I was talking about the Troy Davis murder in Georgia last week with a libertarian friend, and he made a good point that I think is worth repeating.
Imagine if he did actually do it though? Would be pretteee embarrassing for these folks.
I was talking about the Troy Davis murder in Georgia last week with a libertarian friend, and he made a good point that I think is worth repeating. Not worth it in the sense, you know, that a single person who disagrees will ever even come close to reconsidering their ill-formed opinion – just, like, a malevolent little mutant opinion with three fingers on each paw, and hoofs and, and, and hairy claws and, like, one eye, and when you look at it you question the existence of decency in the world — but worth it in the sense that it gives me satisfaction to reiterate the type of insanity we’re up against as reasonable people in the world (not liberals specifically, but reasonable people on the whole).
If you’ll recall, which I know might be hard since about five whole days have passed since we moved on to the next thing to be outraged about, Davis was murdered by the state of Georgia for a crime for which much of the evidence brought against him fell apart in recent years. The infallible, bureaucratic, bloated, incapable-of-doing-anything-right state. No, The State, I should say.
JACKSON, Ga. — Despite his claims of innocence and a roster of high-powered supporters that included the pope, Troy Davis was executed late Wednesday night for the 1989 murder of an off-duty Savannah, Ga., police officer.
Strapped to a gurney in the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Prison about four hours after his scheduled 7 p.m. execution, Davis, 42, lifted his head and used some of his last words to proclaim his innocence to the family of the victim, Mark MacPhail. –Boston Herald
Was he innocent? I certainly do not know personally, but a lot of people seem to think he was. We’ll never find out now though, on account of him being poisoned to death by people who we don’t trust to even deliver the post, or manage the roads, or teach our kids to not eat paint and boogers all day.
Big government is an obvious ill according to the conservative party line, right? Wait a second though, why is it OK to trust the government with matters of life and death if we don’t think they’re capable of doing anything else without stepping on the business end of a thousand rakes, like where the rake shoots up and the handle smashes them in the government-face and then their collective legislating pants fall down, and they steal hardworking taxpayer money to throw abortion conferences while Obama is on one of his bi-weekly welfare vacations? That is the same state we’re talking about here, right?
My friend didn’t see the logic in that. “I’m a small government / anti-government conservative who hates and does not trust government. Anyway, let’s give government the power of life and death over us,” my friend said, summing up the attitudes of conservatives who were in favor or the execution.
That just doesn’t make any sense to me. It’s just a failure of self awareness and logical thinking, I said.
“Absolutely,” he said. “If you believe the government is, by nature, inefficient, then you can’t justify giving it that power. It’s indefensible.”
And yet on the same Boston Herald story I quoted above, and countless other stories like it in similar newspapers and conservative-leaning websites, there are thousands of comments to this effect:
22 years too late and millions of taxpayer money unnecessarily wasted.
Good. I’m sick and tired of hearing about this killer and as well as Jimmy Carter.
The only reason the witnesses recanted was because they were threatened by thugs trying to get this cop killer off.
Bye Bye scumbag
Nobody lied….This guy was as guilty as sin Read all about it here……….
http://www.anncoulter.com/columns/2011-09-21.html
Don’t actually follow that link if you’ve got a delicate stomach.
Long story short, here are your two options: You can either bemoan the inefficiency of the state and argue for smaller government, or you can advocate for an all-powerful state capable of putting its citizens to death, even when faced with overwhelming — or even any! – evidence that their original trials may have been faulty.
Which is it going to be, conservatives? Is the state fallible and bloated and a disgrace, or are they our benevolent daddies who we can always trust to punish us when we done wrong?
I’ll be here holding my breath waiting for you to reconcile that illogical disconnect.
One argument could be that time is money, so the sooner and more expediently the State® kills a guy off, the fewer precious taxpayer dollars wasted. That seems consistent.
Perhaps, but there is a lot of evidence that says the total costs of a death penalty trial are greater than life imprisonment.
http://www.aclu.org/capital-punishment/case-against-death-penalty#incarceration
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29552692/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/execute-or-not-question-cost/
“After decades of moral arguments reaching biblical proportions, after long, twisted journeys to the nation’s highest court and back, the death penalty may be abandoned by several states for a reason having nothing to do with right or wrong:
Money.
Turns out, it is cheaper to imprison killers for life than to execute them, according to a series of recent surveys. Tens of millions of dollars cheaper, politicians are learning, during a tumbling recession when nearly every state faces job cuts and massive deficits.
So an increasing number of them are considering abolishing capital punishment in favor of life imprisonment, not on principle but out of financial necessity.”
Those are from the ACLU and MSNBC though, so, you know, LIBERAL BIAS.
that’s right, bro, liberal bias.
I think the main issue is that The State has powers over things that it shouldn’t and the citizenry doesn’t have power over things that it should. I would love to see a major decrease in government power, especially in respect to frivolous laws against nonviolent crimes and overarching bureaucracy, but I still support a federal death penalty and see The State as the proper body to ensure national security which, of course, means having the power to wage war. I think even most leftists (sans pacifists) would agree with the latter. The best solution is really to have a non political state, one that is in place to ensure civil liberties, enforce immigration laws, and analyze matters of national security (i.e. Iraq or Afganistan aren’t threats – the proper response to Sept. 11th wasn’t a big fucking declared war but employment of 4GW clandestine cells to neutralize threats: the Israeli way.)
It’s not the business of The State to tell us what to eat, tells us not to play with guns, stomp out “prejudice” or make the world a better, freer place. How communities organize themselves should be up to localized bodies. The safety and well being of it’s citizens is the priority of the State, not to be a vessel for special interests in any form. Consider the Swiss Canton system.
It’s not some politician or government agency that decides whether someone should get death, it’s a jury.
Conservative party translates to “Jesus party”. This means self righteous indignation is what fuels their belly fire. They need to off somebody ever now and then as a sacrifice to their bloodlust masquerading as justice. The smoke screen for this true intent is a rhetoric of indignation towards big government or something like that, but in the end its all about “lordy lordy this and that” and “kill the nigger”.
Honestly, part of it might be that it’s easier to kill someone than it is to teach kids or get someone their ID efficiently. Probably fucked up, but I think there is some truth to that. Kind of. Probably.
And regardless of death penalty shit, dude pistol whipped a bum over a beer in a Burger King parking lot after shooting someone earlier. And generally sounds like a fuck-up.
And if it was his friend who actually did it and not him: Don’t fucking hang out with a guy who is going to shoot a cop right next to you. It’s not exactly “wrong place at the wrong time”. You can expect some bad shit to happen on some level, right?
This is probably going to sound insanely fascist or misanthropist but consider that we have the second largest prison population in the world. To decrease this we could, for one, legalize all drugs and prostitution but we’d still be left with a whole lot of assault enthusiasts, murderers, and rapists. Is it too cruel to call this a surplus population? I don’t think anybody here has any notions of prison as a place for proper rehabilitation so wouldn’t it be ideal if we could free up some space for the numerous other scumbags who will inevitably fill their cells?
Also, do away with Nazi shit like lethal injection and the electric chair. How is that not cruel and unusual? Bring back the firing squad and the gallows. How expensive are bullets and rope?
I am not such a pussy that I think serial killers and torture rapists and so on don’t deserve to die, I just don’t personally have faith that the trials to determine your average every day murder are going to be done fairly and without prejudice, especially when its a jury of my peers. With that in mind, killing people, even when they’ve been found guilty, seems strange to me.
“And if it was his friend who actually did it and not him: Don’t fucking hang out with a guy who is going to shoot a cop right next to you. It’s not exactly “wrong place at the wrong time”. You can expect some bad shit to happen on some level, right?”
That may be true, but hardly a reason to kill a dude.
@popfop: I don’t necessarily disagree that certain people are beyond rehabilitation, but who gets to decide who those people are? And how did they end up being branded with the label of useless fuckup in the first place? Was it a just sentence metered out by sober, reasoning minds, or was it an emotional we-need-to-get-someone type deal?
All I’m saying is, once you kill a dude, there’s no going back to say “my bad.”
Unless you like catch the dude with 15 bodies in his basement and he’s in the act of chopping up the next one or some shit, then sure, chop that guy’s head off and feed him to the pigs.
This is the shit that kills me. Liberals are just that..until they do a bid in the county OR get their shit rocked by some clown in the street. There are alot of fuct up people out there and the reasons as to why or how they got that way really don’t matter when one of em has a gun to your shit. Most people who get hemmed up ARE guilty. period.
The state of Georgia executed this guy, not the Fed. Whereas the Fed supports the state in many areas, it was ultimately a decision handed down at the state level. When conservatives talk about “Big Government,” on the whole they are referring to the Fed. Conservatives and libertarians are far more in favor of giving power to the states themselves, as this wrests power from the Fed. Many conservatives/libertarians would actually look at this execution as a vindication of their belief in states’ rights. It’s also worth noting that there are states where the death penalty has been outlawed because the people living in that state vote to put people in office that will legislatively reflect their own anti-death penalty views, so this situation isn’t indicative of all states. You’re basically equating the Fed to state government here and not taking into account the varied death penalty policies of all 50, which really just takes advantage of an uniformed reader. Ending the argument, too, with a false choice argument was beneath reason.
i’m not for the death penalty but does anyone want to link to the convincing argument for his innocence?
@ luke
Your argument seems more to be about objectivity than anything else. While we don’t get to vote on our laws, there is a general consensus that the basic rule of law of our country is right and something to be obeyed. There are certainly times when the rule of law and a moral order come into conflict. If someone raped my sister I’d want to wield the chainsaw and pull some Los Zetas shit but the rule of law does not allow for revenge and life imprisonment or (hopefully) execution would be the appropriate response. For a society to function there has to be a majoritarian consensus on the rule of law. The State should operate blindly to privilege, the lack thereof or any other unimportant matters outside of legal egalitarianism. That is, we all follow the same laws and if found guilty but jury of breaking them we should be suffer the consequences. If we entrust The State to wage war for our protection why would we not allow it the right to end the life of those who threaten domestic society?
That’s a good distinction, Ess, but whether we’re talking about local governments having the power to kill their own citizens or the federal government, I would suspect that either prospect would be troubling to people who are suspicious of government power in general. Just because you dislike overarching federal power meddling in matters that you think would be better decided on the state level doesn’t mean you’re in favor of your specific state abusing its power in such a manner, does it?
How about this one: offer anyone on death row a choice. Ten to fifteen years of spotless service in the military and you get your freedom. But fuck up even once (steal, get into fights, go AWOL, kill civilians, do drugs etc) and you get a bullet to the head.
Seems pretty Judge Dredd-like, but it has it’s benefits. There are sufficient provisions to weed out the real unredeemable criminals, yet those who are innocent would have a way out (albeit a grueling one). If I was wrongly convicted and awaiting execution, I’d jump at the opportunity.
I like the idea of offering alternatives to hiding someone away in a box for 20 years that either 1) could provide some good to society at large or 2) might make them capable of actually contributing to society once they’re free again.
this is related:
http://gawker.com/5843940/alabama-town-offers-church-or-jail-sentencing-choice
Alabama Town Offers ‘Church Or Jail’ Sentencing ChoiceA small town in Alabama is offering non-violent offenders the choice between doing prison time and paying a fine, or working their sentence off by going to church every week.
The one issue that Ron Paul changed his mind about. He took the time to study it closely, and is longer in favor.
no longer in favor.
This information and these opinions were very interesting everywhere else for days.
I just found this good quote from an article on Gustav Le Bon that might some up the idea of the state I was propagating earlier with more sophistication:
“Le Bon was clearly influenced by the English classical economists and writers such as Herbert Spencer. In his view, “the true role of law is to codify custom” and the law should not be used to legislate happiness, impose confiscatory tax rates on the productive, or excessively interfere in people’s lives. Le Bon believed that by enforcing common law, which itself is the product of a gradual evolution to reconcile conflict of interest between people, the state will unify instead of divide people..”
http://againstpolitics.com/2011/07/15/the-atheist-conservatism-of-gustave-le-bon/
WWMFD? What would Milton Friedman do?
All policy and moral arguments against the death penalty aside, the man was certainly found guilty by people who did NOT recant of being a supreme fuck up.
There were two men on a crime spree that night, him and “Red.” Troy shot another man in the face, pistol whipped a bum, and then shot and killed a cop who came to help the bum. If you wanna find some injustice in which to devote your sympathy, investigate the West Memphis 3…
I’m pretty strongly anti-death penalty. But that definitely doesn’t stop me from (once again) being frustrated by Luke’s completely faulty logic. Ess basically owned his shit and showed what a complete novice he is when it comes to understanding and breaking down various political philosophies.
Either you trust one larger group of bureaucrats to decide these matters, or you entrust them to a smaller group. Either way you’re putting your faith in the government to decide that it can murder you.
While this specific instance was a state issue, the death penalty is most certainly an issue of federal concern, and it’s becoming more so in the past two decades.
http://online.wsj.com/public/article/SB117047411173597172-mU2IoLDeKKvoQ02ZnnHvZHq1EkU_20080202.html
The growth in federal capital cases, many observers say, results from a heightened effort by the Justice Department to centralize the process for deciding whether prosecutors should push for capital punishment.
Justice Department spokesman Erik Ablin says the government is making an effort to pursue capital punishment uniformly across the country. “We have in place a clearly defined review process to ensure the death penalty is applied in a consistent and fair manner nationwide,” he said.
Congress in 1986 began expanding federal jurisdiction to crimes that traditionally had been prosecuted by states — imposing mandatory minimum sentences in crack cocaine cases, for example — and two years later expanded federal reach into capital cases. Still, it took 14 years before federal prosecutors under then-Attorney General John Ashcroft managed to obtain capital convictions in jurisdictions that didn’t have the death penalty at the local level.
In many cases, the Justice Department has asserted jurisdiction even though local prosecutors were prepared to handle the cases. In Puerto Rico, for example, federal prosecutors have unsuccessfully sought death sentences for four defendants since 2003 although Puerto Rico’s constitution explicitly states that “The death penalty shall not exist.”
I like how some cop gets killed in a crowd of people and nobody knows nothing about it, but then a cop beats some street shit and people in the next city know exactly what happened, what was said, etc.
If this is the only logical consistency that bothers you about the conservative movement, you haven’t been paying attention. Everything they push is unprincipled opportunistic bullshit.
Anything they want to do–restrict abortion, pray in schools, kill blacks, give harsh penalties for crack and less for cocaine–they justify with freedom and jobs and anti-socialism. Big gov’t, less taxes, etc., are all selectively used. It’s not sad that they do this, it’s sad that people follow them.
good one
All these comments and not one mention of James Byrd Jr’s murderer, who was executed the same day? Did Amnesty International show up for that? Sure, he was guilty as hell, but doesn’t logic dictate that if your goal is to abolish the death penalty, then you should protest that execution, too?
Damn. Real talk. I also love conservative/fascists’ assertions that they should be allowed to do whatever they want in their own homes – apart from take drugs apart from alcohol or have non-heterosexual sex.
@ Devin. ‘Zackly. I don’t think anyone ends up on death row after being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Even if you’re innocent you’ll have made some very poor life choices and kept some very bad company. (Not saying that makes it okay to execute someone innocent, just… y’all be careful out there, okay?)
“Imagine if he did actually do it though?”
Yeah, imagine if he actually do it.
Can’t believe how much “well, where there’s smoke there’s fire” sentiment there is around here. “He wouldn’t be arrested if he didn’t do something wrong.” Really?
Lotta smoke though. He was ID’d by the first shooting victim, then a homeless man who was pistol whipped by dude, and by witnesses from both incidents and locations that claimed his involvement in said acts. So he shot dude 1, pistol whipped dude 2, but the cop that tried to stop homeboy whilst beating up dude 2….that was someone else. GTFO with that “really?” shit.
I’m not talking about this specific case in the last comment, I mean the general attitude of, “Well, if you weren’t doing some shit you wouldn’t have gotten jammed up.”
I’d love to know what you think of the Casey Anthony case…I mean, no eye witnesses, no physical evidence,etc. No fire, true. TONS of smoke however. I would imagine you might agree with the verdict, no?
I didn’t really look into that case much at all. Through the media it seemed like she was guilty, but I certainly don’t know myself.
Jim Goad just sent me pictures of himself with his shirt off so I’m kind of taken aback at the moment.
Forgive me, I’m CDN and have zero concept of the US electoral or legal systems. I see a lot of people here ARE using the “if there’s smoke…” attitude. Which is normal I suppose, but it’s quite a shame that no one seems to consider the life history of a man that got to a position where either he, or his buddy, were shooting, pistol whipping, robbing, etc. I’d guess that man had a shit life, literally, from birth. He probably lead a life of poverty, discrimination, even getting beaten down by cops regularly (I don’t mean physically either). How do you suggest kids in America Will be able to avoid following that same path. To imply troy Davis was guilty by association is extremely short sighted and points to the fact that government, both small local govt’s and Fed, need to be addressing poverty and intervening socially with kids that live in at-risk areas with parents unable to provide them with social skills needed to live a productive life. If what kids learn, repeatedly throughput their childhood, teens, and into adulthood is that they’ll have no opportunity for success, no way to learn how good it feels to succeed and accomplish goals, no way to learn how to challenge themselves, etc. I bet Troy Davis’ life was spent with no real positive influences in his family, living on “the dole” (which, incidentally, I’ve never heard one case of someone getting super rich from having another small source of income while getting
social assistance). So, my point relates to crime and sentencing in that governments can do things to create change that will reduce crime rates and that is by doing a complete overhaul of the social welfare system where people are NOT treated like criminalsfor asking for help, which is easily the most humiliating pride-stomping thing a person can do. Youth programs should be created to help children learn to be successful. While sending youth to “juvi” they could be doing a lot of positive things there that will help them on a path to a better life. European systems exist where, if a family member becomes ill with disease and is unable to work, and needs constant care, a family member is allowed to do this care as their “job” and even gets paid by the government! For doing a “job”! Systems like this would not force a family into poverty because a family member got sick and two incomes lost because the sibling has to care for the sick. If this is a family at risk, who’s to say they’re not going to turn to crime at some level? My point in all this, there are many systems and levels of government that need massive overhauls to set citizen on a better path, to avoid crime, and eliminate the need for a death penalty. To say “he was there, wasn’t he?” is an overly simplistic view of an issue which is, in actuality very layered and complex. It’s shameful, absolutely shameful, that Troy Davis was likely failed by a great number of “systems” over the course of his lifetime, and in the end a jury of his peers decided that he should die for it.
I meant “the spouse has to care for the sick”, not “the sibling”.
i think the liberal hypocrisy is worse. “the us govt is evil personified, an imperialist, minority-keeping-down apparatus of rich oppression. the only remedy is to make the us govt a lot more powerful and give it more control over our lives.”
There’s a very clear lesson here. Liberals, being that they themselves actually care about other people, assume that everyone else does too, given the benefit of the doubt, and therefor operate under the assumption that people in power will act in good faith more times than not. Conservatives, because they don’t care about anyone else, therefor also assume that no one else does, and do not trust anyone else to act motivated by anything other than self interest.
@Luke: There’s no lesson here. All you’re really doing is taking a more winded and roundabout path to rattle the archaic and stereotypical party line, which is “Liberals Good, Conservatives Bad.” Flip the Good and Bad, and you have the conservative mantra. It’s almost like that retarded comment Kos made sometime ago about how “Every Republican isn’t a racist, but every racist is a Republican.”
@ jojoba
“Troy Davis was likely failed by a great number of ‘systems’ over the course of his lifetime, and in the end a jury of his peers decided that he should die for it.”
This is utter determinism, at what point does personal responsibility take effect?
“both small local govt’s and Fed, need to be addressing poverty and intervening socially with kids that live in at-risk areas with parents unable to provide them with social skills needed to live a productive life.”
Gratuitously expensive private colleges don’t even provide this service half of the time, what makes you think governments will or can? I am by no means “successful” but when I was faced with a near deplete bank account I solved my problems the old fashioned way: live frugally – work hard – save money. Sure it sucked but it also worked. Sometimes the most obvious solutions are the best. I don’t think we need a panel of academics and technocrats to tell Troy Davis that acting like a criminal scumbag was not a good life decision. I don’t want a state with conscience, I want a state that executes the laws we all live by. If you want to know one reason the Left lost the support of working class people is because it was soft on crime and immigration, tried to create an activist state. Suddenly regular folks saw their neighborhoods turn into crime ridden shitholes, often populated with those hostile to our general cultural values. And what of the benefits of this new caring state? Oh well, the academics and bureaucrats just needed more money for research…
It’s funny that you mention European social democracies, because if you actually looked at a lot of those countries you would see that the political state is quite conservative. For one, they are quite isolationist and the social democracy in question is based more on Bismarckian conservatism than socialist utopianism. Secondly, the national culture is rather homogenous (i.e. Denmark for the Danes) and the their values are pretty much in line with the Protestant Work Ethic: work hard, live frugally, prosper. Recently the bleeding hearts decided to open up the borders and make their countries the welfare offices of the world. So what happens? Crime goes up and the social services are strained. Consider that Finland, as one specific example, has a population smaller than Massachusetts.
Yeah, but I was drunk so it doesn’t count on my permanent record I think.
You get a mulligan, then.
Addressing “conservatives” as if they all think alike is the primary “disconnect” in this article, but Luke is definitely wet behind the ears with his simplistic ingroup/outgroup thinking. There are plenty of anti-statists who support neither the death penalty nor foreign intervention.
sbtvc dun gots good again