This is flat out moral relativism.
No. It's what is, not how we justify it. An Islamic state believes its laws are grounded in the absolute. We believe that there are self evident truths and rights, derived from an unnamed Creator, that we're born with. None of us can objectively demonstrate the truth of our propositions.
You can have absolutely no argument, e.g., against so called "honor killings" being legal in the Middle East (presupposing that they are legal) or against forced abortions in China.
You don't mean that. You mean if I loose my hold on a claim of absolute truth I have no more right than the next fellow. Of course at that point I have as much right as any fellow and no inherent obligation to honor the wishes of any other.
Your claim was that the State only should use "the least severe infringement on right."
No, which is why you should either quote me or not speak for me. What I wrote was, "The punishment advanced is the least cruel infringement upon right that we can envision while still carrying the punitive weight of social/legal censure." I'm explaining something to you. I'm not originating it.
Our law has boundaries for what can be done punishing in the name of the state and that it doesn't adopt an eye for an eye as the operating principle. We use means aimed at reformation and reflection, as well as punishment in the degree of impairment of rights and absent state sanctioned torture. If that disappoints our sense of justice then I'd suggest you examine the why of it.
...How about "he deserves to die"?
You're entitled. It's a long argument with a lot of facets. It isn't, however, more than tangential to my point and it deserves more than a sidebar.
Nonetheless, if someone is sufficiently trained, skilled, etc., and, being a private citizen, and not an agent of the State...? He may use potentially lethal force to defend himself, but he may not specifically shoot to kill.
No one sufficiently trained in a lethal action will tell you that he can with any degree of certainty, in an adrenaline fueled situation, control his biological response sufficiently to accomplish a less than lethal response with any degree of certainty. He will more often endanger himself in the attempt. He isn't required to risk his safety on the chance of saving the life of someone he believes means him lethal harm.
I don't really see the problem in this case.
It's a prima facie case that someone wronged should not be judge and jury. I'm more concerned with the operating principle than whether or not you can fashion a particular hypothetical to meet your ends.
Then the rest of your point seems pretty irrelevant to me
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It's only important that I speak the truth to you as best I understand it. What you do with it or how you value it is your business.
For what it's worth, I'd like further to point out, TH, in support of what I am saying, that, at least historically, the West has recognized so called "crimes of passion...
Do you realize what the mitigation actually was? An aberrant mental state. It's not a stamp of approval on the behavior.
What I'm saying isn't really too far of a jump from what the law already recognizes.
There's a world of difference between recognizing that in a moment a man or woman may be overwhelmed and act in an unpremeditated rage, for which they will receive a reduced sentence of incarceration, and sustaining the notion that the still illegal and punishable action is a good idea.
Justice is that virtue whereby each is given according to his due. It may also be defined as proportionate equality.
The law does what it can, where it can, to put the victim in the position he should have found himself but for the action of the offender and to compensate the victim for damages while punishing the criminal.
To my ears, that's just a cop-out way to say: "In point of fact, my principles are completely at variance with what Moses prescribed, but I can't admit it, because I have 'Christian' under my screen name and avatar."
I'm not concerned or responsible for your ears. My answer was plain enough. Embellish in any way that makes you feel better, but you still don't actually speak for me.
Okay.
Not analogous. Rape is intrinsically evil. Beating somebody is not.
Rather, sex isn't intrinsically evil. Rape is. Beating someone isn't intrinsically evil. Battery is.
Your whole argument presupposes a "moral equality," so to speak between State and private citizen.
No idea what you mean by that.
Again, this is a modern notion.
Not really. The modern notion of right is mostly about including the woman, though men have been forbidden to act certain ways toward their wives in antiquity and Christianity has some fairly strong things to say about how we are to behave. Ways inconsistent with berating and degrading and treating a wife as property.
Beyond that a big helping of "And?" Antibiotics are new. What, you want leeches?
lain:
Even as late as Kant, we find him writing that the right of a husband to his wife is like that of a right which one has over a thing, i.e., a piece of property, that one may rightly say of his wife "she is mine; she belongs to me." Nor is this misogynistic; the wife can claim likewise over her husband.
Well if Kant said it...then Kant is proof that intelligent men, even brilliant men can be limited by the bias of their age and culture.
I wouldn't, perhaps, speak in those terms, but the modern description of marriage simply seems too weak to me.
So you're only partially corrupted or partially enlightened.
As always, your words are a constant testimony to legal positivism. :nono:
In the same sense a scientist is an advocate for gravity.
My personal system of justice and government has Christ at its head, literally. Absent that our imperfect form will do.