Last time I looked a majority of Brits support the death penalty. Which personally I’ve always found quite disturbing considering all the problems with it.
But 5 mins on any subreddit and you have people frothing at the mouth to hang every criminal.
Which if even more disturbing.
So what do you think?
the issue with death penalty is that even if you have a perfect state that makes zero mistakes when applying such penalty, it can only do so in the context of a criminal offense having been committed.
but what is a criminal offense? one person’s “that’s a crime” is another person’s “i should be free to do that”
for example, in yemen, if you are caught performing homosexual acts as a married man, you are to be stoned to death.
in principle, a capital punishment supporter should also be okay with this.
if you are one of those who has just caught yourself saying “well… i think death penalty is okay but not like that” then you have just hit my main point like a brick wall
if the decision to apply death penalty is based on one’s subjective assessment of what a crime is, then that’s not rational or fair
here’s some homework for you - replace “death penalty” with “any penalty” and re-run my thought sequence again :)
the very act of “criminalizing” is fraught with moral issues already, so i think we should drop all death penalties until we have perfectly solved the question “what is crime?”
for further info, here’s a good one (link here, clicky!)