The death penalty is wrong, but I think there's a point where when you have politicians wielding massive amounts of power being willfully capricious that the crime is on a wholly different scale. They should be held to a higher standard and I think that higher standard can and should include harsher penalties in cases of crimes against humanity.
The argument that human rights are indivisible is contradicted by your statement right after as western civilization turns inwards on itself and begins removing human rights.
>Neither torture nor genocide is recognized anywhere as a human right. After WWII we held trials.
What do you want to tell me? Of course torture is not a human right. That doesn't change a bit that human rights apply to everyone. Even to the torturer. Sure, we should put him/her in prison for a long time but never does even the torturer loose his/her humanity. That is exactly what distinguishes us from the nazis/fascists.
Distinguishes us how? If you cannot lose your humanity through torture, can you lose it through mass murder? Or is humanity something you cannot ever take away from anyone? If so, the worst of the nazis still had it. Yet I do know that it can be taken away precisely because you can torture another person until they aren't themselves anymore. That is, in fact, the goal of torture.
Believing that the world is not divided into good and evil people also requires me to believe that people of the US have the same capacity for both good and evil as did the people of nazi Germany
Yes, they do. This is what "indivisible" in this context means. Of course they should be imprisoned but they are still humans with their human rights.
I know that this is hard for some to understand but retribution has it's limits. It is counter productive anyway. Just look at the USA. It's at the top of countries when it comes to the incarceration rate. Even Chinas incarceration rate is only ~1/5th compared to the USA. Norway is at a rate of ~1/10 of that of the USA. The American way clearly does not work. They put an unbelievable number of people in prisons where human rights are not guaranteed and yet they would still be much, much safer elsewhere. Their prísons grow criminals instead of citizens.
If you say: Nazis do not have human rights than where do you stop? Child molesters like Donald Trump? If human rights are relative and open to interpretation, there are no human rights.
That won't happen. Lynndie England served 3 years and roams freely in the USA. The death penalty is wrong anyway.
> They aren't humans anymore
Congratulations. That is what the Nazis said about the Jews.
Human rights are indivisible. This is a cornerstone of western civilization.