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

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

I agree with you on the reasons to kill outweighing the reasons not to kill part.

I'm thinking about the other part.

I guess in my view, killing in self defense or in defense of another is justified, but I don't generally think of the term "murder" applying to that.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

I did start to write something about the definition of murder (for instance, some people believe that killing a foetus is murder), but it got away from me and started rambling so I deleted it. In general, though, I agree with you, killing a person is not always murder and such killing is therefore out of the scope of Z's statement.

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Having done a bit of thinking about that myself, I find the immediate trap of "if it's justified, it wasn't murder", and fail to get any further :(