Originally Posted by
Snowraven
I disagree. While, for people that are expected to be released from prison at one point, rehabilitation is more important than punishment, once you're expected to be there for life for actions such as the one Brevik did the rehabilitation aspect disappears.
So, since these people have proven that they can't be and won't be rehabilitated, there is one question left. What purpose do they still serve? To society? To anyone really?
Well, normally I'd wager that they're kept alive due to the fact that there could still be charged wrongly. And that is ok. However, this guy was not charged wrongly, he was seen on cameras, he admitted to doing it, ample evidence was found.
So, there is no doubt that he's a mass murderer and that rehabilitation is out of the question.
Now, from my point of view, now we come to another thing, what makes us humans better than animals? Why, it's free thought and the ability to tell right from wrong! But certain elements of society, like mass murderers, can't tell right from wrong. And while you could say that they still have free thought, they still acted against the law, killing other human beings, knowing that what they did was wrong. When a tiger meets someone in a jungle and kills them, it can't understand if what he did is wrong, it only does it based on instinct, if it's hungry or feels his territory is threatened, he will kill you, if not, no.
So, from this point of view, I could consider that tiger better than mass murderers. Why? Well, because mass murderers kill knowing the full consequences of their actions, knowing that what they do is wrong, not because they can't control themselves, but on the contrary.
And what do we do with animals? Well, we cage them, we kill them. And since I have reached the conclusion that animals are above mass murderers... why would mass murderers deserve rights above animals?
And usually I know that someone comes with the same argument "but it's a human being!" so let's do it another way. You're in a room with an endangered siberian tiger and Adolf Hitler. You know you will be saved after a period of time, but if you, Hitler and the tiger don't eat before that, you will all die. You have the choice, kill the endangered siberian tiger and eat it with Hitler or kill Hitler and eat him with the tiger. Would you put any importance to Hitler's "human" rights? Because if you say no, and would kill him, you've already proven that you don't mind killing mass murderers, the question is only how much crime must they have done to deserve death. And if you say that you'd kill the tiger, it means that you'd rather save a mass murderer rather than an animal that had done nothing wrong and is facing extinction, otherwise said, you'd save a criminal rather than the patrimony of our planet.