“…incapacitation can be achieved through appropriately lengthy jail sentences.”
C’mon David, you know that in practice that just doesn’t happen. Yes Ivan Milat and Martin Bryant will die in jail, but all other murderers in time will be released, while still healthy enough to wield a knife, bat or garrotte.

“The state, as a collective of individuals, should not generally have moral rights that individuals do not have.”
Gee, I’m not allowed to forcibly take money off my neighbour to pay for foreign aid, or maintain an armed police force, or issue a CPO (compulsory purchase order) for the house at the end of the street to be levelled for a park, so it looks like the state can’t do that either.

“…and signals, wrongly, that violence can solve problems.”
Err…doesn’t grabbing that 357 Magnum and blowing the brains out of someone about to rape you solve a problem? And what about carpet bombing Baghdad to suggest to it it should withdraw its troops from Kuwait. Didn’t that solve the problem of territorial aggression?

Your example of the surgeon is a "straw man" argument. You really will have to do better.

David

Very good article, David, thank you.

It fascinates me that it is often the same people who rail against the brutality of ISIS who most eagerly express their support for the death penalty.

"The state, as a collective of individuals, should not generally have moral rights that individuals do not have."

As has already been pointed out the state well any truly breaches that concept on a massive scale.

The confiscation of personal property under threat of force (our income tax system) being one of the more obvious breaches.

Senior politicians, police etc being protected by guns while most are not allowed to own a gun for the purpose if self protection.

There are a whole range of ways that states impact on the lives of those not convicted of any crime that individuals do not have.

I din't see any easy answers to some of those dilemas, rather I consider that argument to be pointless in this discussion.

R0bert

So here speaks a clown with a PhD, so bow down & give praise. He is a scientists, so knows all, at least in the rarefied incestuous atmosphere of the university campus.

Come on David, you are not talking at some campus group dinner party, you are out in the real world of real people, talking to people who actually live in the real world.

You have to do much better than this bit of fluff if you want people to listen.

It fascinates me that it is often the same people who rail against the brutality of ISIS who most eagerly express their support for the death penalty.

Posted by Craig Minns, Wednesday, 4 March 2015 9:51:42 AM

Predictable as ever.

Is there something wrong with railing against the brutality of ISIS? Perhaps you think ISIS is doing a great job? Are you suggesting fighting ISIS is the equivalent of carrying out the death sentence? If so, isn't ISIS also carrying out the death sentence, which now that I think about it, they say they are doing.

Do you really believe ISIS is an organisation worth defending?

If you cannot distinguish between death sentence carried out by a State in which it is legal, and the violent evasion of barbaric Islamic savages, there's no point even trying to talk sense with you.