Alabama treats inmates like Victorian debtors at best, stray animals at worst

[Cassius]

The American prison system practices amoralist treatment of inmates? No way.

Firstly, amoralist isn't a word, and secondly, even if it were it doesn't refer to what I think you are referring to. Secondly, who are you to judge what is immoral and what isn't. You are merely an individual and from what I can gather not exactly a hugely wealthy or powerful one either. I also recall that you are not religious, thus meaning that you have no Church, no God and no book to back up whatever definition of morality that you are peddling. You are also criticising the morality of the state, yet, again, you have no comparable source of weight to back up your claims to know what it is to be moral.

So, what would you do? The state has to signal its disapproval of the actions of criminals (in a way that is easy for everybody to understand), thus, naturally, prisons must be unpleasant places to be. Far from being a violation or dereliction of duty, these prisons are in fact performing to a tee the role that prisons should perform; that is, to be hard, nasty places of punishment and suffering for the inmates.

Although I wouldn't, myself, go in for withholding medical care from inmates, that is only because I am of the view that they should be farmed out to do hard labour for free, and, you know, crippled criminals aren't likely to perform such tasks particularly well. Nonetheless, I see nothing particularly immoral here, in fact, in my own flawed, worthless individual perspective, I see this treatment as being perfectly morally justifiable.

[Cassius]

Damn, I have been well and truly got with 'amoralist', my apologies.

Anyway...

The American prison system practices amoralist treatment of inmates? No way.

Firstly, amoralist isn't a word, and secondly, even if it were it doesn't refer to what I think you are referring to. Secondly, who are you to judge what is immoral and what isn't. You are merely an individual and from what I can gather not exactly a hugely wealthy or powerful one either. I also recall that you are not religious, thus meaning that you have no Church, no God and no book to back up whatever definition of morality that you are peddling. You are also criticising the morality of the state, yet, again, you have no comparable source of weight to back up your claims to know what it is to be moral.

So, what would you do? The state has to signal its disapproval of the actions of criminals (in a way that is easy for everybody to understand), thus, naturally, prisons must be unpleasant places to be. Far from being a violation or dereliction of duty, these prisons are in fact performing to a tee the role that prisons should perform; that is, to be hard, nasty places of punishment and suffering for the inmates.

Although I wouldn't, myself, go in for withholding medical care from inmates, that is only because I am of the view that they should be farmed out to do hard labour for free, and, you know, crippled criminals aren't likely to perform such tasks particularly well. Nonetheless, I see nothing particularly immoral here, in fact, in my own flawed, worthless individual perspective, I see this treatment as being perfectly morally justifiable.

I too am neither rich nor powerful, and thus don't believe that my viewpoints are morally superior. I believe them to be the right way of doing things, but I couldn't tell you whether or not I was 'moral' in what I do or not. My own view of morality can best be summed up like so; ordinary humans cannot divine morality by themselves, thus it must be handed down to them, whether by the Church, the state or by those in high places. In my personal opinion I am neither 'moral' or 'immoral', I have moments where I am one, the other, or even both. To be honest, I believe that my account with God is in the red, but what can I do to put it in the black, for I am merely an ordinary and powerless person. Neither I, nor R2D2 have any competency when it comes to judging moral matters, at least not of our own accord, because both of us are in the end ordinary.

As for prisons, well, I stand by my comments. Sometimes people must be compelled to do things, one of those things is to obey the law. If they do not comply then they should be punished, harshly, for not doing so, in order to deter others from doing the same (and thus challenging the power of the state). The more brutal the punishment, the more fear it will generate, and the more likely to swing into line the rest of the population will be. I suppose you think this is too harsh, and that criminals deserve to be rehabilitated; I say, only the criminal themselves and God can truly rehabilitate a criminal, the state's competency is to punish, not to rehabilitate. Regarding forced labour, that has been a practice for millennia, and seems a perfectly sensible thing, fulfilling two roles; punishing the criminal and providing free labour to those in society who need free labour.

The American prison system practices amoralist treatment of inmates? No way.

So, what would you do? The state has to signal its disapproval of the actions of criminals (in a way that is easy for everybody to understand), thus, naturally, prisons must be unpleasant places to be. Far from being a violation or dereliction of duty, these prisons are in fact performing to a tee the role that prisons should perform; that is, to be hard, nasty places of punishment and suffering for the inmates.

Not all inmates are alike.  Not all of them are there for the most heinous offenses that you're probably envisioning (rape, murder, child molestation, etc.).   For the purpose of this conversation this is assuming, of course, that everyone who is in prison is there because they deserve to be there -and that law enforcement caught the right man in every one of those cases.  Prisons should be places of punishment for those inmates who are truly forsaken, certainly, but for those inmates who can be redeemed, rehabilitation as well. 

So is this really the right way to go about it?  Especially considering that many prisoners are there for nothing more serious than drug offenses?   

The thing to do here is to decriminalise certain crimes. In the mean time...

[Cassius]

This is sickening.. What kind of monsters do things like that?

The American prison system practices amoralist treatment of inmates? No way.

Firstly, amoralist isn't a word, and secondly, even if it were it doesn't refer to what I think you are referring to. Secondly, who are you to judge what is immoral and what isn't. You are merely an individual and from what I can gather not exactly a hugely wealthy or powerful one either. I also recall that you are not religious, thus meaning that you have no Church, no God and no book to back up whatever definition of morality that you are peddling. You are also criticising the morality of the state, yet, again, you have no comparable source of weight to back up your claims to know what it is to be moral.

So, what would you do? The state has to signal its disapproval of the actions of criminals (in a way that is easy for everybody to understand), thus, naturally, prisons must be unpleasant places to be. Far from being a violation or dereliction of duty, these prisons are in fact performing to a tee the role that prisons should perform; that is, to be hard, nasty places of punishment and suffering for the inmates.

Although I wouldn't, myself, go in for withholding medical care from inmates, that is only because I am of the view that they should be farmed out to do hard labour for free, and, you know, crippled criminals aren't likely to perform such tasks particularly well. Nonetheless, I see nothing particularly immoral here, in fact, in my own flawed, worthless individual perspective, I see this treatment as being perfectly morally justifiable.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Well I've gleaned that the man is basically a Nazi, so I'm going to guess "everything".

Before we go any further down this line of, um... attack, let me just put forward a couple of point. I am not anti-Semitic. I am not anti-Slavic. I do not believe that the British people need 'living space'. I'm not very keen on the idea of placing one semi-competent man at the pinnacle of a vast, complex state, with pretty much absolute power. I do not believe that the disabled should be killed. I'm not amenable to the idea that women are basically baby factories. I also do not believe that there is such thing as a 'master race'.

Now that's out of the way, please inform me as to why I'm 'basically a Nazi'. Or we could just forget the whole thing .

[Cassius]

So Cassius' brutal rejoinder to R2D2 consists of (1) a yogiism ("That isn't word, and you're using it wrong!"), (2) a tautology ("You are merely an individual!"), and (3) a demand that R2D2 produce a deity to legitimize his opinion?

+ implying that this criteria didn't apply to rich and powerful people, who are apparently the only ones allowed to make moral judgements.

I guess that is even more disturbing than his views on prisons. To imply that only rich and powerful people can claim what is moral or not.... I am sorry but this kind of thinking is what leads to fascism and tyranny and inhuman, misanthropic procedures... How can one get to such a worldview?

In the end, 'morality' is essentially worthless unless one has the power to back up moral pronouncements. Take Christianity for example; the reason as to why it is still taken (relatively) seriously as a moral belief system is because it has the support of lots of big and often very wealthy Churches (the Catholic Church is the obvious example); of course, in the past, there was far more state support of Christianity, which also helped. If Christianity was just some poverty-stricken cult on the fringes of society, then I doubt it would be taken seriously at all as a system of morality. My point is that in order for ideas and views on morality to be viable, they need to have powerful forces behind them, patrons, if you will. Nobody believes in the divine right of Kings anymore because nobody powerful advocates for it, whereas, in the 17th century, it was in essence the ideology of several monarchs and many were willing to fight and die for it.

To preach morality without the power to back up what you are preaching is like having a body without bones; utterly useless and a general waste of time for all concerned. I'm not so much arguing that the rich and powerful are the only people who can have ideas on morality, but they are the only people whose ideas matter very much in the grand scheme of things.

Take me, my 'moral views' are worthless; they may do fine in the context of kitchen table banter, but with regards to the workings of the government, those in high places etcetera, they are totally worthless and irrelevant. There is no point railing against the 'evils' of the state if one has no power to change anything, and so one might as well accept the current situation and attempt to rub along with it as best as one can. For most people, life is like crawling through a deep marsh; the very act of crawling through the accumulated muck and sh!t to tiresome to allow us to look up at the pale blue sky above us and think. Rather than stop and gaze, one might as well plough on through the marsh.

[Cassius]

Gotcha, Thrasymachus.

I quite like Thrasymachus, so thank you .

"The state must punish criminals because the state must punish criminals." - Cassius

Cassius' posts are exposes of the worst kind of sophistry. He provides no justification for America's carceral state outside of its existence as a state. To Cassius, the existence of the state is only justified by the right of the strongest. Cassius has demonstrated that he does not believe in the validity of moral systems unless they are justified by coercive force or hegemonic rule, which is another indication that the position of his claim is founded upon the right of the strongest.

The right of the strongest is a principle that could justify any moral action in any circumstance. In otherwords, it is not a moral principle at all: it is sophistry. It is the kind of sophistry that has been employed to justify political imprisonment, the violation of civil liberties and mass murder.  Ironically, Cassius' argument may also be used to justify the expropriation of land, the beheading of aristocrats and the burning of churches.

You say that I engage in sophistry, yet, what evidence do you have to suggest that my argument is anymore false than your own?

Anyroad, that the state is the state and should be obeyed and respected if it flowers from a legitmiate source is but one argument in favour of America's carceral state. Punishments such as these have many purposes; to deter, to penalise those who do wrong, to enforce and assert the supremacy of the state. The existence of the state is not only justified by its power, but because of the functions that it peforms; to maintain law and order, to defend its borders and to assist its law-abiding citizens in their business. However, it can only do those things if it has power; a state stripped of its ability to coerce and to bribe is a fundamentally useless state.

I repeat, how can a system of morality be worthwhile if it has no power? The aim of morality, after all, is to lay down the laws by which we should live and to enforce those laws; a moral system without power can do neither of those things, because it does not possess two of the key means of persuading people to do things; the aforementioned coercion and bribery. It can still attempt to 'reason' with people, or to appeal to them on the grounds of other matters, such as being the 'kith and kin' of the target, but in the end both of these appeals seem (historically speaking) to be largely superfluous.

Thus, I stand by my point that morality requires a powerful patron in order to be enforceable and worthwhile. The very 'civil liberties' that you mention in your second paragraph do not exist by some form of natural law, they exist because of the state defining and handing down to the citizenry those civil liberties. I suppose that it could be argued that they come from God, but, as you are not religious (as far as I'm aware and correct me if I'm wrong), that argument is out of the window. So tell me, where do our 'rights' come from? Who or what is it that ensures we have those rights? More importantly, how does it ensure that we have those rights? For the concept of human rights is in of itself part of a system of morality, and I would ask you, how has that system become relevant?

[Cassius]

This is sickening.. What kind of monsters do things like that?

The American prison system practices amoralist treatment of inmates? No way.

Firstly, amoralist isn't a word, and secondly, even if it were it doesn't refer to what I think you are referring to. Secondly, who are you to judge what is immoral and what isn't. You are merely an individual and from what I can gather not exactly a hugely wealthy or powerful one either. I also recall that you are not religious, thus meaning that you have no Church, no God and no book to back up whatever definition of morality that you are peddling. You are also criticising the morality of the state, yet, again, you have no comparable source of weight to back up your claims to know what it is to be moral.

So, what would you do? The state has to signal its disapproval of the actions of criminals (in a way that is easy for everybody to understand), thus, naturally, prisons must be unpleasant places to be. Far from being a violation or dereliction of duty, these prisons are in fact performing to a tee the role that prisons should perform; that is, to be hard, nasty places of punishment and suffering for the inmates.

Although I wouldn't, myself, go in for withholding medical care from inmates, that is only because I am of the view that they should be farmed out to do hard labour for free, and, you know, crippled criminals aren't likely to perform such tasks particularly well. Nonetheless, I see nothing particularly immoral here, in fact, in my own flawed, worthless individual perspective, I see this treatment as being perfectly morally justifiable.

What the hell is wrong with you?

Well I've gleaned that the man is basically a Nazi, so I'm going to guess "everything".

Before we go any further down this line of, um... attack, let me just put forward a couple of point. I am not anti-Semitic. I am not anti-Slavic. I do not believe that the British people need 'living space'. I'm not very keen on the idea of placing one semi-competent man at the pinnacle of a vast, complex state, with pretty much absolute power. I do not believe that the disabled should be killed. I'm not amenable to the idea that women are basically baby factories. I also do not believe that there is such thing as a 'master race'.

Now that's out of the way, please inform me as to why I'm 'basically a Nazi'. Or we could just forget the whole thing .

you may not be a Nazi specifically, but you are absolutely, unapologetically, without an ounce of  hyperbole, an absolute Webster's definition of a fascist.

So yes, without a swastika, your philosophies and politics are still horrid to the core.

Congratulations on your re-election, Senator.

Webster defines 'fascist' on these lines I believe;

'A political philosophy, movement or regime that exalts the nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralised, autocratic government headed by a dictatorial, severe economic and social regimentation and forcible suppression of opposition'

I don't believe in autocracy. I don't think it works, and I don't think its a good idea even idealistically. I don't believe in economic and social regimentation, nor do I believe in the forcible suppression of opposition. I'm not a fascist, Badger, just a good old Tory.

Anyway, please explain to me as to why my 'philosophies' and politics are horrid to the core. Don't hold back, I'm curious as to why you in particular think that.