Viscerally, I support the death penalty. I think there's such a thing as deserving to die.

I agree. Problem is, somebody somewhere out there thinks the same thing and might well apply their analysis to your stupid ass. In which case, when they decide to act on it, what's your argument? That they are mistaken in your particular case? Try and make that argument, Saletan, and see where it gets you.

Frankly, as a person who most ignorantly justified the invasion of Iraq, I can imagine a lot of folks are dead ass certain that you deserve a one way trip to the bone orchard. Me, being a softy at heart, might give you a pass. But I wouldn't waste much effort dissuading others hell bent on making you, er, hell bent. So where does that leave us? Everyone on a potential death list somewheres, and everyone with a potential death list in their head. Noone believe that they themselves deserve to be on a such a list and nobody really thinking, deep down, that there's a problem with them having such a list themselves.

Humans cannot accurately reconstruct the past with any more than a slight degree of probable accuracy. They cannot fashion, in any real measurable sense, a sanction that is undeniably just. They cannot, in any meaningful way, predict the future. Each of these inadequacies are key elements justifying the imposition of death on any person. In each of them, people and their institutions fall woefully, and demonstrably, short.

So just give it up. Let the potheads out of jail and keep the accused and convicted murderers, child rapists and war criminals in prison for the rest of their lives, or until they are subsequently proven innocent. What is lost by such a policy? The "visceral" satisfaction that morons like Saletan gain by the shedding of blood of someone on their list.

The visceral profit of people who are empirically and demonstrably unable to make a rational, reasonable or remotely just judgment about others. In other words, a cost that is so minute as to defy measurement.

hasn't it always been obvious that the death penalty was in fact a form of public catharsis?

humans, for the most part, aren't rational or empirical. the rational and empirical are often not concordant with emotion and prejudice. what's rational and empirical is not directly and humanly intuitive. railing against it is not going to stop people from being human, from commiting crimes of passion or commiting thought-crimes of passion.

I have no idea why you single out Salentan in particular on this issue, when at least he has the balls to say it aloud. I'm sure a lot of people feel this way at some moment in their lives, and I imagine, for a lot of them, there is no immediate and successive voice in their head speaking in part for rationality, empiricism, and the greater part of justice and humanity.

to play devil's advocate, for those we deem to not be a part of human society, who predictably break the rules of our most basic moralities, if it doesn't make humane sense to simply kill them, does it make any more sense to pay for them to live out the rest of their lives in prison? is it rational to believe that we should keep them alive at all, just so we can save our sense of compassion? in opposition to the grist of your view, this other view is just as polar and just as much lacking complexity and nuance.

I totally disagree. The minituea of those visceral reactions are hardly disparate from what humanity is. They don't defy measurement, they are bluntly apparent. and if they weren't bluntly apparent, this wouldn't be a debate, this would be a foregone conclusion.

comportment:

hasn't it always been obvious that the death penalty was in fact a form of public catharsis?

humans, for the most part, aren't rational or empirical. the rational and empirical are often not concordant with emotion and prejudice. what's rational and empirical is not directly and humanly intuitive. railing against it is not going to stop people from being human, from commiting crimes of passion or commiting thought-crimes of passion.

I have no idea why you single out Salentan in particular on this issue, when at least he has the balls to say it aloud. I'm sure a lot of people feel this way at some moment in their lives, and I imagine, for a lot of them, there is no immediate and successive voice in their head speaking in part for rationality, empiricism, and the greater part of justice and humanity.

to play devil's advocate, for those we deem to not be a part of human society, who predictably break the rules of our most basic moralities, if it doesn't make humane sense to simply kill them, does it make any more sense to pay for them to live out the rest of their lives in prison? is it rational to believe that we should keep them alive at all, just so we can save our sense of compassion? in opposition to the grist of your view, this other view is just as polar and just as much lacking complexity and nuance.

I totally disagree. The minituea of those visceral reactions are hardly disparate from what humanity is. They don't defy measurement, they are bluntly apparent. and if they weren't bluntly apparent, this wouldn't be a debate, this would be a foregone conclusion.

What the fuck are you trying to say?

It was a natural visceral reaction for alpha males in primitive proto-human societies to kill and eat the human offspring of potential rivals.

How about debating that?