THE GOVERNMENT KILLING AN INNOCENT PERSON UNDER THE GUISE OF JUSTICE ??? HOW INCREDIBLY HYPOCRITICAL..

ITS TIME TO TAKE BACK.. OUR COUNTRY..

It’s Texas.

They don’t really wish to be part of the USA (as they are a ‘Republic’ not a State and constantly harp on that fact).

Let us give them their wish. Pull ALL Federal assets and let them fend for themselves. They’ll last about 2 months against Mexico, regardless of The Alamo. Let’s see um swing that pair they claim to have. It’ll be effen hilarious.

Cynical: “The State will do whatever it damn well pleases, it doesn’t care a whit whether you think it’s competent or trustworthy”

Alex: “If we get rid of the death penalty, then in the area of the death penalty, it won’t be able to whatever it pleases. I think it really undermines your convincingness that you dogmatically over-generalize about the EVILNESS of “The State.” Instead you should convince us that the violations of rights inherent to any government system are more severe than the violations of rights that would result with anarchy. Or something like that. Not to be too arrogant.”

No worries, Alex. But I do notice that your statement is very conditional. When your premise (citizen-induced abolition of the death penalty) is fulfilled, I’ll be better able to address the consequences you list.

As for the evilness of the State, the very definition of State (that entity with a monopoly on initiative force in a given geographical area) denotes evil from a violence/aggression viewpoint, which is the foundation of the bedrock morality I propound, namely that initiating violence against another human being outside of extremely narrow conditions of self-defense is evil. Most normal people are raised to believe that. Call it “dogma” if you wish, that doesn’t invalidate the principle.

Not to reinvent the wheel, and I admit to using shorthand as it has been some time since I last compared/contrasted statism and anarchy here, but my basic theory is that violence (really control, the instinct to control one’s environment, including other humans) is written into the code of human existence; i.e., human beings will now and forever be violent (controlling) creatures who must somehow live together peacefully.

So, what is the best way to organize society? By (foolishly, I believe) trying to contain that violence by “delegating” it (there is no real delegation in the end, it’s a usurpation) to an unaccountable superagency known as the State? Or by distributing it evenly across all of human society by reserving sovereignty for the individual?

For those who comprise the State, the answer is obvious — status quo, as no one in that position would risk the loss of control they currently possess. For those who erroneously believe they comprise the State (We the People!), the same answer applies but for more emotional reasons.

The shame is that the latter group is the main recipient of State violence, and I believe things could not possibly be worse if that violence were evenly distributed across the population (anarchy).

The State is very clever, it divides and conquers. Back to the original point, when the death penalty is forbidden to the State by the individuals of this country, I will tip my hat to you and re-evaluate the nature of sovereignty in the US.

100% agreement, JOR. Everything else is utilitarianism.

Do all of the extra appeals contribute usefully toward the exoneration of innocent people? If any of them do not, they would seem pointless. And if any of them do, why should not similar appeals be available to those “only” sentenced to life without parole, whose guilt should be even less cerain than the guilt of those sentenced to death? If someone’s going to die in prison, does it really matter whether it takes a year or sixty? Either way, the government destroyed their life (hopefully deservedly).

The death penalty is sometimes needed, but those who abuse positions of power should receive it first.

Well, I guess they could get better at executing us, but I’m not so sure that’d make the death penalty a better thing to have.

What’s the strongest argument against the death penalty?

I guess that depends on the audience. In today’s world, everybody’s instinctive, trained-from-birth reaction to moral arguments is to blanche and say something irrelevant like “but who says?” or “but *I* don’t have a problem with X” wave it off (and then in the next breath make questionable pseudo-moral pseudo-arguments like appeals to Duh Law or entreatments to follow the rules). So arguments about the morality of killing people, or of killing people in self-defense, or of killing people as punishment, or of killing people just to shed some blood for blood what was shed, are all pretty weak arguments. So, too, are arguments about the state’s competence to “get the right guy”. Today, it’s all about how much it costs, and how much it deters undesired behavior. And executing people who are convicted of X has roughly the same deterrent effect (if any) whether they are actually factually guilty or not.

Of course, that doesn’t mean those are bad arguments. They’re just not very strong or persuasive arguments, given the audience. I actually don’t think there are any strong arguments against the death penalty, again, given the audience. I think there are plenty of very good arguments, and I tend to think the best arguments are the more basic moral appeals – it’s just wrong to kill someone who is not an active threat to life or limb, no matter how bad he is or how much your emotions demand blood and pain be shed. And really, the arguments that have the best chance for being strong arguments are the ones that engage people’s moral intuitions directly, not the piddling about over how much the appeals system costs or whatever (9/10 people would probably just want to be rid of the appeals system before they got rid of the death penalty anyway, due process be damned). And I really think arguments relying on cases of questionable convictions or factual guilt, while very good arguments, are actually the weakest arguments of all given the audience and American culture. They can always be rationalized (“well if they got arrested they were probably bad people anyway, so who cares, and it sends a message either way”) or just waved off (“isolated incidents!”).

As in you saying, no, hell no, NO!

I’m glad you and I agree that there are non-violent solutions to problems that the State presently solves with aggressive force.

Cynical,
“How is a State execution self-defense, Joe? It’s not, so that point is irrelevant.”

It isn’t but I believe Joe’s response was in rebuttal to your “killing a person is wrong”. It is relevant to that posting.

Thanks and yes, of course. Cynical likes to throw out big broad statements and then fein shock that people call him on it. Buy hey, he is an anarchist, so I get it.

Cynical’s later anarchist suggestion, however, works fine for me too.

The christian pro death penalty crowd should read this a few more times,

http://bible.cc/romans/12-19.htm

Just as the christian anti-pot crowd should read Genesis 1:29 a few more times,