Can we just shoot these parents?

The ultimate "adult with a child's brain" put down.

osso...I'm heavy.

If you choose to pull out the "discrimination against a certain population card" I'm going to stop reading.

If the woman, regardless of her weight, wore warm, adequate clothing, but let her child go shivering in tattered rags, I'd be just as disgusted.

It's about depriving someone of something needed to live and thrive, when you obviously enjoy the benefits of the same way too much.

I just hope this kid never has to look at either parent again. The father is just as guilty.

YOu are lost.....it is about someone who has a fucked up relationship with food passing on the problem to her kid. I'd bet a paycheck that she loves her kid, does not want to hurt her kid, and thought that she was helping her kid. It is a mental health issue, not a criminal one.

My opinion that you don't criminally punish the mentally ill, challanged or disturbed is not restricted to those who act out sexually.

No Walter.
I am not saying that they dont deserve a trial, and there is nothing in any of my posts that even suggests that.
IF however, they are tried and found guilty, then I advocate shooting them.
People like that have no socially redeeming qualities and dont deserve to live, IMHO.

Sure, but you posted a strong post against a hungry fattie with vitriolic description.. I'm, obviously, I hope, not on her side re actions.

OK, OK . . . my response wasn't measured . . . starve 'em not quite to death for eight or ten years, then get 'em some psychological help. Whatever the hell they do, get the kids away from 'em . . .

Horrendous behavior from people like that, MM.

How about all those who during the Reagan years ran and supported terrorists actions against innocent men, women and children in Central America - 300,000 people murdered, but not before they were horrendously tortured.?

Do they deserve a trial? do they have socially redeeming qualities? do they deserve to live?

And consider just how many people, Americans, that is, that it took to run these various operations. Consider how far up in the US government this went - all the way to Reagan.

Consider having your tongue pulled out thru a slit in your throat, your wife being raped in front of you then having her breasts cut off, then you, having your testicles crushed, your penis severed and stuck down your throat choking you, ...

Now consider your ideas as to what should happen to this woman and weigh them against what you think should happen to those who provided material aid to the carnage in Central America.

Answer - yes! But like others said that is too easy on them.

I don't think Chai was picking on obesity - just pointing the irony and inappropriateness - hoarding food for herself when she obviously did not need it at the expense of her child.

Well, this thread's title is "can we just shoot them", noz if they should be shot after a trial.


I'm rather happy that the degrees of penalty aren't a result of s.o.'s personal opinion. (Not to mention that I never advocate medieval punishments for any kind of crime.)

There are many things people do to each other that I don't understand; a mother doing this to her own child is one of them. One would think that regardless of situation the bonds of human motherhood would be sufficient to restrain the mother from such horrendous actions. Sadly, a corollary of such thinking would presume such behavior being less surprising coming from strangers, and that is the kind of thinking that makes one despondent of the world.

I fear that as long as I live I shall never see the bottom of human depravity.

Simple human outrage would cause me to go along with Setanta's suggestion for an appropriate punishment. After all, any humanity the woman might have engendered from the heart of another was nullified by her own brutality, but her actions are so beyond the Pale of human behavior to consider the mother insane.

Unfortunately there are parents whose crimes against their children are worse than what has, justifiably, triggered such anger and disgust among participants of this thread.

While anyone with any sort of moral foundation would not commit these crimes, the fact that some do doesn't mean they are mentally ill in the sense that they cannot or should not be held responsible for their actions.

Such people are evil.

The concept doesn't require a belief in God, or lesser notions of the supernatural.

It does require a recognition that with very, very rare exception, people choose to do the things they do.

With the possible exception of the grossly brain damaged, no one, no matter the circumstances of their life, is incapable of empathy or compelled to consider only their own desires in reaching the choices they make.

If your self-indulgence is so all consuming that you defy natural instincts and neglect or injure your children to directly or indirectly satisfy your personal desires, you are evil.

Because evil requires choice, redemption is always possible, but the rest of us have a very practical interest in requiring a very high standard for the proof of redemption.

I would also argue that as a society the security of which depends upon the right choices of it members, we also have a very practical interest in the deterrence of punishment.

And I would argue that as human beings who can and will suffer for the evil of others we have an intrinsic right to retribution.

Because evil people can very easily subvert protection, punishment and retribution to the furthering of their self-indulgence, we need to deal with evil within a framework of fundamental law.

Like any systems we can create, it will be imperfect, and so we find ourselves arguing about how we should deal with the imperfection of our system:

Should 99 evil people go unpunished and free to assure that 1 innocent is not unjustly convicted?

Is the inevitable (but hopefully rare) unjust punishment of an innocent the price we pay for a societally effective response to evil?

I believe people who think they have the right to judge who lives and dies should have their hands cut off.

Yes, certainly. And that is without canvassing the issue of in what evil consists, who gets to decide who is evil, and why said deciders should get to make the decision.

I consider these people to be brutally stupid. I have no problem with visiting brutal punishment on those who have behaved brutally. I do have a problem with even discussing the concept of evil. Good and bad? Yeah, those are reasonable topics for social debate. Evil, however, simply does not exist.

In a world where we are ever so slowly abolishing the barbarism of capital punishment, here we have nuts wanting to expand it to cover bad parenting.

Bad parenting?

That's what you call this?

If a father rapes his daughter is that "bad parenting?"

If a mother leaves a two year old home alone for two days while she goes in search of Crack is that "bad parenting?"

If a parent beats a child to the point of brain damage, that's simply "bad parenting?"

Essentially lynching such "bad parents", while perhaps emotionally satisfying, can't be tolerated by a society that relies so fundamentally on the Rule of Law, but seeking extreme punishment within the context of the law is neither "nuts," nor "barbaric."

Personally, I don't want the State to have the power to kill its citizens, but it's not because the death penalty is barbaric or immoral.

Eorl didn't say "bad parenting", Finn. He said bad parenting and that's exactly what this is.

Folks who think that lynching is emotionally satisfying and seeking extreme punishment isn't nuts have no business in the administration of justice. Even those sick prosecutors who pander to folks like you don't belong in the process.