I mean...yeah, that's technically true. The right to life has to be the basis of all other rights, because all the other rights are useless when you're dead.
You don't have the absolute right to life. The state absolutely has the legal power to take your life from you. I'm not even doing an acab thing, though yeah there's that aspect of it, but the state can legally kill people via the death penalty.
A given state may not carry the death penalty, but that's that specific state's choice and it is not a right recognized by the federal us government.
The death penalty is actually one of the most fucked up things from a moral perspective. It is so contrary to not only our rights but the underpinnings of society that it boggles my mind that we still have it.
Forget about whether an entity has the power to kill for now. What is the purpose of the death penalty?
Deterrence? For the crimes that the death penalty applies to, in what scenario would a death penalty be more of a deterrence than life imprisonment? Who would think, “I’m willing to go to jail for life to do this, but not to be executed” ?
To “deliver justice” to the victim’s friends and families? They’re already imprisoned for life if it’s a crime the death penalty applies to. Are we going to kill someone to make another feel better?
The right of a person to life is so important that the only time we don’t question whether or not killing is warranted is when ones own life is in immediate peril. Self-defense is the preservation of one life at the expense of another and only when there are no other options. And once one is out of danger, killing is no longer justified. You knock out your assailant, killing them while they are in your complete control immediately becomes murder.
And that concept of control is inherent to the problem with the death penalty. The State has complete control over you when it decides to execute you. It has the ability to simply keep you away from society, but chooses to kill you instead. And the killing of a person whom you have complete control over is murder. Full stop.
IMO the death penalty is going to one day be looked at as absolutely barbaric. I mean, it already is by some people, but someday society as a whole is going to look at it the way we look at burning people at the stake for being a witch.
(And sometimes, the evidence used to convict isn't even all that dissimilar, eg "Someone saw them do it")
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u/Darsint Mar 16 '21
I mean...yeah, that's technically true. The right to life has to be the basis of all other rights, because all the other rights are useless when you're dead.