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

[zanda-myrande.livejournal.com]

I'm going to think about this some more. You may be right, but I'm fighting a really strong gut reaction allied to my firm belief that "necessary" and "justified" are not synonyms and therefore one can be true without the other. However, since I can't think of any other examples, I'll let it percolate a bit.

[pbristow.livejournal.com]

They are certainly not synonyms: There many things that are justified but not necessary, and that's the whole basis of forgiveness and redemption: A punishment for some given harm done is justified, but is not carried out because repentance and/or forgiveness makes it unnecessary. See also "suspended sentence", where a justified punishment is witheld as unnecessary, *unless* the criminal goes on to demonstrate an unwillingness to mend their ways (by committing a further crime or breach of the conditions of their sentence).

However, the question is whether anything can be necessary but not justified.

Also, I think from reading your pervious comment that there's some confusion between "apparently necessary at the time", and "actually necessary in the final (objective, omniscient) analysis (assuming there can ever be one)". [ETA:] Of all the things that might count as justification for an act, necessity is pretty much a clincher, PROVIDED you can prove the necessity is real, or at least that you had very good reasons for being convinced it was real.

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly, that's what I was trying to say. ^{But is this a suspended sentence?} It falleth from above _{like the TullimoreGentle Dew.}