Noam Chomsky
If the Nuremberg laws were applied, then every post-war American president would have been hanged
RW on the Death Penalty
What is the value of life, what can we, or more likely our system, tolerate and does this kind of punishment have any useful effect on society? Those are the three main aspects of this problem. The death penalty has divided the so-called “civilised” world in two groups. The death penalty is most the powerful weapon a system can have because it erases “the dissidents” of our society. The death penalty is also by far the most barbaric punishment anyone can imagine, because it ends everything.
The question of the value of life has bothered many thinkers from the pre-Socratics all the way up to the situationists. But none of all great philosophers have come up with an answer that could suit the whole question. Yet we live in a system where everything is based around value, we are still unable to judge how much a life is worth. May be assassins can tell you how much one person his life is worth nowadays, but I don’t think the rest of us are fully capable to judge that for one another.
So how can a judicial system possibly estimate the value of another human being his or her life? If you think that mass slaughtering, like genocide during the Second World War or in Rwanda, is morally unjustifiable. How can you explain, the killing that is been done for your Nike shoes. The amount of children that died from the 90s up till now because of child labour is higher then the amount of children that died in Birkenau, Auschwitz. Both are indisputable unforgivable, but yet we chose to condemn the first and do if our noses are bleeding when it comes to our own personal comfort.
Second example: in 1998 Florence Rey, the artist, was attacked by a policeman who tried to arrest her. During the battle that followed she killed the policeman. She got 20 years. The maximum penalty in France. During the anti-G8 demonstrations in Genua, in 2001, a policeman shot down a protester. The trial hasn’t even begun.
Third example: If you live in the US of A and your black and around 6 feet tall. You have a very big chance of finding yourself on death row. Because ¾ of executed persons in the United States were black, including a few innocent.
So it seems that life has an irregular value, based on the winners and losers, and on your status on the social ladder. How can you expect a sincere judgement if the common law is using different standards, because of your background.
The proof of the incompetence of our system also lays in the death penalty. Living in a capitalistic system where everything is touched by the colour of money, we live with a certain rules and laws. Some of them are more rightful then others. Though we are so lucky to live in age where the philosophy of Kant has touched our judicial system. This helps us to explain laws.
Kant said in his Kritiek der Rein Vernuft: That acts or deeds are unmoral, if you don’t want them to happen to yourself or to the rest of society. This you can conclude two things of out. First killing is immoral, because the majority people in our society don’t want to die. Second conclusion, if killing is immoral how can you ever rationalize the killing of any system or any man. It is simply not a solution. If you kill another human being you can defend the fact, that you’re entitled to kill the killer. Only if you live in a system where you have to right to kill, you have a right to send a person to death row. So our system can’t tolerate a death penalty because that kind of punishment is immoral, even against Nazi-war criminals. Nazi’s need help to get a long fine in a stable society, because they are filled with prejudgements. Because the first helps our society, the second one is immoral.
Another reason, that systems that encourage the use of the death penalty are mostly likely to be immoral and cruel is the fact that: the death penalty is also mostly used in countries with a dictator. China, United States of America (let’s don’t forget the McCarthy trials in the middle of last century!), Nigeria, and let’s not forget Nazi-Germany and Soviet Russia under Stalin, but these are just a few of the many countries that used the death penalty to kill political adversaries. It is a very efficient weapon to destroy dissidents because no totalitarian system can handle with critical voices. They must be erased at once, because they are the biggest threat to the stability of the system.
Another crucial factor is the effect the death penalty has. It surely frightens people. And the global fear factor is one of the weapons modern day capitalism and dictators use to keep their civilians silent. If a system wants to stimulate fear instead of moral values then that is just another sign that that system fails.
There is also an important issue if always the guilty person is send to the electric chair. What if you kill an innocent man or woman? History has already proven that also innocent people are executed. It is irresponsible to kill an innocent person. And if you put so much value to life, isn’t the slightest chance to accidentally kill an innocent human being, is enough to think that the death penalty is utterly wrong.
It is impossible to justify the death penalty. It is immoral and shows that we rather throw someone’s freedom and life through the window instead of helping him to get a place back in society. There for you must show to help society instead of destructing other person’s lives. Only brutal totalitarian societies where there is no value for life can justify this kind of punishment.
