| Attention Whore Alert
Since I didn't break at Nationals this past weekend, I had to edge my way into final round anyway. There's a video of it online here. My hung over rant starts at 45:40. The round is reasonably... um... bad. I don't say this becuase I have personal animosity about not being in said round (or not breaking), but mostly becuase the arguments they make for something which begins to be a decent proposition are all completely irrelevant to the round given what is ommitted. To spare you actually watching the round, the case proposed is that nobody should ever be sentenced to life without parole, or death. Arguments made in the round: - A person is basically a product of their society, so if you later remove the social factors, they are morally inculpable again. An example actually used was, if someone commits a murder becuase they are poor, then 40 years later inherits a bunch of money, they are not going to murder again. The logical result? Murdering someone for money should not be a crime (if it's a LOT of money). Theft, should not be a crime. - We generally have moral intuitions. We assert that they allow for life in prison - so there. - If Godzilla were sentient, destroyed Tokyo but later decided he was docile, he should be let out of captivity. Arguments not made in the round: - Anything really questioning parole as a system. - Any sort of distinction between types of crime. That is, whether parole is okay becuase the social harm from letting someone out from a given charge is pretty low if they do it again, as compared to the money used to keep them in prison and so on. This would have been nice, since the round forgot to be about anything or point out that certain crimes (treason, serial rape, murder) are not of this class. - Any questions about whether or not the death penalty is morally justifiabe. Whee. cranked out at 12:17 PM | |
|
| template © elementopia 2003 |
 |