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

Christian Gregory christian11 at mindspring.com
Thu Jun 19 06:51:33 PDT 2003



>So if one does not object too much to the above listed acts of killing, why would one object to killing a criminal? The distinction between voluntary and involuntary death does not help much here, because (i) most of the killings listed above (except euthanasia) are not consented to by the killee and (ii) it is a two edge sword: a convicted murderer did not respect the
will of the person he killed, why then we should respect his?

First, because you aren't, in the case of the murderer, killing someone who is incapacitated. And in this (Rideau) case, far from protecting society, you're actually preventing it from benefitting more from his freedom.

Second, if the only argument for killing someone who has clearly shown every sign of good citizenship since his conviction is that you're doing back to him what he did to another, then all you've got is the most mechanically nihilist corrections system imaginable. It is an expedient that allows you to avoid asking harder questions, like why some people are more likely to be sentenced to death for capital crimes than others, or whether killing is a just response to killing, aside from its ability to soothe tempers.

Christian



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