[snakeboy]

You can laugh all you want, but killing fewer innocent people is in fact a good thing. If you can't see the value in that, then politics is not for you :)

I think we should celebrate that kind of incremental progress so long as it's not progress towards some kind of inescapable local minimum. And even in that case, it just becomes more complicated, not obviously wrong either.

[tstrimple]

Reducing the number of innocent deaths is an improvement. It doesn't feel like it's worth patting yourself on the back over reducing the number of unnecessary deaths cause when the process itself should be eliminated. I reject the idea that "politics" means negotiating over how much completely unnecessary human suffering is acceptable because we have to compromise with the people who want humans to suffer for one reason or another. Not every issue has two sides. Sometimes people and ideas and practices are simply wrong.

[snakeboy]

> Sometimes people and ideas and practices are simply wrong.

Of course, and I agree with you on this particular issue. All I mean is that if we can act today to chip away at the problem rather than just talking about the ideals, that's good, and in a democracy, that's what we accept as we work towards the ideal.

> It doesn't feel like it's worth patting yourself on the back over reducing the number of unnecessary deaths cause when the process itself should be eliminated.

Life's too short, I'm happy to celebrate progress. I'm proud to see the end of it in my home state of Virginia this year, even if it's not nationally outlawed.