[lbo-talk] Dean: hang 'em high!

[Shane Taylor]

Wojtek Sokolowski wrote
> PS. Why is the capital punishment such an
> abomination to the Left? After all, most (if not all) of
> us are nonviolent people and abhor violence in most
> forms, but violence and death is a basic fact of life.
> Revolutions are rather violent endeavours, and most
> revolutionaries did not have any reservations to get
> rid of the enemies of the revolution. What is more,
> capitalism causes thousands, if not millions,
> preventable deaths every year (unsafe or unhealthy
> products, pollution, wars, etc.). Why then the debate
> centers disproportionally on the death of a few
> scumbags (even if a few of them got lesser
> punishment if they had more competent legal
> defence)?   This is a bona fide question, not a
> rhetorical one.  

Of all the authority exercised by the state, among the last we should
accept is the authority to execute citizens.  As Hitchens once said, it's
no coincidence that so many authoritarian states that treat their
subjects as state property use the death penalty.

At the risk of being crude, I'll point out that just as opposition to
censorship doesn't require approval of the material suppressed,
opposition to capital punishment doesn't require empathy for the
executee.


> We have about 300 gang killings per year in
> Baltimore, which is among the top three or so in
> the nation. People certainly do not like that, but
> few oganize protest campaigns to stop that mayhem.
> Why then many of us expend so much energy on
> behavlf of few criminals whom the law and order
> types decided to kill?

The difference is that gang killings aren't legal, but state killings
are.

-- Shane

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