Yep. I'd wish him a "Twilight Zone" kind of hell where those he
wronged and the evil he did come back to torment him forever. But
we'll just have to settle for the thought of him feeding worms,

Yep. I'd wish him a "Twilight Zone" kind of hell where those he
wronged and the evil he did come back to torment him forever. But
we'll just have to settle for the thought of him feeding worms,

On May 17, 12:35 pm, "Kingo Gondo" <kingo_nospam_go...@gmail.com>
wrote:

From the idiocy expressed in this thread you'd think so.

There's a shitload of people whose death I'd roundly applaud:

Osama Bin Laden--seems obvious.

Fidel Castro--world record holder for non-monarchal tyrants, his death =

be WILDLY celebrated in the streets where I live (wait and see).

Kim Jong-il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Vladimir Putin, Pat Robertson, --oh w=

Can't say Mr. Robertson--we're only allowed to hate SUCCESSFUL tyrants,=

would-be tyrants fortuitously held in check by the vestiges of Enlighte=

thinking. Silly me.

***** you--I hope the pusbag dies a slow, miserable death. Sic semper
tyrannis.

I only wish there was a hell for that sack of ***** Falwell.

So your proposing a particular "Retributive Theory of Punishment" and
I was wondering if you could justify it with a few sentences. Here is
a presentation of the political philosophy view;

The Individual & the Poliical Order
An Introduction to Social & Political Philosophy
-Norman E. Bowie & Robert L. Simonhttp://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/de=

2. - The Retributive Theory of Punishment

One of the major classical retributive theorists is Immanuel Kant. It
is useful to begin with his theory because it contains most
propositions that retributivists defend and because it is so
uncompromising. The basic propositions of Kant's theory are the
following:

1. Punishment can be inflicted only on the ground that a person has
committed a crime.

2. Judicial punishment can never be used merely as a means to promote
some other good for the criminal.

3. If a person commits a crime, that person ought to be punished. In
fact, it is immoral if the criminal is not punished.

4. The degree and kind of punishment are determined by the crime
committed.

One should note that to Kant the commission of a crime is a sufficient
condition for the infliction of punishment. Kant's comment in this
regard might be considered by some as quite shocking:

Even if a civil society were to dissolve itself by common agreement of
all its members... the last murderer remaining in prison must first be
executed so that everyone will duly receive what his actions are worth
and so that the bloodguilt thereof will not be fixed on the people
because they failed to insist on carrying out the punishment...

Those guilty of a crime must be punished if justice is to be done.
Some retributivist theorists, but not Kant, give proposition 3 an
additional twist. They argue that criminals not only ought to be
punished, but indeed have a right to be punished. Sometimes this is
expressed by saying that the criminal has willed punishment or that he
has contracted for it. One way of explaining this proposed condition
is to take the overall perspective of the present book. We view
political institutions as means for implementing individual rights and
for resolving conflicts of rights. Presumably individuals concerned
with these rights would choose to live in such a society as we have
described. However, in accepting the benefits of such a society,
justice requires that one accept its obligations as well. Thus, there
is a sense in which the criminal has willed punishment and indeed even
has a right to it. Hence, we add yet another item to our list of
propositions that retributivists might hold.

5. If a person commits a crime, the person has a right to be punished.

Our list of five propositions indicates that retributivists may come
in many forms and share the label "retributivist" with varying degrees
of enthusiasm. A less extreme retributivist would defend fewer
conditions. Our interest is not the verbal one of deciding how many or
what propositions one must uphold if he is to be called a
retributivist. Rather we wish to discuss the plausibility of the
retributivist conditions to discover if any are acceptable. Since
proposition 5 is not an essential element of contemporary
retributivist views, we omit it from our discussion.

Acceptance of the first two propositions of the retributivist theory
is essential if penal institutions are to be considered just. The
first condition requires that a person be found guilty of a crime
before being punished. The second condition requires that punishment
be meted out in response to the crime and not inflicted simply to
promote the good of the criminal. The first condition rules out the
use of punishment (perhaps of innocent persons) simply to benefit
society. It also protects persons from preventive detention and from
any other device that would in effect punish them before a crime was
actually committed. The second condition protects a criminal from
imprisonment, beyond the terms of his sentence, on the grounds that
continued imprisonment is in that criminal's best interest.

Condition 3 is also acceptable so long as it is understood that
condition 3 does not make punishment obligatory. What condition 3 does
is to say that it creates a presumption that punishment is appropriate
or justified without having to show that any given instance of
punishment also promotes utility. If a person makes a promise, he or
she ought to keep it. However, sometimes the obligation to keep a
promise must yield to a higher moral obligation. As it is with
promisekeeping, so it is with punishing.

Proposition 4 brings the utilitarian-retributivist conflict into sharp
focus. The utilitarians argue that the amount of punishment should be
determined by consequences and hence the amount of punishment should
only be great enough to provide deterrence. The retributivists have
another answer, which goes back at least to Aristotle. Aristotle
argued that the purpose of legal justice was to right wrongs. For
Aristotle, this meant the reestablishment of a kind of equality. A
crime has upset the moral order and the punishment is designed to
equalize the offense and set the moral order right. In this way one
can speak of the punishment fitting the crime. This equality condition
has also found expression in the popular notion of "lex talionis," an
eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Despite the expression "an eye
for an eye," the equality condition is seldom interpreted to mean that
there should be some kind of exact equality. Although you could punish
a murderer by taking his or her life, many crimes can't have
equivalent punishments-embezzlement, contract violation, and often
libel to name but a few. The point of the equality conditon is that
more serious crimes should be punished more severely. An embezzler who
steals $1,000,000 should not get a less severe sentence than a
shoplifter who steals a coat worth $100.

We reject this retributivist proposition on two grounds. First, we
object on practical grounds. In many cases the determination of
equality is practically impossible. Consider crimes whose chief evil
consequences are at least partially psychological, e.g., libel,
slander, blackmail, even kidnapping-and perhaps rape. How are these
crimes to be equalized? In fact, the legal system has established an
elaborate system of fines and terms of imprisonment, which however
justifiable on other grounds, seems artifical and ad hoc if justified
on grounds of equalizing the harm done or of reestablishing equality
in the moral order. Nor is the practical difficulty simply the problem
of developing a good yardstick. Consider murder. One retributivist
answer is that equalization entails the legal execution of the
murderer. But what is equalized? To execute the murderer is to have
two dead persons instead of one. The moral order has not been
reestablished, unless one simply assumes that morality supports this
kind of retributivism.

The murderer example brings home a significant point. The fact is that
crime does upset the moral order and that in a significant sense the
injury can never be undone. There is no way the moral indignity can be
erased. Nonetheless, there is a sense in which the infliction of
punishment must be equal: Given due allowance for the proper exercise
of judicial discretion, similar kinds of crimes should be punished
similarly.

Finally, retributivism places additional constraint on utilitarian
considerations of punishment. Punishment should be appropriate for the
crime. For example, a hard to detect but minor crime should not be
punished harshly even should it be true that only a harsh penalty
would have deterrent effect (due to the low probability of getting
caught).

In summary we disagree with the retributivists that the state must
punish criminals and we disagree with the retributivist on how the
amount of punishment a criminal deserves is to be calculated. However,
we agree with the retributivists in maintaining that the state has a
right to punish criminals, that a person should only be punished if
found guilty of a crime, and that punishment can never be used merely
as a means for improving the criminal. Moreover, punishment must be
appropriate to the crime and consistently applied throughout the
criminal justice system.

We are now able to show how radically bur point of view on punishment
differs from those who propose treatment rather than punishment as the
appropriate response in dealing with criminals.

Recent emphasis in the social sciences, especially criminal psychology
and penology, has been on the rehabilitation of criminals rather than
on measurements of guilt, responsibility, and the notion of making
criminals pay for their crime. The tendency has been to drop all talk
of punishment and to speak only of treatment. Crime is considered a
type of disease, like malaria or smallpox. The criminal is isolated
from society until cured.

But the blurring of the distinction between crime and illness,
punishment and treatment, is extremely unfortunate for many reasons.
First, surrendering the language of guilt and punishment threatens
human rights. How we talk does make a difference. Once crime is
treated as a disease, it is easy to leave...

read more =BB

--
Alric J. Knebel IP: 67.60.27.252
16201 Cervantes Court Biloxi, MS 39532 or
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(228) 432-0131 or (228) 392-9967