Georgia today had the honour of being
the first state to execute a criminal following the Supreme Court's lifting of a temporary death penalty moratorium. I realize that some here have religious or ideological objections to capital punishment but, I suspect it goes without saying that I am not among those individuals.
Indeed, I am for the death penalty not only on practical grounds ("no dead criminal re-offends") but on philosophical grounds as well. The refusal to use the death penalty to punish criminals - a tool used by pretty much all known human societies since the beginning of time - is a sure sign of civilizational decadence and decline. The death penalty isn't merely about the offender and the victim - it is the recognition that there exist absolute and unforgivable offenses which are not merely against human law, but against natural law as well.
No one will miss this sub-human trash:
Lynd, 53, was sentenced to die for kidnapping and shooting his live-in girlfriend, Ginger Moore, three times in the face and head two decades ago. After he buried Moore's body in a shallow grave near a south Georgia farm, authorities said Lynd fled to Ohio, where he shot and killed another woman who had stopped along the side of the road to help him.When we kill a criminal such as this, we reaffirm our own belief in humanity and civilization. Killing someone like this is a way of expressing our own self-confidence - it is a way of saying, "yes, we are certain enough of ourselves and our collective morality that we are going to write you out of the human race." It is the judgement of civilization that such people should die.
The real pity is that we can't use the death penalty for more offenses. Look, for example, to
the case of Josef Fritzl in Austria. It is regrettable that Europe has abolished the death penalty - and that the death penalty has been more-or-less abolished for crimes other than murder in the United States because, quite frankly, I can think of few creatures who deserved to die more than this... thing... does. Killing him would be a collective reaffirmation of our own humanity.
Now, of course, there are many - and I'm sure many here - who aren't comfortable with such power being in the hands of the state. I thoroughly disagree here. Given that the death penalty would - even if I was allowed to extend it to rapists, child molesters, and some other criminals - be fairly narrowly applied. It is a power which will only touch upon the vilest things which walk the Earth. The use of the death penalty - as authorized by the will of a jury of one's peers - is one of the narrow powers that the state ought to have.
After all, the state - at least in a libertarian state - is a repository for those functions - contracts, law enforcement, national defense, international relations - which cannot (or should not) be exercised on an individual level. If you assume that, in the state of nature, mobs would simply kill rapists, child molesters, murderers, and the like then it is fair to say that the obligation of the state to carry out this function is implicit in the social contract.
