So, another two drug smugglers are about to get the noose and bleeding-heart activists are out in full force (they even managed to recruit Richard Branson to join in) decrying the reportedly "inhumane" penalty that's soon to be carried out in Singapore.They have managed to attract international attention to the case of Nagaenthran K. Dharmalingam who, reportedly, has IQ of just 69 points, what would qualify him as intellectually disabled.
I'm focusing on this line of defense as it reveals a lot about the intentions of all of those caterwauling do-gooders and the self-serving hollowness of what they do.Now, we can only assume two things about them:
That their intentions are pure and they do feel for the poor bloke. But in this case using the argument that he should be spared because he is intellectually deficient is painfully illogical.
What interest does the society have in keeping alive a drug trafficker with an IQ allegedly making basic life difficult? Not only has he committed a crime - and it was found that he was capable of understanding what he was doing and the possible consequences - but he would also need state-funded assistance for life either in or out of prison.He would either wither behind bars or, if ever let out, could be recruited to commit another crime. So, what's the point?
Alternatively, we may assume - and I think it's closer to the truth - that those activists don't really care about Nagaenthran's ability to comprehend his actions and are cynically using the IQ argument not in the hope of sparing him but rather to smear the authorities and Singaporean judiciary, portraying them as despotic, oppressive and murderous (despite broad public support for death penalty).Since it is not logical to keep a person whose only contribution to society was attempted capital offense, it is still useful to leverage his case to promote a particular ideological agenda, that has no ground in facts or reality.
Because reality is such that Singapore does not experience the drug problems widely reported in the "developed" West, particularly in the USA.How can anybody in their right mind want to upend the status quo that keeps Singapore safe and overwhelmingly drug-free?Mind you, this was not always the case, as heroin use was quite rife in the 1970s, before the harsh penalties were imposed, eradicating the problem in a very short time.Should Singapore aspire to become another Amsterdam where drug permissiveness created fertile ground for violent organized crime targeting journalists and policemen? Or one of the beloved "progressive" cities like San Francisco or Seattle, with open drug use, homelessness and empty syringes littering the streets?Critics of death penalty attempt to present all sorts of arguments not in the best interest of the society but to desperately defend their irrational ideology that makes them feel morally virtuous.——————I do think, however, that there may be logical ways to defend a drug trafficker's life - not by proving that he's intellectually challenged but rather that he's a genius.If Nagaenthran's IQ was 169 then we could at least contemplate sparing his life and putting it to good use behind bars, feeding him books, math and physics education (or whatnot), hoping he could make a positive contribution to the society, justifying clemency. Sparing an extraordinary mind could outweigh his sins, and make him a productive element of the nation, even if he's still serving a life sentence.But if we know it is quite the opposite, then I think it makes the capital punishment more - not less - logical.Humanity does not need people who commit crimes and take up space at taxpayers' expense. We only need humans who can contribute.If you want to defend the life of a criminal then make a case for what he can do for the rest of us - not that he can't do a damn thing.
