Correction

[avevale_intelligencer]

In the previous post I said that the only thing that mattered about Jared Lee Loughner and Timothy McVeigh was that they wanted to kill.

I was wrong. I'm sure many people have moments when they want to kill, and then they move on. So the *other* thing that mattered about them, that maybe mattered *more*, was that they saw no (EDIT: sufficient) reason not to.

Christians, and Jews, and Muslims, and atheists, and agnostics, and Hindus, and Buddhists (especially Buddhists, perhaps) all see (EDIT: sufficient) reasons not to kill. ()EDIT: as do pagans, of course, and worshippers of the Spaghetti Monster and anyone else I hadn't thought of.) Some reasons are given in religious scriptures, some arise naturally from the consensus codes of morality by which we live, some are deeply personal. They're all good.

Let me be very, very precise about this: nothing justifies murder. No political ideology, no sacred precept, no failure of justice, no crime, no iniquity, nothing. Murder is never justified. Not even in those rare cases where it becomes necessary, when even I would admit that there was no other choice. Never.

To see no (EDIT: sufficient) reason not to kill is to see no reason. It is to be lost. It is to be pitiable and dangerous at the same time. And it is true of too many people.

EDIT YET AGAIN: and just in case anyone was wondering, I do not believe abortion or contraception are murder.

Comments

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I would say (my opinion) that a 'pre-emptive' strike is never valid. By definition, it is acting not on something which has actually been done but on a fear or assumption that it might happen. This is the basis on which I opposed the attack on Iraq, but supported that on the Falklands -- the latter was in response to an initiation of force by another country, whereas with Iraq there was merely a "feeling that they might do something".

The same applies on a personal level, as far as I'm concerned the person who initiates force is assumed to be in the wrong unless they can provide very good reasons (which will satisfy a jury or other collection of people representative of the society) why it was necessary. For instance, a mother using force to restrain a child which is about to (or likely to) run out into the road in front of a car is reasonable (and for that matter if I restrained you from doing the same it would be reasonable), but use of excessive force so that it caused damage might not.

This in general distinguishes a 'need' from a 'want'. I could say "I need a new guitar", but if I attacked someone to get the money to buy it I would rightly be condemned by almost all other people, because my actions were not proportionate to the level of need, and they would say (again correctly in my view) that no, I just wanted the guitar. If it were a loaf of bread to keep myself (or my family) from starving they might look on that as more justified (although probably not enough to save me from punishment).

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

If someone is pointing what looks like a gun at me, and expresses an intention to use it to kill me in the immediate future, I think I'm justified in going for a pre-emptive strike. If circumstances mean that the only pre-emptive strike I can make is by using the gun in my hand (reality intervention: I don't have one, and wouldn't know what to do with it if I had) to render them incapable of attacking me, then such is life, and if they didn't want it to happen, they shouldn't have made the threat.
I gather that the British police force agree with me. (Not that that means they're right, or I'm right, but it's a possibly useful standard of comparison.)

[keristor.livejournal.com]

That's basically my position. Again with the caveat that I too don't have a gun, and am not likely to do so in any future which seems likely.