Law of the jungle
"Criminal
Lovers" is not just a new pizza that should served at the Pizza Hut, an
idea I immediately had when I saw their menu and the "Chicken Lovers"
pizza there. In his post "Chinese Americans like the death penalty--blacks do not", Inductivist
recently took a look at the support for death penalty among various
ethnic groups in America, with results that shouldn't exactly surprise
anybody. Just like the vast majority of people in the world, I strongly
support giving the death penalty to all murdering criminal scum. Were I
the ruler, execution chambers would be working pretty much on a daily
basis, cleansing the society of the criminal element that terrorizes
decent people. For this reason, I lament the fact that a loud minority
has succeeded in nondemocratically ending the death penalty in most of
the Western world. United States still nominally has the death penalty,
providing leftists all over the world yet another reason to condemn USA
while they happily ignore the vastly more serious human rights
violations in their favourite Third World dictatorships. La de la, I
can't hear you!
Scott Turow's little nonfiction book "Ultimate Punishment" was an interesting look at death penalty, written from the point of view of the famous novelist's work in the murder trials and exoneration. The book is worth mentioning here for at least two reasons. First, it introduced me to a delightful fellow Henry Brisbon, who is basically the Illinois version of Tookie Williams, except that this particular sociopathic multiple murderer avoided the death penalty and is now rotting in the Tamms supermax prison. I guess that once Mumia finally kicks the bucket, leftists can next start championing Henry's release. (That last sentence was parody, so please don't tell me if they actually do this.) Second, this book provided one novel argument against death penalty that I don't remember reading before anywhere else, and this argument is far superior to the usual whining about how somebody was once executed even though he was innocent, and how this supposedly makes death penalty bad, even though many other government policies and acts that the speaker enthusiastically supports (for example, allowing unlimited automobility and gay bathhouses to flourish) kill directly or indirectly orders of magnitude more innocent people in a year than the death penalty has killed during its existence.
The argument is actually quite ingenious in the sense that it doesn't require the notion of killing murderers to be wrong. In a nutshell, it could be paraphrased like this: Even though a good government can use death penalty in a just and responsible manner and not cease to be good, evil governments pretty much have to torture and kill people to maintain their power. Therefore, death penalty could be banned everywhere as so that it serves as a canary in a coal mine, so that if some government starts killing its citizens for any reason, that single fact alone would conclusively prove for the rest of the world that government to be either (a) illegitimate or (b) out of control. Of course, this argument is idealistic in the sense that it requires that the world consists of nations that are ready to liberate foreigners by overthrowing their oppressive governments, which anyone should see by now to be a dubious assumption at best. So even though I don't agree with this argument, I admit that there might be something in it for further development.
Unlike humans, nature is not "politically correct" or "inclusive", and happily metes out the death penalty for all kinds of defectives, doing this without any mercy or endless appeals or pretension that everybody is "equal". I really have to wonder why it is called "Mother" Nature, since everything in nature is cruel, merciless and ultimately meaningless and without purpose. But as The Danimal once noted, no matter how horrible you find the cruelty of natural selection, if you like being a human instead of being a monkey, you approve of this process. A few days ago, I also read David Quammen's essay collection "The Boilerplate Rhino", which was basically like the Scientific American mathematics essays by Martin Gardner and his successors, but about biology. The very first essay, "Rattlesnake Passion", hooked me in as it vividly took us to Texas where the Texans farm and happily kill rattlesnakes. Let your kid pose for a picture holding a rattler with its mouth sewn shut, or for $5 he can chop off the rattler's head with an axe! Fun for the whole family!
Other interesting essays in this book included, for example, "Who Swims With the Tuna" that ponders the philosophical question of why exactly it is just fine to kill and eat tuna, but very bad to kill and eat dolphins. "Tropical Passengers", a vivid depiction of various health hazards and parasites, convinced me never to travel anywhere that doesn't get at least few weeks of snow each year. "The Cats That Fly by Themselves" examines the physics that allows cats to fall from great heights without injury or death. "Impersonating Henry Thoreau" reminds us of about the few facts of this classic character who supposedly rejected society and lived in a more peaceful and natural way. Finally, "Limelight" brings us the story of two gay octopi who were caught in their shameful act by the video camera of a deep-ocean bathyscaphe, and the media circus that followed this event.
Scott Turow's little nonfiction book "Ultimate Punishment" was an interesting look at death penalty, written from the point of view of the famous novelist's work in the murder trials and exoneration. The book is worth mentioning here for at least two reasons. First, it introduced me to a delightful fellow Henry Brisbon, who is basically the Illinois version of Tookie Williams, except that this particular sociopathic multiple murderer avoided the death penalty and is now rotting in the Tamms supermax prison. I guess that once Mumia finally kicks the bucket, leftists can next start championing Henry's release. (That last sentence was parody, so please don't tell me if they actually do this.) Second, this book provided one novel argument against death penalty that I don't remember reading before anywhere else, and this argument is far superior to the usual whining about how somebody was once executed even though he was innocent, and how this supposedly makes death penalty bad, even though many other government policies and acts that the speaker enthusiastically supports (for example, allowing unlimited automobility and gay bathhouses to flourish) kill directly or indirectly orders of magnitude more innocent people in a year than the death penalty has killed during its existence.
The argument is actually quite ingenious in the sense that it doesn't require the notion of killing murderers to be wrong. In a nutshell, it could be paraphrased like this: Even though a good government can use death penalty in a just and responsible manner and not cease to be good, evil governments pretty much have to torture and kill people to maintain their power. Therefore, death penalty could be banned everywhere as so that it serves as a canary in a coal mine, so that if some government starts killing its citizens for any reason, that single fact alone would conclusively prove for the rest of the world that government to be either (a) illegitimate or (b) out of control. Of course, this argument is idealistic in the sense that it requires that the world consists of nations that are ready to liberate foreigners by overthrowing their oppressive governments, which anyone should see by now to be a dubious assumption at best. So even though I don't agree with this argument, I admit that there might be something in it for further development.
Unlike humans, nature is not "politically correct" or "inclusive", and happily metes out the death penalty for all kinds of defectives, doing this without any mercy or endless appeals or pretension that everybody is "equal". I really have to wonder why it is called "Mother" Nature, since everything in nature is cruel, merciless and ultimately meaningless and without purpose. But as The Danimal once noted, no matter how horrible you find the cruelty of natural selection, if you like being a human instead of being a monkey, you approve of this process. A few days ago, I also read David Quammen's essay collection "The Boilerplate Rhino", which was basically like the Scientific American mathematics essays by Martin Gardner and his successors, but about biology. The very first essay, "Rattlesnake Passion", hooked me in as it vividly took us to Texas where the Texans farm and happily kill rattlesnakes. Let your kid pose for a picture holding a rattler with its mouth sewn shut, or for $5 he can chop off the rattler's head with an axe! Fun for the whole family!
Other interesting essays in this book included, for example, "Who Swims With the Tuna" that ponders the philosophical question of why exactly it is just fine to kill and eat tuna, but very bad to kill and eat dolphins. "Tropical Passengers", a vivid depiction of various health hazards and parasites, convinced me never to travel anywhere that doesn't get at least few weeks of snow each year. "The Cats That Fly by Themselves" examines the physics that allows cats to fall from great heights without injury or death. "Impersonating Henry Thoreau" reminds us of about the few facts of this classic character who supposedly rejected society and lived in a more peaceful and natural way. Finally, "Limelight" brings us the story of two gay octopi who were caught in their shameful act by the video camera of a deep-ocean bathyscaphe, and the media circus that followed this event.
There is no law in jungle. Nature is not cruel; it is totally neutral. In my opinion it is as foolish to say that nature is cruel as it is to worship some ucca-pucca-wicca generous and merciful Mother Nature. Hippies and victorian gentlemen are in this respect quite similar. Sides of same coin, eh?
Hope you don't mind my mediocre english: koska kirjoitat englanniksi, oletan että haluat myös kommentit englanniksi etkä trogdolyyttien kielellä.
Posted by urogallus | 5:12 PM