As far as I can tell, some people would like to be allowed to see him get executed; if I say “no, I don’t think you should be allowed to see that,” and they ask why not, I’m going to say, “well, that’s a really good question, and I don’t actually have an answer.”
And if you step in to say it’s because idiots who might not otherwise sympathize with him might sympathize with him, I’m going to say “okay, first, I’m not sure we should be basing this on whether idiots will sympathize” — and, before I even get to second, someone else could say “but publicly executing him might discourage idiots from following his example,” at which point I’d say, “again, it seems to me to be a fool’s errand to guess at how idiots will feel if they’re allowed to see stuff: the question isn’t whether it accomplishes anything: it seems like the default should be allowing this, and I need to hear a better reason than ‘but idiots’ to justify not allowing this.”
The last public execution in the United States was in 1936, so you could be forgiven for not being up to speed on the discourse around no longer making executions public. But this has been a settled question for 90 years.
That last public execution happened in Kentucky, and 20,000 people showed up to celebrate. Kentucky state officials were so embarrassed they decided to ban public executions.
“Public executions as spectator sport is beneath us.” The reply seemed too obvious to bother making: that, no, you don’t get to just declare that; whether it’s currently beneath us isn’t a settled matter; it’s being decided right now.
“I think the Trump Administration presenting an execution as entertainment is… odious, to say the least.” Again, the reply seemed too obvious to bother with: “oh, you do? Well, other people don’t think it’s dot dot dot odious; you do, and they don’t, and it isn’t a settled matter.”
I predict that it will not be a “clean” death, He will writhe and moan for an uncomfortably long time before finally dying.
Some people will bask in the brutality. More will be horrified. It will engender a bunch of talk about the death penalty in the news. This guy will be a martyr for whatever cause he associated with.
None of it will play out according to Hegseth’s plan.
Are you telling me that you think executions should be a spectator sport, and further that you don’t understand why anybody thinks that they shouldn’t?
If so, I don’t think I can reply further to that in this forum.
I’m telling you that, if some people don’t want to watch, I understand and I default to figuring it’s their call to make: and, if other people do want to watch, I understand and I default to figuring it’s their call to make — and if any of those people tell me that my default isn’t good enough because they’d like to impose their views on the group that sees things the other way, then I don’t think I’ve heard a good enough reason for that yet.
That’s true of literally everything. “Oh, you think that killing and eating people is wrong? Well, Jeffrey Dahmer disagrees, it isn’t a settled matter.”
But you’re reaching for that comparison because you know it doesn’t work.
If I say, “hey, everybody, let’s take a vote: should we change the law so it’s okay for people like Dahmer to murder innocents and eat their bodies? No? Yeah, I also voted ‘no.’ But: sometimes we do vote to change a law, right? Not, like, the Dahmer thing — it was silly of me to propose that one, we don’t actually want that — but sometimes we vote in favor of a change, because there’s nothing special about the status quo.”
I feel that stopping people from viewing something is the endeavor that needs to be justified. Stopping someone from breaking an innocent man’s leg? To my mind, that’s a justifiable endeavor. Stopping someone from picking an innocent man’s pocket? Likewise. Stopping an innocent man from witnessing a public execution? What, like, he’s just standing there, minding his business, and someone who’s talking about bloodlust tries to stop him? I don’t see that the innocent man would need to justify himself, or that I would; I figure the person looking to stop him would.
Well, yes; as far as I can tell, what’s being discussed is making this execution one that members of the public will be allowed to choose whether to view: if one person tells me they choose to view it, and another tells me they choose not to, I’ll shrug in both cases and say I figure it’s their call — and if a third person tells me they disagree, and wants to forbid viewing it or make viewing it mandatory, then I’ll say, “wait, what? I don’t think they need to justify themselves, but I think you do.”
What I question is the wisdom of making it private in the first place. If people want to witness it, who am I to tell them no? What right do I have to stop them?
Offering this up as entertainment opens America up to all sorts of disgusting motivations and consequences that threaten social cohesion. Entertainment is, in this as in many cases, synonymous with “profit center”.
Government offering state-sanctioned killings as ways for capitalists to make money is… perverse in the extreme. Sure seems like those media moguls and owners of advertising streams and gambling apps are going to want to start lobbying for the death penalty to be applied more liberally if it turns out it gets a lot of eyeballs on those car insurance ads.
Maybe a more subjective answer, but joy at watching a captured human be killed, no matter how ‘deserving’, is not something it is healthy to feel, and more importantly is not something it’s healthy for a society to encourage people to feel. We are worse off as families, spouses, neighbors, and communities when we start living in a world where “It sure felt good to watch that guy get killed” is part of the conversation around the dinner table.
And if one is a libertarian at heart none of those IMO very important considerations outweigh the right of any given libertarian to exercise his freedom. No matter how freedumb it might be.
Well, yeah; the alternative is, what, not letting people exercise their rights unless you approve of how they think? If they’re not harming anyone — and you don’t want to let them decide what to do while they keep not harming anyone — why wouldn’t I default to siding with them? After all, I’d sure want them to default to siding with me, if anyone ever declared that what I was up to involved a “freedumb” to be taken away from me.
Even from a libertarian perspective, it doesn’t make a lot of sense.
The court sentenced this man to death. This means that they took away his right to life in exactly one circumstance: when the government is putting him to death. It doesn’t strip him of every other right in every other context and declare upon season on him.
If someone waited until he was being led to the firing squad before jumping out from behind a bush and stabbing him to death, that person would be guilty of murder.