Don't fry them

Shellee asks:

"Are you for or against the death penalty, or (if its conditional), in what cases? Furthermore, do you believe that societies that sanction war are hypocritical for opposing the death penalty?"

There have been many good answers so far, though I'll leave it to Shellee to sum things up tomorrow.

Short answer:

1. I am opposed to the death penalty
2. I am not opposed to war

'

Longer answer:

My opposition to the death penalty is primarily pragmatic at this point. It is too expensive and riddled with problems in terms of the probability of killing someone innocent. Like laws against marijuana, its role in our public life seems predominantly symbolic, only a tiny fraction of seriously violent criminals end up on death row, and the rate of execution is trivial in most of these United Stated States. That being said, the most powerful argument I've heard in favor of the death penalty is that recourse to it is an essential tool when bargaining with criminals once they are in the "system," and it allows a level of graduated punishment which might disuade violent offenders from killing witnesses (i.e., since life in prison is gauranteed for crime x, they have nothing to lose in killing witnesses). But, as I said, it is too expensive and I am not convinced of its ability to affect the crime rate in society as such. If the government in the future had god-like powers of omniscience I am not totally opposed to the "ultimate punishment" in the case of exceptionally heinous criminals, and perhaps within my lifetime I will be satisified that such a level of omniscience maybe attained by brain scanning technologies. I am not totally unmoved by the argument that the state is not in the business of killing human beings, but, I believe there are many greater noxious evils attributable to the state so I am not prepared to stand on principle on this issue.

As for war, I think it should be used judiciously. Like the state, it is a necessary condition of modern mass society. I hope that as we globalize war will become less pervasive a feature of our species' existence, but optimism must be tempered by the necessicity of preparation. I believe what the state as an actor does to an individual offender who has transgressed against his or her fellow citizens is fundamentally a different question from societies which have grievances against each other via the proxy of their political systems.