Rules of Law and Logic

{link » Imprisonment and the right to vote}

“Should prisoners have the vote? I've never thought about it, to be honest, until I read this post by Afua Hirsch, who thinks they should have. All she persuaded me of, however, is that if you want to make a case for something, you need to make the case - you know, put forward arguments, try to persuade people, consider and rebut possible counter-arguments. Hirsch does nothing of the kind. She simply tells you that the right sort of people think that prisoners should have the vote.

Whether she's noticed it or not, another category of persons overrepresented in the prison population are those convicted of crimes. That's step one. Step two is to admit into one's thinking some concept of perpetrator culpability for crimes. Step three is then to recognize that imprisonment for crime includes a retributive element, whatever rehabilitative aims might also be appropriate; and to see that a question can now legitimately arise as to whether deprivation of voting rights might be an appropriate form [of] retributive punishment, as incarceration is thought to be.” [emphasis added]
 — Norman Geras

Rules? We don't need no stinkin' rules! As Norm has no doubt recognized, there are great numbers of pseudo intellectuals pushing and shoving to appeal to the much greater numbers of "citizens" who can barely scrape together half a dozen words into a pseudo sentence that "kinda" makes sense, if you can recover from rolling on the floor laughing your ass off (ROTFLMAO).

Post #712 Rules of Law and Logic