Quote:
Originally Posted by Derleth
Quote:
Originally Posted by thorny locust
'You mustn't kill people! Killing people is bad! And to prove it we're going to kill you!'
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I disagree.
Try these on for size:
"You must not kill me! Killing me is bad! To prevent it, I'm going to kill you!"
"You must not use your military to attack me! Using your military against me is bad! To stop your military, I'm going to use my military!"
"You must not shoot others in a bank robbery! Shooting others to rob them is wrong! Also, shooting police officers is wrong! To stop you, we're going to shoot you!"
There's a pragmatic case against the death penalty. I'm not sure there's a coherent moral case against it if you still accept self-defense and military action as valid, not to mention an armed police force. |
Not the same situation, because in the case of the death penalty, we have a choice. The murderer who we'd be trying to execute has already been stopped, if they're sufficiently under control that we could execute them.
If the only way to prevent somebody from killing me is for me to kill them, then yes, I'm entitled to do so. But if I could prevent them from killing me just by shutting a door between us, then whatever some states' laws say I hold that it would be wrong for me to kill them.
If the only way to prevent another entity's military from attacking my country/group with deadly force is to use deadly force against them, then we're entitled to do so. If we have other reasonable methods of preventing them, then I hold that we're not entitled to do so. (If the results of any negotiations are sufficiently terrible, then we'd be entitled to fight back anyway. But that's not going to apply to a prisoner on trial.)
If the only way to prevent the robbers from shooting people is to shoot them, then the police/bank guards/whoever are entitled to shoot them. If the robbers are already subdued and handcuffed, I don't think anybody here is going to claim the police are still entitled to shoot them.
Note that I said above that a society that's unable to provide prisons is entitled to kill people who are sufficiently dangerous to it -- because they have no better choice. But we do.