Sometime I Hate Being Against The Death Penalty...

...because of how freakishly stupid so many anti-death penalty advocates are. The trouble is they are so stupid they have no idea how much damage they are doing to the cause. The recent example in the case of Troy Davis proves my point.

Its depressing. It begins with an assault on the very idea of reasonable doubt. Yes, eyewitness testimony can be tricky, but the lengths people are willing to go to exonerate Davis in this case is ludicrous. The argument they are making is "sophisticated" in the same way "it depends on what your definition of 'is' is" was sophisticated, and it doesn't help.

Second, this emphasis on portraying these criminals as innocent victims has to stop. The point of being against the death penalty is that you are against it even when the person involved is guilty as sin. If you cannot make the hard argument, but instead try to only make the case that innocent people ought not to be executed (well, yeah), then you have lost the argument before it even started. This is particularly the case when in your zealousness you whitewash actual guilt, as is happening in the Davis case. No objective reading of the evidence leads to Davis' exoneration. You only look like a fool if you insist it does.

I'm sorry but the argument that says "we ought not to have the death penalty because we could make a mistake" is a dumb argument. It invites the rejoinder, "Well, what if we reserved it only for the cases we are really sure of." The response to that has been, "But, how can we ever really be sure of anything..." and BOOM!!!!!! The sound you are hearing is the sound of the minds of millions of Americans closing against you...and, if that is the best argument you can come up with, rightfully so.

The real argument is its unnecessary... its barbarous, as witnessed by the fact it is the way the Taliban does business... and its uncivilized. Actually, I'd argue it is worse than uncivilized, it is anti-civilization. In philosophical terms it is a remnant of the closed society. It appeals to our hive/pack instincts, and not to the rational parts of our being. Lots of people will disagree with me, but at least that is an argument worth having. It helps that that it also the only kind of argument we have a hope of winning. Until we are willing to have that argument we will continue to lose, and we will deserve to lose.