical #$%^ slinging in lieu of any real argument. These people actually expect to be “treated as equals” when they froth at the mouth and shriek at people for not accepting every aspect of their argument, even if they accept huge chunks of it (allies in the real world, unlike in leftist fever dreams, don’t typically have anywhere near 100% overlap of interests and concerns).
Lydia would go off in a similar way over anything related to Dalrock, no fault divorce that implies that women are actually victimizing countless decent men. That’s what makes women like Dr. Helen Smith so highly unusual and such a real gem of a woman; she actually has a deep and serious sense of justice that is capable of being righteously angry at people being subjected to injustice rather than an obsessive focus on women.
In general, I think there are a lot more men who are capable of looking at issues of sin and evil and being opposed to the principle than focusing primarily on who is on the receiving side. As the post mentions, 140k prison rape victims that are known. That is a staggering volume of what is just known, and if you use the feminists’ iceberg theory of sexual violence it is clear that there may well be not only a heck of a lot that is unreported, but men might actually be much closer to parity with women as victims.
Does she really care? Not really. I mean look at her. I explicitly state in one thread that a 15 year old aspiring starlet who is cornered and all but forced to perform sexual acts is substantially less morally culpable than one who is given a quid pro quo from the other side of a desk, yet she says I think they’re all Hollywood whores who get what they deserve. Clearly this is not someone who is concerned about truth because the only alternative explanation is that she is one of the dumbest people on the Internet, and her command of English is much better than anyone with a sub-70 IQ I’ve ever witnessed.
I’m pretty sure more than one commenter here is in “There’s someone wrong on the internet!” mode.
I’m with you Rhetocrates. More than a few folks here seem like they could benefit from just taking a moment to chill out.
Since insanitybytes22 (and presumably everyone else here) is in agreement with my comment above from October 21 at 8:57 pm, which as Zippy points goes quite a bit further than his original “Blaming the Victim” post, then what do we really disagree about? How blame for this sorry state of affairs should be distributed between the two sexes? If that’s what this heated combox battle boils down to, that sounds pretty juvenile to me.
What else is there? Oh yeah, insanitybytes22 believes strongly that a Christian ought to be staunchly opposed to the death penalty. Well, guess what, so does the Holy Father as well as your bishop. Heck, just yesterday my pastor issued a strong condemnation of the death penalty in his Sunday sermon, alongside equally strong condemnations of abortion and assisted suicide.
So what, exactly, are we disagreeing with so vehemently?
insanitybytes22 – any comment?
insanitybytes22’s comments are in moderation, and will be allowed through if and when any attempts at paraphrase demonstrate good faith.
then what do we really disagree about? How blame for this sorry state of affairs should be distributed between the two sexes? If that’s what this heated combox battle boils down to, that sounds pretty juvenile to me.
I think that is hardly a juvenile disagreement when one considers the way IB has framed it. Her position is nearly at or formally at “women are not responsible because of men not manning up.” That is simply not a position you can reconcile with any reasonable, authoritative Christian teaching. (It’s also bitterly ironic when one considers that much of the conversion process in the 1st century was wives converting their husbands)
The death penalty, for one. I’m in favor ot it, and I think the long history of Christianity is, too. Which is, I think, the original topic of the post.
Unfortunately, I think Zippy’s rhetorical tack in the original post is misguided; rather than pointing out particularly heinous crimes as a justification, we supporters should try to justify it from Church writings and first logical/Christian theological principles.
I might be the minority here, but I also think it shouldn’t be anywhere near as vanishingly rare as some of its supporters around here appear to, since it provides a strong opportunity and incentive for repentance for the condemned and a strong object lession (and social cohesion) for the populace. But I’d need to source my thoughts and properly put them together before making an argument. I simply don’t have time to, which is why I haven’t weighed in on one side or the other.
But I’m still reading, because I might be convinced I’m wrong either in my conclusions or my basis for reasoning.
Hrodgar:
Rather than more/less, I tend to think of it in terms of means/ends (see my my more recent post).
Power is the means we have at our disposal to pursue our ends.
Violence is a common end for incontinent women[*]: it provides her a kind of climax or release. She will use sex to pursue that end, and other ends besides. So all of the incontinent female sexuality you see all over the place is an expression of female power: of female means to achieve female ends.
Sex is a common end for incontinent men: it provides him a kind of climax or release. He will use violence to pursue that end, and other ends besides. So all of the incontinent male violence you see all over the place is an expression of male power: of male means to achieve male ends.
Because the locus of personal power for women – power to pursue any end – is stereotypically sex, you see women pervasively (and competitively with each other) projecting their sexual power. Same with violence for men.
Of course there are all sorts of other kinds of power and ways of projecting it, etc. But the reason female sociopathic behavior is pervasively sexual while male sociopathic behavior is pervasively violent is because these are the most primal powers of the female and male, respectively: the most primal available means at hand to achieve proximate ends.
——-
[*] I am not suggesting perfect symmetry, that violence is as common an end for women as sex is for men. By the nature of things human beings have lots of different and complex proximate ends.
Rhetocrates:
That isn’t the point of the OP.
The point of the OP is that the conclusion that we can protect “society” from heinous criminals without resort to the death penalty in at least some cases treats the penal system itself as not a part of society – a place where people must be protected from heinous criminals.
Zippy:
The point that’s there does need to be made, but one’s all too easy to mistake for the other as written, methinks. Your clarification in the above comment is sorely needed.
“Public cameltoe (just for example) is a pervasive form of sexual assault, perpetrated by women for their own purposes.”
Whoa, how did blog.jim get ahold of Zippy’s password?
If Kant were alive today, he’d be on the front lines of the crusade against public cameltoe.
Sex is a common end for incontinent men
This could be the case, but I am also inclined toward the idea that sex may not actually be the end itself for incontinent men, that sex serves as a means to achieve something deeper – such as power over another person, social validation from a female, or any one of a whole host of other possibilities.
Because the locus of personal power for women – power to pursue any end – is stereotypically sex, you see women pervasively (and competitively with each other) projecting their sexual power. Same with violence for men.
This make sense. But stipulating for the sake of discussion that your point about sex as an end for men is correct, it is clear that the only reason women possess so much personal power in the sexual arena is precisely because men pursue it as an end.
Violence is a common end for incontinent women[*]: it provides her a kind of climax or release. She will use sex to pursue that end, and other ends besides. So all of the incontinent female sexuality you see all over the place is an expression of female power: of female means to achieve female ends.
This point is still not apparent to me, even if I stipulate your other supporting points. That incontinent women misuse their sexuality as a means rather than as an end in itself is manifest in most instances, however it is far from obvious that violence is the common end being pursued. Unless by violence you mean something along the lines of “women in general want a man to swoop in and force some level of order onto the chaos of their lives,” or “women want a more wild sort of man that they can tame through their femininity,” well then, OK, that makes sense up to a point. But that’s also not what I would consider to be violence.
[…] suggested that I make the point of my post Sodomized by a false premise more […]
The problem isn’t that we agree on most – not all – things, it’s that even after our main points were laid out in list form, that she actually agreed to IB categorically refused to accept that we were not lying and were not, in fact, misogynist pigs. She continually, over and over again, reinterpreted our comments in fascinatingly labyrinthine ways in order to justify her fantasy of the evilly evil men.
While I respect your attempts to be patient, I have no sympathy for people who play that game.
I also STRONGLY agree with Mike T- where blame should be laid is at the heart of this discussion, and is a very important question. The first step to solving the problem is admitting their is one.
Girls who blew Harvey Weinstein to get ahead in the acting industry were not innocent victims but whores negotiating on the price; that their are degrees of culpability does not change that. Their lives were not in danger, they were not at risk of ending up in the streets and going homeless or hungry. Other jobs exist beside actor, other opportunities.
To repeat over and over and over that Harvey was a POWERFUL MAN and this somehow exonerates all of their women for their fornication and prostitution is a big deal. We simply cannot start fixing any of this if we refuse to move on from that very silly attitude.
The most bizarre thing to me is that someone can toss off life imprisonment as no biggie while declaring the death penalty barbaric. Even discounting the odds of being sodomized, this seems pretty unreasonable.
donnie:
You can always plumb the depths of human motivation this way — ultimately we are unsatisfied with anything less than God Himself. But the point is that sex is a woman’s most primal power, while violence is a man’s most primal power.
Correct. Female power is indirect in this way. Men and women are different. Men figure out how to kill the bear, women figure out how to get men to kill the bear.
Many incontinent women get a special thrill, a special validation, like the validation a man gets from sex, from a man or men being violent on her behalf. Though again this is just an example of a proximate end that women pursue using sex as a means.
Gabe Ruth:
Yes, and not just life imprisonment: life imprisonment in the sort of dystopian panopticon that would be required to protect criminals in general from heinous criminals in particular.
The most bizarre thing to me is that someone can toss off life imprisonment as no biggie while declaring the death penalty barbaric.
They argue that they don’t, but executing an innocent man is such a uniquely gross deprivation of his dignity that it’s in a category unto itself.
That is a load of garbage. It’s just on the far end of the spectrum, and being locked in a cage for your entire youth through mid life is not that far from it.
Note that IB called me boneheaded when I raised the issue of it being primarily a procedural issue relating to handling corruption and error. This is typical anti-DP idiocy on display. The issue is absolutely not limited to capital murder. It happens just as frequently on less grave felonies.
Mike T:
Right, an unjust conviction is a terrible injustice no matter what the punishment.
It strikes me that being uncomfortable with the death penalty is likely correlated with being unwilling to accept that doing evil at gunpoint is still evil.
Which is the whole point of Veritatis Splendor – if you submit to doing evil at gunpoint, you’re choosing evil, and that’s venial at best.
I am very sorry for taking so long to reply to this, but I wanted to thank Hrodgar for his reply. From what I understood of reviewing Deuteronomy however, it seems to me rape would only merit the death penalty when the woman was betrothed. Given that the death penalty also applies to those who have normal intercourse with a betrothed woman, and not to those who rape a woman without betrothal, it doesn’t seem to me mosaic law is really approving the death penalty to rape.
On the other hand, it does approve the death penalty to sodomy. Although I can’t help but feel it would be a bit unfair to approve the death penalty on this ground, but leave sodomy completely legal and unpunished otherwise.
@Mike T
My comment wasn’t meant to belittle the gravity of rape, of any kind. I just wanted to know if this kind of punishment would really be called for. Personally, I think a good punishment for rape would be castration, though I am not sure such punishment would be really just, or even permissible under Catholic doctrine. At any rate, I didn’t mean to disrespect anyone with my question.
I didn’t take it that way, I was speaking about people like IB.
Personally, I think a good punishment for rape would be castration
I don’t agree it’s compatible, but even if it was, it would be highly imprudent. Far from being a deterrent to future violence, I think it would motivate men to commit more violence whether they were guilty or innocent. There’s a movie called Just Cause that is based on that concept, and I think pretty accurate in its display of the villain’s mindset because of all of the rage over being castrated.
Also, implementing such a law in this climate would be criminally insane. We have marital rape laws for dang sake. Adding castration to the list of possible outcomes from a divorce would make marriage as obscure as Zoroastrian fire rituals within a generation.
I have no issues at all with death penalty as a punishment for forcible rape.
But then I think whippings, even public whippings, should probably replace at least a good deal of incarcerations-as-punishments.