A Texas man who said his death sentence was based on false and unscientific expert testimony was executed Thursday evening for killing a man during a robbery decades ago.
Brent Ray Brewer, 53, received a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville for the April 1990 death of Robert Laminack. The inmate was pronounced dead at 6:39 p.m. local time, 15 minutes after the chemicals began flowing.
Prosecutors had said Laminack, 66, gave Brewer and his girlfriend a ride to a Salvation Army location in Amarillo when he was stabbed in the neck and robbed of $140.
Brewer’s execution came hours after the U.S. Supreme Court declined to step in over the inmate’s claims that prosecutors had relied on false and discredited expert testimony at his 2009 resentencing trial.
Let me spell it out for you why this is a ridiculous argument.
A person who is “pro-choice” believes that the law should give each affected individual the choice of what to do. It is about individual liberty, and definitely not about a government having a choice. There is simply no way to extend this to mean what you’re saying.
If that’s not enough for you, a person who is “pro-life” believes that the law should not allow an individual to decide what to do. They believe that this individual liberty is not as important as the life of a fetus. So, it’s rather easy to extend this one. In fact, when you hear a pro-life person trying to explain why they are right, virtually all of their rationale also works for people after they are born. But then when you try to show the ramifications of their arguments, they simply don’t accept them.
The problem is that these are not two equal sides. Pro-choice people can actually argue consistently and with conviction. But pro-life people cannot, unless they throw in all this other stuff. So, when people mock “pro-life” in this situation, they are actually mocking the idiotic actual views that these people hold, and contrasting them against an ideal pro-lifer who actually believes what they say.
Disregarding my personal views on this subject, this is a straw man argument.
You have very noticably left out that pro-lifers view the fetus as one of these individuals you say the Pro-choice regard so highly. The Pro life argument is that it should be systemically illegal to end the life of what they view as innocent individuals.
Which… yes, is kind of similar to the general take on this article, regardless of your views on the individuality of fetuses
While I can appreciate what you’re going for here and will even relent that your argument is topical to the discussion at hand. I do feel the need to point out that a fetus is, by deffinition, objectively, not a human being.
I get where you’re coming from and I respect that you believe these 2 things are equitable. But, feelings aside, capital punishment for a human being is very very very different from removing a small collection of half formed cells. Its like comparing the death of an animal to that of a tumor that was removed in a surgical procedure. The tumor died, but it’s not the same thing as killing an actually sentient aninal
(By the way, that downvote didn’t come from me. I upvoted you just to counteract it.)
I don’t understand what you are saying at all. I don’t mean that the argument is unclear. I mean that your sentences don’t make enough sense to me to convey the information to me that you clearly want to convey.
I think you have to be extremely clear when you say that somebody is making a straw man argument. What exactly did I say that was a mischaracterization, and why does it make it easier for me to argue against their point?
I was mocking the shitty logic of the post I replied to. So yes. It is a ridiculous argument. 👍
Congratulations. You’ve managed to read the first sentence without reading anything else. Let me TL;DR it for you. The “shitty logic” you’re referring to is actually pro-choicers giving pro-lifers the best possible interpretation of their own logic. But on the other hand, there is no way to do the same thing to the pro-choice side, because the pro-choicers already believe in the best version of their argument.
To be fair, I wouldn’t read a post that starts with “let me spell it out for you” even if you’re completely right.
I’m guessing you don’t require a particularly compelling reason to avoid reading something.
It’s more like if that’s the tone of your first sentence, I wouldn’t want to be subjected to more condescension.
No, you only like to dish out condescension with phrases like, “I wouldn’t read a post that starts with ‘let me spell it out for you’ even if you’re completely right.”
Sorry for the confusion but I’m not the guy you were talking with. I’m completely on your side I was just critiquing the messaging.
There’s no confusion. I quoted YOU. How strange is it to suggest that I was confused about who I was talking to when essentially the entire comment was quoting the person I was talking to. I’m being generous and assuming that you didn’t just get confused because you’re trying to utilize multiple accounts that you own, and that you forgot which account you used to make which comment.
And my point was that you used a condescending tone when it suited your argument, which puts us in exactly the same boat. The main difference seems to be that I was originally condescending to a person who used an embarrassingly poor argument, which was worthy of condescension.
Thanks - being brigaded by libs means I’m kinda skimming responses at this point.
I’m saying maybe use the interpretation of their argument that they use and not the one you wish to shoe-horn onto it. Whenever I’ve listened to pro-lifers (at least the better versed ones) they clearly only intend to stop what they view as “actively killing an unborn child.” Their logic, taken from that POV (and assuming a BUNCH of their premises are true) seems to be reasonably consistent and would have no bearing on the death of a convicted murderer.
It doesn’t matter where they intend to stop.
If I say, “one apple plus one apple is two apples,” and my stated justification is “1+1=2”. And then later, I say, “one orange plus one orange is three oranges,” you would be right to say, “Your justification 1+1=2 also works for oranges, so somewhere in your arguments you’re incorrect.” But here, you’re saying that I can respond, “I only intend to stop at apples,” and that this is “reasonably consistent.”
This is some sort of cognitive dissonance sophistry that simply doesn’t work. It’s not reasonably consistent.
It’s their argument - so yes it does?
Do you believe people should be free? Well how about criminals? Does it matter now “where you intend to stop”?
If I stated that all people deserve to be free, but I actually meant except for criminals, then that is something that I can be challenged about and I can revise my statement, and I could say, “All people except criminals deserve to be free.” But we’re not talking about that. We’re talking about people who believe in absolutes, but never defend the actual ramifications of those beliefs.
I mean… They do.
https://www.focusonthefamily.com/family-qa/pro-life-perspective-on-the-death-penalty/
You may not like the explanation (i don’t). But they do discuss it and have justifications of sorts for their beliefs.