Quote:
Originally Posted by DanaC
Quite aside from the moral question, I have always had a slight difficulty with the idea of the state having the right to inflict death upon one of its citizens.
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I would switch huge for slight. When the State authorizes killing, what it is doing is cracking the door to uncivilized behavior. Sometimes killing is in self-defense and is necessary. If someone invades your home or your country it becomes necessary. To kill for revenge or because someone might be a threat, introduces uncivilized behavior to a civilization which may be more fragile than we acknowlege. Whenever the State authorizes killing it sanctifies it and lowers the threshhold of acceptable violence. A cop recently suggested to a friend of mine that he take "care" of a situation himself, my friend didn't find this acceptable. A President of mine recently crossed the line and so men are being trained to believe its ok to kill because they're in a war-zone. Eventually they will come back to civilization many of them changed, having moved or erased that line between acceptable and unacceptable violence.