Bigthink - Feature Comments Feed

Comment on: The Preventative State

Bigthink — Thu, 01 May 2008 07:30:32 +0100

Even though I believe in most of the premises Prof. Dershowitz is stating: ie. "You should treat people that are suicide bombers like Lions" He would be better off if he stopped the hysterical approach to our current dilemma.

Since 9-11 Most in America seem willing to give up Liberty for safety. This is the root of preventive jurisprudence. In WWII the US faced an enemy that also thought suicide bombing was good, please don't forget the lesson of the Kamikaze fighters of Japan. They also flew airplanes to their own individual deaths to attempt to kill more of us. Therefore, the promises of an afterlife are not the only root to suicide behavior and can't be the only way we address this behavior.

If someone is willing to give up their life for a belief, no matter how erroneous one in opposition to this belief feels, we will not stop their martyr mentality by killing them all. Heck, killing them is what they want. One who is in opposition must first listen and then, like we so often do in the US with extremist, we take the middle road and ask them to pull in their extremist. Example: alot of the FBI agents that just raided that crazy polygamist sect in Texas were LDS practicing members. (Mormon's raiding other, too extreme wrong view held, Mormon's for those not familiar with the LDS faith.) In our country, where Christianity is widely accepted, my favorite Christian book is the recently released "Lord Protect Us From Your Followers" In this book, is a calling for Christians to pull in these war-mongering extremists that make all Christians look bad.

Thus, the two points of this response so far are:
1. Please think and don't fall into the trap of giving up our liberties for "preventative jurisprudence" and
2. America could succeed in the war on Muslim extremists if they used and promoted more, the use of current Muslim's that know that Allah wouldn't want babies dying and woman raped. The Taliban Government is not inline with the Quaran and America has alot of Muslims that are angry with the violent methodology employed by terroist. Instead of labeling all Muslim's as terroist, America needs its Muslim population to be on the forefront of this war. That would be all the "preventive jurisprudence" our country needs for terrorist.

Finally, to combat crime on another front ex. sexual predators, we simply need to strengthen and make extremely harsher punishments for first offenders. Most sexual crimes are committed by re-offenders, therefore, we don't need "preventative jurisprudence" we need punishment for prosecuted predators that deters the crime in the first place and never allows a convicted predator to find other people to harm.

Thank you in advance to anyone that take the time to read this response.

Comment on: The Preventative State

Bigthink — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 04:45:17 +0100

We addressed the subject of incarceration, however I believe not enough was said about the invasion of privacy. What leads the authorities to the conclusion that they may arrest me? Would the qualifications for a preemptive strike include looking over my finances? Looking over the books I read, places I travel, and comments I leave on websites? As a political science student I visit plenty of extremist websites and search for books that could be considered terrorist training material. Is that grounds of an arrest? Is that even grounds for having a closer look at my actions?

A preemptive strike would only encourage the feeling of being an outcast. It would only increase the negative feelings felt by the group that is being singled out for the action. Whether the action is against Jews, Muslims, women, or people that like to highlight their hair and pierce every part of their body, all groups with equal sensitivity feel the lack of acceptance. Single them out and you cause them to come together and use their joined strength to cause more trouble, than before.

A preemptive strike should not be in a form of punishment but in a form of a helping hand. If everyone had a feeling of belonging and knew they could find help from those around them, they would be less willing to go and blow themselves up or go and kill someone. Hate breeds hate, so shouldn%u2019t we focus on lessening the amount of hate in the world rather than breed more of it by separating people into groups that are trust worthy and those whose lives need to be looked into.

Comment on: The Preventative State

Bigthink — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 10:28:59 +0100

"You cannot simultaneously prevent war and prepare for war" -Albert Einstein.

The ends never justify the means, the means justify the ends. There are endless methods for preventing people from committing horrible acts, however preemptive punishment is a horrible act of it's own.

I agree with what he said that we must dispose of the myth of the hereafter. I agree with the Voltaire quote, "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities".

A big problem (as far as extremists) is that when people put faith in something above humanity, namely God (or at least a God that certain people believe in) they lose their faith in humanity. This doesn't just go for Muslim extremists, this goes for evangelical Christians in the US, this goes for Mormon extremists, or any organized religion really.

Comment on: The Preventative State

Bigthink — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 13:20:33 +0100

Thank you for your discussions.
I think that this is the sort of slippery slope that makes the totalitarian state a more feared object than the perpetrators of crime.In the wrong hands this leads to very narrow thinking and a state controlled preventive approach akin to Hitler's final solution.
I was hoping for a more positive approach to preventive jurisprudence. There is enough evidence to know the reasons for most of these crimes, like sexual predators, suicide bombers. How can we help these individuals and groups to better cope with their problems so they don't have to project them onto us all? How can we make our society understand the inevitability of crime and prepare, protect and cope with the inevitable?
Surely if we legislate and prosecute, torture and incarcerate, we all individually absolve ourselves of responsibility, handing over all the power to the state and we exacerbate the potential of violent crime
Joyce Arnold

Comment on: The Preventative State

Bigthink — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:57:12 +0100

There is the very frightening and real danger of pushing people who were innocent of the crime into doing exactly what you didn't want them to do or are accusing them of doing. There has to be a more efficient method of quickly processing suspects and eliminating suspicion - to hold people even for only half a year is a portion of that person's life that can never be recompensated. Mistakenly punishing innocent people for crimes they have not committed is going to have a debiliating long term effect on society, as with the white terror in Taiwan in the fifties where the government incarcerated and executed many of the intellectuals in society on unreliable tips of socialist activity. The effects of this can still be seen today as the politicians in Taiwan use this issue as levers for support and division.

Comment on: The Preventative State

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 20:01:58 +0100

In a sense, this kind of thing isn't new.

We all saw the video of Saddam, on assuming power, reading off a list of people within his own party whom he feared would someday pose a threat to him. They were taken out and killed.

The rationale justifying most incidences of ethnic cleansing often included the fear of future threat from that clan or ethnic group. When Pakistan was losing the war to Bangladesh in 1971, they 'preemtively' collected professors, scientists and scholars and killed them all, to prevent Bangladesh from ever becoming a nation strong enough as to pose a threat.

There is nothing new of this kind of 'preventative' approach. What makes it look different to us is that we're used to seeing this kind of thing done by other nations we consider ghoulish and evil. We're unwilling to concede that by engaging in the same kind of atrocity ourselves, we're becoming evil ourselves.

And we're getting there. A contributor to Guliani's campaign recently commented on the need to eradicate all Muslims in America. Though he said he was 'not necessarily referring to genocide', he made it clear he sees no distinction between moderate and extremist. This kind of thinking is common, if not dominant in the conservative right wing community in America.

Comment on: The Preventative State

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 15:19:38 +0100

Alan Dershowitz presents some good points on the difficulties of adapting constitutional liberties to the modern criminal environment. But it is disheartening that he does not present a middle ground between "letting 10 nuclear terrorists go free to keep one innocent man out of jail" and treating human beings like wild animals. Especially when you realize that this is a Harvard professor who, by his own admission, had been thinking about this issue throughout his life. One is tempted to ask "Where is the Big Think?"

The least he could have done, in the limited timespan of his presentation, was to acknowledge the NEED for the middle ground. He does not. The need should be urgently addressed because torture and unorthodox investigation methods are not going to go away from the real world any time soon and, more importantly, as it stands we are detaining and torturing many more innocent people than there are potential nuclear terrorists which, reportedly, are still walking free.

Torture of innocent suspects are sticky situations. My brutal father extracted numerous confessions from me of things I never did, though his methods fell substantially short of torture. It might have given him some level of satisfaction to discover and punish the offender, but if his objective was to educate me, he utterly failed. All he managed to do was to breed rebellion. In the long run, it was counterproductive for both of us.

The difference between people and lions is that a caged or disabled lion does not breed further resentment from other lions. Draconian measures taken to innocent suspects could push those suspects over the edge to real terrorism. At the very least, they would certainly feed the meme of vengence.

The free world is in a delicate position where the more it responds to the threats posed to it, the more it loses the appeal that is the foundation of its strengths - not to even mention the loss of the reasons that make it worth protecting.

The Free World, and America in particular, was founded on a set of ideas that brought the best, the brightest and the most motivated to its shores. Surrendering those ideas is the ultimate defeat.

Comment on: The Preventative State

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 14:25:30 +0100

I really don't understand how much more "prevention" we can do. The problem isn't that we're not preventing those potential crimes we know about, it's about identifying the crimes in the first place.

There is already a legal structure in place to prevent suicide bombing - identify and monitor the threat, then act when they actually commit a crime (which is inevitable in the planning of a suicide bombing).

If the threat isn't *identified*, then it can never be contained.

But when you use the word "preventative", you seem to mean identifying and containing people who are deemed a threat *before that threat is made clear*. The techniques and psychology to do this identification without a huge number of false-positives is non-existent.

To hold people responsible for things the government has *deemed them likely to do*, using a science that can be best defined as in its "infant stages", is an extremely frightening idea.

Comment on: The Preventative State

Bigthink — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 06:40:55 +0100

The ends do not justify the means Dershowitz, especially when the means erode our personal freedoms. The preventative state is a doorway to what Orwell wrote about in 1984.