Moral justification for the execution of criminals of war?

[bennyboy]

YAt any rate, that a given culture is all kind of weird is not an argument against or a demonstration that a given moral proposition is malformed, illogical,  purely subjective, or inconsistent...and it's not as if not killing killers is part of the american social contract, yet, anyway.

Well, what happened to social contract as normative?  If mores are a social construct, then how is one to say that a society's mores are malformed, illogical, purely subjective, or inconsistent?

As you know, it's my view also that the social contract is normative-- specifically, it's a negotiated median response of the emotions of the human animal in response to its environment.  The problem is that when feelings get spackled with fabricated rationale, people get academic, and now you have people responding not to the physical environment, but to the environment of fabricated construct.

That's how you get people believing (knowing, in their view) in witches, or in the idea that America is the freest nation in the world.

Was that all this ever was?  Bog standard anti-americanism?  So much for those many pages of brilliant and absolutely operative objections.  Learn not to waste your own time and the time of others, while beclowning yourself like a common american nutter after a shooting in the process, dipshit.

Dipshit, huh?  Well, I suppose this conversation is done, then.  I'll finish answering this quote, and go find something less ire-drawing to do, like maining Teemo jungle.

I'm not anti-American.  I've argued, in these very forums, that this is an American world.  Even the worst terrorists are driving cars, flying planes, and using communications technology that would never have existed without America and its unique history and psychology.  Also, my American family roots are much deeper than my Canadian ones, so I identify with America, maybe to a similar degree that Chinese Americans still hold some interest in, and opinion of, how things are developing in China.

That being said-- America is a highly fractured and inconsistent society.  Establishing where mores should come from, and in what ways they should be enforced, is extremely problematic.  The idea that there is intrinsic value in human life, for example-- this is both seen and ignored in remarkable ways in the US.

Back to the OP, the ongoing expense of a single execution might amount to millions.  Okay, there's a deep respect for the sanctity of life (and due process) there.  But then you just had many tens of thousands of black people die to Covid, with little to no health care.  It seems to me that those millions of dollars in vaccinations and medical equipment would have gone very far, indeed, in maintaining those lives.