Thread: A question on the constitution

You guys are right. Let's just all sit in a circle, holding hands and singing songs of joy and peace. That way no one will ever want to hurt anyone else.

That is quite a leap you are suggesting between singing Kumbaya and expecting some level of accountability and responsibility.

It's time for me to leave this thread,,, I've got to get ready for a Knap-A-Que this weekend. If your not familiar with this uniquely American tradition; it's where you collaborate with your neighbors once a year to kidnap a foreign national & bring him to the family Bar-B-Que. We stake out potential victims at the hotels next to airports. We get them as they are arriving in the U.S.. We spring on them as they exit their rental cars,, using photos of last year's Knap-A-Que to entice them into coming. Once we got them hooked, we pick them up at the hotel on the day of the Knap-A-Que & drive them to a remote back yard where kids are running wild & water-boarding themselves on the slip-n-slide. We further submit them to bar-b-que pork ribs (beef ribs are available too) , kegs of alcoholic beverages & southern potato salad. We take photos of them as they start to enjoy themselves & use the photos to post on social media,,, this practice discourages other foreign nationals from visiting America.

We do our best in America to discourage the influx of foreign nationals to America , by holding these Knap-A-Ques all over America.
I hope that someday we Americans can find a solution to all these visiting foreign nationals & this horrible practice of Knap-A-Ques will be just another bad stain in American history.

Originally Posted by prodigy

So just to clarify, if a known terrorist was captured and he has knowledge of future attacks, it's not ok to force him to give up this information? I mean he obviously is not going to want to say anything, so I guess we can just let him go? It is wrong to torture him, it is wrong to hold him in prison... what is the best way to handle these people? It's a bad situation, there is no right way to do it, but saying all the ways we have used are wrong without acknowledging the options are very limited doesn't really help. These guys don't play by the rules, if they did they wouldn't be here still. If you play a game against someone who doesn't play by the rules, do you think you can still win?

I marked in red the parts I disagree with. There is a right way to do it. I don't see why shouldn't we hold people in prison. We have these ways, we simply want a shortcut and think that doing the wrong thing may not be all that bad after all.

The whole criminal justice system is set up to deal with people who do not play by the rules - we continue to have a functional society with continuously decreasing violence and crime rates, so I would say we are winning by playing by the rules against bad guys who don't.

I think the core of the problem is that despite all the big words a lot of people do take the freedoms we enjoy for granted.
Playing by the rules is what ensures these freedoms.
You do not start with 'known' terrorists, you start with 'suspected' terrorists. You need a process based on rules to move from 'suspected' to either 'known' or 'falsely suspected', because without such process you end up with abusing innocent people and that's where you've betrayed all those ideals.

Is the criminal justice system perfect - certainly not - sometimes we discover we've sentenced the wrong person, sometimes we fail to punish the right person. But not having such system and simply punishing people without due process is far far worse.

Look I'm done, I've thoroughly enjoyed this thread, and I'm sure it will continue without me. Your logic is so illogical and hard to follow. You obviously feel that our criminal justice system somehow extends to foreign people in foreign lands? Anyway it's been fun debating with the several members who have chimed in! To the OP, great thread, definitely stoked a lot of fires! Smooth shaving my friends!

Originally Posted by gugi

Secondly US's history on slavery doesn't support a superior value system.

I think if you looked as deeply into the issue of slavery as you have on the manga Carta you'd find it far more complex than you might be giving it credit for and might see a perspective of the country's founders that we might not be giving them credit for (if credit is the word you'll choose). Slavery in the early years was a compromise. A compromise, just like I've seen suggested here on this thread as the very basis of our system. The union was less than solid. The chance of the colonies forming a lasting government and fending off the British could only happen IF everyone were on board. The only way to do that was through compromising on the issue of slavery. And to paint the entire country with the same brush is not exactly accurate. In essence some of the founders knew that slavery was in contrast to everything they were saying. But they needed to allow it in order to secure the union. In a way, they punted on the issue and left it to be resolved at a later point in time. Everyone here might find that reprehensible but that's what they were willing to do to preserve or establish the country as we know it. We might consider that as we ponder how righteous we are and what we won't sink to to preserve ourselves in this fight. Others might not agree with me but I see the govt running roughshod all over civil liberties all the time in the name of fighting terrorism. The govt doesn't have a problem doing it. It does it all the time. My complaint is that if you are going to run over civil liberties, put the pain where it belongs. Direct it like the tip of a spear and get it over with. But then again, that assumes that those in charge really want to fight it.

So tell me gugi: In your world of justice, how should the ISIS terrorist be treated? The terrorist who beheaded the Coptic Christians, burned the Jordanian Pilot alive, kidnap and torture innocent people for ransom. Do you believe they deserve a trial or should all terrorist be killed and just let God sort'em out.

Originally Posted by OCDshaver

I think if you looked as deeply into the issue of slavery as you have on the manga Carta you'd find it far more complex than you might be giving it credit for and might see a perspective of the country's founders that we might not be giving them credit for (if credit is the word you'll choose).

I most certainly understand that it is complex and have not denied anybody credit. You are extrapolating my words into something that I didn't say. My statement was that US does not have some special moral superiority that was being implied. The world in 18th century was not isolated countries - ideas were flowing pretty quickly around and the same questions that the US founders were trying to answer were asked and answered in many other places. Slavery being one of the big ones, and more generally human rights, the organization of government and so on. US got a chance to make a big sweeping change in the government structure, it did things that for others took decades and even centuries to accomplish, other things others accomplished much faster than US did.
I mean you know all of this anyways.

Nearly every country in the world had and traded slaves

In fact the very "People" we are discussing still do Boko Harum just did admittedly sell slaves


A Brief History Of Slavery -- New Internationalist

Originally Posted by feltspanky

So tell me gugi: In your world of justice, how should the ISIS terrorist be treated? The terrorist who beheaded the Coptic Christians, burned the Jordanian Pilot alive, kidnap and torture innocent people for ransom. Do you believe they deserve a trial or should all terrorist be killed and just let God sort'em out.

I'm pretty sure I already addressed it, but I can do it more directly as well.
I'd start with the fact that this is internal problem for Iraq and Syria. If you're going to solve some other country's internal problems I think you need international mandate, and international involvement.

Because ISIS aren't the only terrorists who kidnap and torture innocent people for ransom and kill them. The fact that they are the ones who happened to be on the TV set doesn't mean that they are the ones who should be the top priority. What did we do for the terrorists before them who kidnapped, tortured, and raped there?