The lynch-mob mentality goes back to the wild west dear chap. Comparing that with Big Government makes no sense. You've gone with weak reference to vocab, rather than the nature of the history and how it has ensured the US stands out compared to the 'Big Government' Western nations. Garland offers a rationale for why the US stands out. You don't. Most mature nations have banned it, making Garland's analysis even more pertinent. You've returned with nothing of value
You are merely rationalizing. If it walks like a duck and quacks likes a duck, its a duck. It doesn't matter the rationale. The death penalty is Big Government because it uses the power of the state to take a life. The fact that Americans do it and conservatives support it doesn't make it less so. Conservatives want to maintain the mythology that they are against Big Government, so they rationalize their support for Big Government in the context of their own history and ideology.
No, I'm referring to the scholarly research into why the US 'stands' out. Your attempt to refer to big government makes no sense. The US 'stands' out because of a sense of conservatism built from attitudes when government was not in control.
A mob is a collective. A government is a collective. Mob power is collective power. Government power is collective power. It's like rationalizing that taxes aren't government power because there were extortion payments to the mafia for protection in the absence of the rule of law.
That human interaction will lead to collective action is obvious. To compare the lynch mob from an era of government non-control with 'big government' is quite frankly cretinous
I'm comparing it to today. This is the year 2013. Even if the reason you gave is why Americans support the death penalty, it does not obviate the fact that the government is using government power to take lives in the year 2013. There is nothing more Big Government than the government taking one's life. It can't be reversed if there is a mistake. If the government raises taxes and decides its a mistake, then they can reverse and lower taxes. The government cannot reverse the death of a person.
Justice has no expiration date. Stop rationalizing your fear and weakness into pretentious moral superiority. It's disingenuous. And what logical fallacies have I presented?
Presenting the argument as either you want justice or you want to give a criminal a hug. Many of us are against the death penalty due to not wanting innocent people being executed. Maybe in your world everything is really simple, black and white, us vs them, etc, but the real world isn't like that. - - - Updated - - - Presenting the argument as either you want justice or you want to give a criminal a hug. Many of us are against the death penalty due to not wanting innocent people being executed. Maybe in your world everything is really simple, black and white, us vs them, etc, but the real world isn't like that.
It might not apply to you, but it does to far too many who oppose the death penalty. They hold some misplaced sense of empathy for the killer that they, for some odd reason, do not seem to hold for the victims and their families. It's almost as if they just ignore them altogether. Which is nothing more than fear of one's own inability to carry out the process competently. It's interesting how you people don't seem nearly as concerned with the guilty people who go free as you do with the innocent ones that get punished.
I don't want people coming out of prison and murdering again. perhaps someone guilty of a capital crime should have to come before a panel of judges to reveiw evidence and only if there is a unanimous belief that there is NO doubt as to the crime should capital punishment take place
Reasonable is just what your average idiot on the street thinks is reasonable. That's how it's defined.
Further analysis against this view is summarised by Johnson (2011, American Capital Punishment in Comparative Perspective., Law & Social Inquiry, Vol. 36, pp. 1033-1061): "Many scholars have tried to explain why these American jurisdictions cling to capital punishment when all other developed democracies except Japan have abandoned it or stopped executing. Franklin Zimring (2003) believes the main cause of this form of American exceptionalism is a long-standing commitment to vigilante values, especially in the southern states. In his view, vigilante values support capital punishment by framing it as a local imperative to serve victims instead of as an issue of state power and human rights. James Whitman (2003) has stressed the uniquely prominent role of degradation in American punishment. On this view, punishments in the United States are harsher than those in Europe because American traditions of egalitarianism and distrust of state power discourage the merciful and respectful treatment of offenders."
