Quote Originally Posted by Herbert Augustus Chapman View Post
Good Lord! I find myself in a position actually to the right of AWIMB's swivel-eyed-loon-in-chief.

I hold that certain crimes are so unforgivably heinous that only the chop will do. My critics at he dinner tables of leafy Buckinghamshire point at that it is a retributionist ideal that will always fail intellectual scrutiny and I agree wholeheartedly. The need for retribution, on those who have callously murdered your children for example, is primal and innate and is the seed of justice itself.

I doubt that the revolting bellicose ***** Mladic would be bellowing from the dock in The Hague if he faced the rope.
I agree about the desire for personal justice, but that is personal. Frankly, if someone takes personal vengeance for the murder of a child and kills the perpetrator, I for one would generally applaud them and hope they would be treated leniently by the judicial system. That, as you say, is a very natural right of justice that exists outside the law.

However, once you forego that option and leave it up to the state to enact justice on your behalf, you can basically fùck off as far as I'm concerned. At that point, your feelings no longer have anything to do with anything. It's just cold, dispassionate law.