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To: sitetest
"Neither bestial nor demonic, but rather savage, from the basic need to protect the vulnerable avenge the innocent."

Devising hellish methods of torture --- competing with each other to find THE most abominable method of torture --- has ZERO to do with protecting the vulnerable. In fact, it makes the torturers themselves vulnerable to obsessions, infestations and possession by the Evil One.

Torturers (and people who openly get off on sadistic boasting and torture-fantasy) are deforming their minds and instincts in a way that makes them more and more resemble the horror they think they are exterminating.

And "avenging"? This is forbidden by Jesus Christ.

100 posted on 06/29/2014 6:15:36 PM PDT by Mrs. Don-o (Save us from the fires of hell; lead all souls to heaven, especially those in most need of Thy mercy)
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To: Mrs. Don-o
Dear Mrs. Don-o,

Hellish methods in response to hellish actions.

“An eye for an eye...”

What you are seeing is neither diabolical nor bestial, but proportionate. Posters are thinking of punishments that fit the crime. The problem is that the crimes are so beyond what ordinary people can conceive, that they grasp for punishments beyond what they conceive.

But these are natural, normal responses to unimaginable evil. They aren't bestial or demonic.

That being the case, Jesus abrogated the law of retaliation, and although the starting place for His disciple may be the imagining of cruel tortures, it isn't the proper ending place.

After working through the anger and rage that are justly provoked by this cretin's actions, the proper conclusion is that a just punishment would be something like death by hanging - swift, a minimum of fuss and muss, and certain.

But that's where folks, one hopes, get to after some reflection. It is not necessarily where folks will, with justice, begin.

Imagining horrific tortures for baby rapists is merely an attempt by regular folks to balance the scales.

My old Uncle Mike used to ask, if someone who commits the murder of an innocent can justly be executed, what should be the penalty for someone who commits two such murders? Or who commits mass murder? Do we execute the miscreant more than once? Is not justice lacking if the fellow who murders one receives the same sentence as the fellow who murders many? Old Uncle Mike was a wily fellow.

But he had a point. I've often thought that there would be a certain justice in sentencing a mass murderer to multiple almost-executions - a partial hanging, or a partial electrocution, just to the point of death, for each victim. That would be a more mathematically-precise application of justice.

Thus it is, with a child rapist, that if execution is just for less heinous actions, what should befall the one who commits acts so heinous as to beggar the imagination of the ordinary sinner?

The difficulty with that approach is that if fails to observe the limitations of human existence, and it attempts a utopian resolution to the problem of criminal justice. It aims for perfect justice, which is not to be found in this life.

But it is wrong to label as “demonic” or “bestial” the reaction to attempt to make the punishment fit the crime. Better to label these attempts as “ultimately futile,” and “in need of further reflection,” and “in the final analysis, unjust.”


sitetest

114 posted on 06/30/2014 9:49:39 AM PDT by sitetest (If Roe is not overturned, no unborn child will ever be protected in law.)
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