First off, everybody has the right to their own opinion, no matter how ignorant it seems to others. It isn't very nice to go flaming them for it. America is pretty much founded off of the whole live and let die philosophy. Survival of the fitest. It is the very natural way of things, you'll find it happening in nature everyday. Before you say that humans have their own mind and are better than the animals, I must say that of course we are, but you see this same behavior in humans too. Always have, always will. You can argue that we are better than this until the cows come home, but it wont make the facts of life any less true. You will always have power hungry madmen who want more power. This is called greed. We all know greed quite well and have all felt it at some level or another. Anyway, America won it independance through this philosophy, and it is still a very strong part of us today. Americans have the tendancy to be extremely independant. Once when I lived oversees somebody told me that we Americans are extremely cruel, because we always kick our children out when they turn 18. This came to me funny, because I have rarely met an 18 year old in America who was not excited to get out on their own. In America our philosophy usually tells us if somebody threatens to take something away from us, we should stand up for ourselves and not let them. If somebody tries to kill you kill them first. No all Americans think this way, but plenty of us do.
That said, hopfully those of you from other countries can understand why some of your ways of thinking are so unbelievable obsured to some of us. To address WESHALLPRESERVE, I know you are young, but I don't think excuses you from laying down so much flak on some of these guy. Try to keep the insults down. It can be damaging to the rest of what you are trying to say, and you do have some great points. But if I were any of the ones you are insulting, I imagine I would stop caring how good your posts are. These other guys have the right to their opinions, it doesnt hurt us that much (especially if they are not an American voter), the consequences of their way of thinking will have the largest impact on them. Whether they ultimately end up finding that impact a positive or a negative one is for them to discover. Keep the good points coming WESHALLPRESERVE, but I would suggest (but only a suggestion) trying to use more tact. You are going to find that most people in life are close minded and already know all the truth about the world and everything in it. When this is the case, as it most often is, there comes a moment when the best course of action is to stop arguing with them.
A truely wise man always realizes what a fool he really is. The universe is a massive place full of countless things, none of us will ever know more than the smallest fraction of these things. This is why an open mind is a smart thing to hang onto.
And about the whole thout shalt not kill thing. There are numerous translation of the Bible in English, many of them have both their strong points and their low points, and they all say essentually the same thing execpt for the occasional translation error. To truely say that it really means that you should not murder, you would need to look at the original Hebrew text, because you will find both murder and kill used if you look through just a few different english translations. The fact is that the same Jewish law that commanded that man should never kill man also supported capitol punishment, and the same God who gave them the ten commandments (of which man should not kill man is one of) also sent the Jewish people into battles against other nations. I don't know if the quote ferris gave mention that, I did not take the time to read them. If they did then I apologize for the redundacy. Humerously murder was punishable by death. So to use that against the death penalty is laughable. And this is off topic, but thought I would mention just for fun, something that a lot of abortionist hating Christians (not a fan of abortion myself) have a hard time with, the Jewish law mentions the compensation that a man was to pay if he struck a pregnant woman and caused her to lose her baby, and it is a MUCH smaller price than the penalty for the murder of child. (I don't see this as a Biblical base that abortion should not be equated with murder, but I do find it something interesting to think about.)