What did the Founders mean when they separated the words "life" from "liberty"? What did they mean when, in a previous clause, they said, "life & LIMB"??? The latter question here is one thing I rarely hear my conservative FReeper friends discuss, but I think it should be....after all, why would they allow depriving a convict of a certain LIMB, if @ the same time, it was considered to be cruel & unusual punishment as the liberals suggest?
You gotta remember that the Constitution doesn't prohibit the death penalty, REGARDLESS of what the USSC said when they illegally outlawed its use w/in the states back in the '60s (or whenever it was). The only limit it puts on the death penalty is that a person can't "be deprived of life, liberty, or property w/o due process of law."I am absolutely in agreement with you on this point.
What did the Founders mean when they separated the words "life" from "liberty"? What did they mean when, in a previous clause, they said, "life & LIMB"??? The latter question here is one thing I rarely hear my conservative FReeper friends discuss, but I think it should be....after all, why would they allow depriving a convict of a certain LIMB, if @ the same time, it was considered to be cruel & unusual punishment as the liberals suggest?I've always seen "life or limb" as an idiom for suffering a very extreme fate. Do you know of any instances of people losing limbs as a legally-sanctioned punishment at the time of the founding?