Argumentative Essay: Murder Is A Tricky Business

I did not say DP opponents who argue that execution is murder hadn’t given it enough thought – I said that they were not being intellectually honest. I stand by the assertion that it is false equivalency to equate the murder of innocents with the judicially sanctioned execution of their murderer. Murder is the killing of innocents without due process and the other is the killing of the guilty after rigorous presentation of evidence and after deliberation in accordance with the law (aka judicial execution). Judicial execution at the federal level is as far removed from murder as it gets.

It is a personal choice to argue from so called moral grounds – but saying “it’s a personal choice” doesn’t lend one’s position inherent validity, for arguing from a secondary definition of morality can be a tricky business when your secondary definition of morality is at odds with and ignores the natural law that governs universal moral norms. To argue from a secondary position of morality as you implied you define it lends greater moral weight to the life of the murderer than to the lives of his victims
and it gives greater moral consideration to his life over the laws of society we live in, and the lives of the people who make up that society – indeed it begs the very question of the nature and origin of morality. This secondary position is more about mercy than it is about morality.

Likewise arguing on so called moral grounds from religious faith not only doesn’t lend inherent validity to one’s position, it weakens it.
Faith is a private matter and by definition is not based on proof . We don’t live in a theocracy and our legal system is governed by empirical evidence, by proof, and it is one in which actions have consequences. So the argument that “It isn’t morally right for us to decide whether a guilty person lives or dies, that’s up to god” isn’t a valid argument, for if one chooses not to decide, one has still made a choice. Furthermore God has not been proven, so god need not be considered in our application of law and justice. And for that matter, why don’t the religiously faithful see jurors, judges, prosecution, and defense as being instruments of God’s will? Indeed it could be argued that true unadulterated faith would require precisely this
view.

“Neither the state nor the federal government answer for me every time they execute…”

I did not mean you personally, I meant all of us, collectively, as a society – but I think you knew that. I can’t think of a single law that every single person agrees with, yet laws are enforced on the behalf of us all collectively. That’s all I meant.