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Orf wiv their 'eads [2]
Aug. 9th, 2006 09:34 amMy post on capital punishment the other day appears to have sparked a fair old debate, which is always gratifying. It's interesting to note that the pro/anti camp on the poll seems fairly evenly split, which surprised me considering that LJ tends to be the natural environment of the woolly lefty and led to me thinking that the atavistic human desire for revenge is quite strong across the population.
After consideration, my own opinion of the death penalty is that I'm against it; not because I consider people inherently worth saving or because I'm worried about ethical concerns of turning the state into a murderer, but simply because I reckon that giving the state the power of life and death over it's citizenry is a really bad idea which historically has gone badly wrong so often that it simply isn't worth the risk and the death penalty is just the thin end of the wedge. Let's face it - I wouldn't trust Tony and Gordon with my phone number* and so any suggestion that a legal structure giving a state with them in charge the authority to kill its people is just plain laughable.
I think that most people wouldn't argue that there are some people out there who just plain have it coming and if they were kiled by a falling piano tomorrow then the world would be a better place for it - whether or not we should go out and kill them, however, is another matter.
Last Sunday I found myself in the happy position of rowing a remarkably attractive young lady across a lake (this hasn't got much to do with my point, I just wanted to boast) and this topic of conversation came up. "Ah", she said. "What about euthanasia?"
Good point, thinks I, and the more I think about it, the better it gets, especially as the people who oppose the death penalty tend often (in my experience) to be pro-euthanasia, and vice versa.
By way of comparison: The death penalty is a system whereby highly trained (legal and medical)professionals are given the option of ending the lives of people who by any reasonable moral standard have really got it coming. Euthanasia is a system whereby highly trained (legal and medical) professionals are given the option of ending the lives of people who have, at worst, just been unlucky. The question is: is it legitimate for the state to allow the legal killing of people who've just been dealt a bum hand, but not to allow the legal killing of people who can reasonably be said to have it coming?
*Because they'd sell it to telemarketers to try and pull the Labour party out of the £14m black hole it finds itself in. Either that or John Prescott would make dirty phone calls to my sister.
After consideration, my own opinion of the death penalty is that I'm against it; not because I consider people inherently worth saving or because I'm worried about ethical concerns of turning the state into a murderer, but simply because I reckon that giving the state the power of life and death over it's citizenry is a really bad idea which historically has gone badly wrong so often that it simply isn't worth the risk and the death penalty is just the thin end of the wedge. Let's face it - I wouldn't trust Tony and Gordon with my phone number* and so any suggestion that a legal structure giving a state with them in charge the authority to kill its people is just plain laughable.
I think that most people wouldn't argue that there are some people out there who just plain have it coming and if they were kiled by a falling piano tomorrow then the world would be a better place for it - whether or not we should go out and kill them, however, is another matter.
Last Sunday I found myself in the happy position of rowing a remarkably attractive young lady across a lake (this hasn't got much to do with my point, I just wanted to boast) and this topic of conversation came up. "Ah", she said. "What about euthanasia?"
Good point, thinks I, and the more I think about it, the better it gets, especially as the people who oppose the death penalty tend often (in my experience) to be pro-euthanasia, and vice versa.
By way of comparison: The death penalty is a system whereby highly trained (legal and medical)professionals are given the option of ending the lives of people who by any reasonable moral standard have really got it coming. Euthanasia is a system whereby highly trained (legal and medical) professionals are given the option of ending the lives of people who have, at worst, just been unlucky. The question is: is it legitimate for the state to allow the legal killing of people who've just been dealt a bum hand, but not to allow the legal killing of people who can reasonably be said to have it coming?
*Because they'd sell it to telemarketers to try and pull the Labour party out of the £14m black hole it finds itself in. Either that or John Prescott would make dirty phone calls to my sister.
