Capital Punishment

Society is not just a collection of autonomous individuals. When third parties are involved, there must be collective judgments and decisions. Just as an individual has a right to protect his own life from unjustified aggression, so society has a right and duty to protect its members.

I do not believe that somebody should commit voluntary euthanasia (because we do not have the ownership of our lives – this belongs to God) but I would not make it top of my priorites to dissuade them, even less to stop them. But

(i) A psychopathic serial killer, so far as we can work out from these impenetrable people, seems to have no notion that he should not be continuing his actions. Now whether he agrees with us or not, he should not ever be released from detention, and if in a particular situation there is a significant chance of his escaping and re-offending, and this chance cannot be eliminated, he should be executed in the interests of the common good, as the lesser of two evils.

(ii) The perpetrator of wilful murder, especially if there are aggravating circumstances, has forefeited his right to keep on living. Whether incarceration or execution is appropriate would be a matter for individual consideration, but it is not intrinsically wrong to deprive a person of what he has no right to.

(iii) A person who apparently believes with sincerity that he is entitled to kill innocent men, women and children, to crucify or decapitate women and children (e.g. members of IS): if possible he should be dissuaded, and if this is not possible, he should be killed to stop him from continuing.

A culture or society that is not prepared to enforce public laws of this kind will, with inevitability, be supplanted sooner or later by one that is. This process is happening right now in parts of Western Europe, which will be Moslem (and non-democratic, judging by the signs) within two generations at the maximum, unless there is a significant change.