Oh c'mon. If you define civilized society that broadly than anything capable of organized warfare is by definition a civilized society. It would be a pointless tautology. In that context my response that systematic murder is uncivilized (and that therefore a society that engages in systematic murder is an uncivilized society) becomes a direct contradiction in terms. So that's obviously not what I meant.
When I speak of a civilized society it is in comparison to other societies. Not all countries violate human rights on the same scale, and therefore, not all countries are equally civilized.
We also don't treat murder as being infinitely bad, and we reject policies that would decrease the murder rate because they would cost us in terms of something else we value e.g. privacy and convenience.
Almost everyone (including really terrible people) don't want people killed. That is why it is often necessary to de-humanize the enemy. We give them labels, make them not worthy of the protections of civil society, and then it is justified if they die. Because they are not people anymore.
'Unsavory' is an interesting way to describe speech that instructs, encourages, or incites the commission of murder, which has a terminal effect on the speech of the people who die and and a chilling effect on the speech of those around them.
Logically, it would appear that murder is the ultimate form of censorship, by not merely constraining speech but eliminating its very possibility. Perhaps you could articulate how you resolve this philosophical conundrum?
It's implying, without argument, that having the death penalty somehow makes a country "uncivilized". That still counts as "no true Scotsman". "No civilized country..." etc.
I get what you're saying. You're saying the poster isn't implying that the US is not civilized, but rather that given that it is civilized, it should know better.
It still amounts to the same thing. I think you're saying it's not a "no true Scotsman" because instead of a "no true Scotsman would" it's "no true Scotsman should"? But the essence of the fallacy is that it, without argument, applies an attribute (in this case, "no death penalty") to a word ("civilized") and argues based on that unargued assertion that it isn't, or isn't acting like, that word (a Scotsman, or civilized).
Edit: I'll put it this way. Here's the OP: "How can a society which calls itself "civilized" do X?" Similar to "How can a man call himself a Scotsman if he does X?". It's implying, without argument, that X is un-Scotsman-like. It's still the "no true Scotsman" fallacy, with a different sentence structure.
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