Do you mean by that because it was done by those regimes we shouldn't do something. The Nazis were the first to build autobahns that doesn't mean no one else should. Thats a purely emotive argument.
The fact is we are getting to a point in the world where we will have to make choices about who gets resources I can't see that any point is served by using those resources on people who damage society.

We are all capable of bad things. Havent you ever wanted to kill someone in anger?
The punisments have to be hard enough to stop most people from breaking the law.
Our system in Finland is based on the thinking that people can change. We have three time killers getting out after each killing, just to kill again. Something wrong with that too..:roll:

In the UK we still have the death penalty for Treason....but it's never been invoked for years.
The problem we have is....life is exactly the opposite....some people are released after having served only 5 years.
Personally I couldn't imagine anything worse than being incarcerated in a small cell for the rest of my life.

Both extremes are bad - no matter at what end of the spectrum. In Germany, legislation certainly is far too forgiving, too well-meaning, too weak. I have experienced that myself in a very tragic incident years ago, that led to the death a loved one. Sure I had spiking emotions back then, and I still think the guilty one got off the hook far too easily. My demand for an acceptable ammount of justice has not been fulfilled. but I neither killed the court members, nor that bastard. I also wouldn't have seen him in jail for all the rest of his biological life.

C'mon all you guys, think twice of what you are saying here.

There is a very intersting debate about Imprisonment vs Corporal Punishment in Heinlein's "Starship Troopers".

He argued that Imprisonment is more cruel, and less likely to deter crime than lashes at public square.

Something? No matter what?

You demand that it is done what your government and othe rwetsern governments critizises china for practicing since long. If I would have let you your way, than I see no more substantial argument that would allow me to attack the Sharia. Ethically, both practices are off limits for me.

And btw, building Autbahnen, and enforcing transplantation and extra-cruelly taking revenge in jurisdiction does not really compare. Justice has nothing to do with cruelty, a judge's job should have nothing to do with emotions of revenge, a law-code should not reflect such motives.

So may the strongest beast win? I use force only to defend me. Beyond that I refuse to accept needing to live in a jungle. That is simply not good enough a life for me - for I am more than just an instinct-driven, genetically programmed beast with a predetermined fate and no free will. I have a strong power and gift: the ability to influence most men for the good or the worse, and the freedom to decide if I want to forgive, or not. As Happy Times indirectly indicated, that better ios used with wisdom only, not blindly.

for lower crimes I may agree on some cases, although I have something different in mind: making people feel ashamed, or a combination of both. Biut there are significant cultural difference concenring shame, of course. Pillory someone who has stolen in a shop, putting him naked on display for two days and nights, in public on the marketplace and let people express their disgust of him in word and deed, may proove to be an effectice thing. Other societies like the traditional parts of the Japanese one have an internal code of honour that makes loss of honour a shame wiothiout needing such obious means to enforce that offenders feel ashamed - like is being seen in the suicide they just had. But for that being possible here, our western culture probably already is too immoral now. many people even find it chick to earn their money by making rodoiculous fools and total idiots of themselves. talking of implementing new standards of honour and shame probably is useless thing, then.

Seen from a behavioristic perspective, physical pain certainly is a very motivating stimulans. If it is compatible with this or that code of ethics, is something different. Brad's idea of chaingangs also is something worth to think about, it also includes the element of shame and being put on public display.

Well..Friday night just back from the night out but...This treason thing, we hung Lord Haw Haw (is he in the radio pack?) and all he did was tell jokes right, but we've got these religious maniacs whot try to kill British soldiers abroad and we campaign to get them released from Gitmo, what's going on?

Again I reiterate it's not revenge, there's virtually no hope of rehabilitating criminals let's just tidy them away.

Bet I delete this and a few other post in the morning.

'Night all

You say virtually. So then there is some hope? But its too hard isn't it to try at least. Lets just throw all these men's lives away because the value of human life can be weighed against the common will to be fair and moral. And if its too much work... f**k 'em.

Thats the problem with so many people. They just don't care or respect their own freedom. Its isn't a double standard where there is a brand of human being whom we can just dismiss as irrelavent or too much of a hassel. If we want the institutions of society to govern us then we have to be responsible for them. This isn't some laissez-faire economic scheme. You can't cop out and say that I don't want to waste the resources of our nation on people that you feel have become incompatible with society.

If we let the value of a man's life be qualified by the mistakes he's made and to then deny him the universal rights that he still is owed then we turn rights and freedom's into a thing that is not guarenteed but qualified by a narrow social judgement. A man is always a man, no matter the pain he inflicts or the crimes he commits. You don't torture him, you don't sacrifice him. It isn't every man has a right to live unless he's inconvenient to society. You always need to give a man a second chance or else you are as cruel as he is. You kill him anyway and sometimes he doesn't deserve to be locked away forever.

So many people ascribe to extremes for solutions. Extremism is what makes religion, politics, and economics fail. Balance and critical judgement is what makes these things last. You can't say "lets just" anything. You don't lump people together. Hasty generalizations are the stuff of lazy minds. Its hard to make the world work and keep it from being a jungle. People seem to think that its all supposed to be easy. Its not.