word. "I have always maintained that violence, or a life taken in self-defense can always be a mitigating factor when it comes to judging that violence. I would defend the raped man or woman, or his/her companion, who kills a rapist (were that possible) to prevent him from doing further harm, any day. My opposition to the death penalty does not stem from an anodyne commitment to non-violence in the abstract. It stems from my understanding that if we give the state or any abstraction of commensurate scale, the right to decide matters of life and death, whether for punitive or for any other reasons, then we have actually ceded away our own sovereignty and autonomy as individual human beings. The phrase ‘collective conscience’ troubles me profoundly because it is based on a conceptual sleight of hand. Conscience can only be an individual matter, the fiction of ‘collective conscience’ means nothing." kafila.org/2013/09/13/how-would-you-like-your-death-penalty-steak-rare-well-done-or-medium-rare-arguments-against-the-death-penalty/
Posted on: Fri, 13 Sep 2013 18:08:55 +0000
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