Meyer Wolfsheim wrote:
My apologies; I never meant that as the implication. I highly doubt that you, or most people, would ever be capable of evil on 1/10th the scale of this attack.
Thanks, but I'd go a bit further. The percentage of humans who would be capable of such evil has to be vanishingly small. Unfortunately, that percentage is not zero so this sort of thing continues to happen.
However, if you assume lack of conscience and moral indifference, this does become a cost/benefit situation.
We have to assume it because it demonstrably exists. The trick then is, to make the costs greater or the benefits less. Easier said then done, but those are our only alternatives.
One of the problems with capital punishment is that it isn't much of a deterrent, except to the Christians who believe in Hell.
I think a much strong argument can be made that those who do not believe in an afterlife would be more deterred than those who do.
You can only be executed once.
Yeah, but it's that once that counts forever. In any event, that's the situation in which we live. There will always be that tiny minority that will do evil. The rest of us are left to monkey with the cost/benefit to reduce the incidences of such evil. Life goes on.
Americans will do everything they can not to believe that this could have been a domestic action. We want to blame the "sand-niggers" and the "rag-heads." The fact that this could have been a sociopath with the ultimate get-rich quick scheme is unthinkable.[2]
And so far, unsupported by the facts. Time will tell. In the mean time, Meyer, I'll bet you, or anyone on this list, a C-note that this is the work of Bin Laden. Any takers? S a n d y