Capital punishment should be banned ?? (209)

Probably quit after a day.....

Pardon me for living, I can see how you went from a capital punishment thread to this

Then obviously you have no respect for those who have a wealth of experience and knowledge...just your own insane desires of what your worth...and to me you being a Manc is far down the totem pole of life's worth...so yes in your case Death Penalty should be enforced without remission and post haste....

I am for the death sentence, but I believe it should not be turned into a public show. The monsters don't deserve to live...

What happened after the Chinese Cultural Revolution.

The Gu family is not in those ranks. It may have sacrificed its sons for the Revolution, but the family now lives a simple village life. Gu Anjian's 36-year-old son, Gu Zisong, scoffs when I ask if the family is proud that their relative worked with Mao to try to make China more egalitarian.


"Pride? What pride? If there were any glory in it, we wouldn't live here," he says.
Gu Zisong makes his living growing oranges - a line of work that has helped pull many farmers in this area out of poverty, since it caught on seven or eight years ago. You can see their profits in the new concrete and brick houses rising up in the village.
The Long March

The Long March, or Red March, 1934-35, was a strategic military retreat by Communist fighters to get away from a crackdown on them by the Kuomintang.
It was an arduous walking journey over mountains and other tough terrain, and most of those on it died.


Those who survived set up a base in Yan'an, in the central province of Shaanxi, where Mao regrouped and from which he planned moves that ultimately led him and the Communist Party seizing power in 1949.


Gu Zisong admits life here is better than when he was a child. Back then, he says, the village consisted of mudbrick houses with no electricity or indoor plumbing, and dirt roads that turned to muck in the rain. Now, the roads are good, and most homes have refrigerators, TVs, even the occasional computer - which allows them to see that their lives might have got better - but the elite in China are doing far better still.

Another member of the family, Gu Yuesheng, 34, runs a kindergarten down the street. He started out as a migrant worker, in a sweater factory in the city of Dongguan, 250 miles away.

"I didn't really like the city," he says. "People looked down on migrant workers." He says workers were so underpaid and overworked that strikes and protests were common, even though independent trade unions in China are illegal.

"My own boss was ok," Gu says. "But even in my factory, if you were a migrant worker, you could only move up so far. The good jobs went to local people."
Gu Yeusheng at the kindergarten he runs

Gu Yuesheng was a migrant worker, but now runs this kindergarten
So, when Gu Yuesheng had made a bit of money, he came back here, and started his own sweater factory. At its peak, he says, it employed more than 120 fellow villagers, and produced four million sweaters a year. The factory had to close last year, when too many foreign customers went too long without paying.

"It felt like falling off a cliff," he says, shaking his head ruefully.
Still, Gu Yuesheng is proud of having helped his fellow villagers get a leg up, without having to go through the hardship and humiliation he experienced as a migrant worker. His efforts have also pushed him nicely into China's middle class. It's a mobility villagers here didn't have at the time Mao visited.

Yes the boomers took over again and they all became Capitalists
But with wages and expectations rising, Gu Yuesheng doubts the next generation will find it as easy as it was for him, if they're not educated. That's what the kindergarten is about, he says - to help children from this village get a head start.

Well, I stand by my principles. But I realize that others have a perfect right to their own opinions and ideals. I certainly wouldn't personally attack a whole group of people and make all encompassing statements.

You will see a lot of it unfortunately.

That is most unfortunate.

Aquinus.

Value of human life

Everyone thinks human life is valuable. Some of those against capital punishment believe that human life is so valuable that even the worst murderers should not be deprived of the value of their lives.

They believe that the value of the offender's life cannot be destroyed by the offender's bad conduct - even if they have killed someone.

Some abolitionists don't go that far. They say that life should be preserved unless there is a very good reason not to, and that the those who are in favour of capital punishment are the ones who have to justify their position.


Right to live

Everyone has an inalienable human right to life, even those who commit murder; sentencing a person to death and executing them violates that right.

This is very similar to the 'value of life' argument, but approached from the perspective of human rights.

The counter-argument is that a person can, by their actions, forfeit human rights, and that murderers forfeit their right to life.

Another example will make this clear - a person forfeits their right to life if they start a murderous attack and the only way the victim can save their own life is by killing the attacker.

The medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas made this point very clearly:

Therefore if any man is dangerous to the community and is subverting it by some sin, the treatment to be commended is his execution in order to preserve the common good... Therefore to kill a man who retains his natural worthiness is intrinsically evil, although it may be justifiable to kill a sinner just as it is to kill a beast, for, as Aristotle points out, an evil man is worse than a beast and more harmful.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae
Aquinas is saying that certain contexts change a bad act (killing) into a good act (killing to repair the violation of justice done by the person killed, and killing a person who has forfeited their natural worthiness by killing).


Executio

Aquinus.

Value of human life

Everyone thinks human life is valuable. Some of those against capital punishment believe that human life is so valuable that even the worst murderers should not be deprived of the value of their lives.

They believe that the value of the offender's life cannot be destroyed by the offender's bad conduct - even if they have killed someone.

Some abolitionists don't go that far. They say that life should be preserved unless there is a very good reason not to, and that the those who are in favour of capital punishment are the ones who have to justify their position.


Right to live

Everyone has an inalienable human right to life, even those who commit murder; sentencing a person to death and executing them violates that right.

This is very similar to the 'value of life' argument, but approached from the perspective of human rights.

The counter-argument is that a person can, by their actions, forfeit human rights, and that murderers forfeit their right to life.

Another example will make this clear - a person forfeits their right to life if they start a murderous attack and the only way the victim can save their own life is by killing the attacker.

The medieval philosopher and theologian Thomas Aquinas made this point very clearly:

Therefore if any man is dangerous to the community and is subverting it by some sin, the treatment to be commended is his execution in order to preserve the common good... Therefore to kill a man who retains his natural worthiness is intrinsically evil, although it may be justifiable to kill a sinner just as it is to kill a beast, for, as Aristotle points out, an evil man is worse than a beast and more harmful.

Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae
Aquinas is saying that certain contexts change a bad act (killing) into a good act (killing to repair the violation of justice done by the person killed, and killing a person who has forfeited their natural worthiness by killing).

Thank you.

I agree. With maturity comes wisdom.

I am not sure about that...