Writer's Block: Capital offense

[ghoti_mhic_uait]

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It's barbaric, I would never support a candidate who thought it could ever be OK, and I think the UN should impose economic sanctions on any state which still practices it. Next!

(Bet you're all really shocked at my pro-life views given, you know, my normal pro-life views)

Comments

[alison-lees.livejournal.com]

and here am I worrying about what people will say if I slap my children in public, even though I wouldn't normally dream of smacking them in public...

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

There's a bit of a difference between a slap and an execution, though.

[alison-lees.livejournal.com]

I know. would you think maybe that the slap was more acceptable than the execution? I agree with you by the way, on the subject of execution.

[ghoti.livejournal.com]

Yes.

I don't slap myself because my children both had phases of hitting if they disapproved of my actions, but I've never really minded having been slapped myself.

[simont]

I don't slap myself because

... you'd look silly doing it? :-)

[alison-lees.livejournal.com]

I think what happened was her comma button wasn't working?

[beckyc.livejournal.com]

There's a bit of a difference between a slap and an execution, though.

Quote!

But yeah, I know what you mean.

[khalinche.livejournal.com]

Yup, this!

[plexq.livejournal.com]

Hell yeah. It's totally unacceptable. Massive double standard, we THE STATE are sufficiently capable of determining when to murder someone justly, but you the individual are not! It's creepy and frightening.

[gerald_duck]

Well, I'm against the death penalty for reasons I explained four years ago.

But I don't think your particular argument holds any water. The state has the monopoly on violence, and by some political theories that pretty much defines statehood. It's not, for example, a double standard that we let the state seize someone off the street and lock them away for years and years, where we don't let private individuals arrest people, put them on trial, convict and imprison them.

[plexq.livejournal.com]

I suppose you do have a point there, though I suppose I feel that there is a significant distinction between imprisonment of an individual for wrong-doing and terminating their existence permanently. The former can be over-turned based on new information/new state/government who make their determination in a different direction, whilst the same cannot be said of someone who is dead.

The Wikipedia article you point to is very interesting and informative. I have only recently really begun thinking about things like this more carefully. What does it mean for a state to be a state? How does that help us or hinder us? Is it a construct that is purely there to ensure that those in power remain thusly, or does it actually confer benefits beyond that? Why do states exclude the migration of members of other states so strongly? I am a total political science n00b, and really have never had any education on the matter, so I'm learning a lot very quickly, and have a vast cavernous lack of knowledge at the moment.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

There's a difference between trusting the outcome of a political process involving the views of millions of citizens with my life, and trusting each and every one of those citizens individually. States are not people, they are very different from people, and therefore the standards should different.

(Note; I am against the death penalty. However, I am not a pacifist, furthermore I support the principle of (heavily regulated) state use of lethal force against armed criminals, revolutionaries, and other users of lethal force, even if I am alarmed by some of the excesses that occur in practice.)

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

(I say "some of the excesses" because I'm sure there are excesses that I do not know about, and as such it is rather hard to be alarmed about them.)

[plexq.livejournal.com]

States are not people, they are very different from people, and therefore the standards should different.

States are people. Very often they are one person who is running the show, in front of, or behind the curtain. I hardly need a political science degree to see that.

Heavily regulated state us of lethal force. Heavily regulated. What does that mean? It means you can use lethal force in any situation the state has deemed appropriate. This is the state who has not your best interests at heart, or really its own best interests at heart, just it's own preservation. You seem to be saying that the state should have the right to protect itself. I couldn't disagree more. The state should have no right to protect itself, only to protect its citizenry. Which means that revolutionaries, as you have termed them, which is a very dangerous and othering term, would certainly not fall into the category of people who receive the delivery of lethal force, as they would be considered part of the citizenry.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Cut into two parts, due to LJ not allowing long replies.

States are people

States are people in the same way that plucked chickens are people. States may consist of people, but it is not true to say that they are people, in the same way that people are not bodily organs. As you say, very often states are heavily influenced by the will of a single person; however, even in the case of absolute monarchies (or monarchy-like regimes that do not term themselves as such) the state that the monarch rules is distinguishable from the monarch himself (or herself). For example, various courts (which are organs of the state) may take decisions without the monarch's direct knowledge or consent. Also, a monarch may need to seek some sort of legitimacy in order to secure their claim to power, for example by adhering to some religion or political ideology, or by continuing the tradition the brought them to power.

Ideas such as democracy and the rule of law are never perfect, and are very often a complete sham; however, they are ideals that are worth fighting for, and when reasonably successfully implemented they make the state look less and less like a person.

The differences between states and people are many, and suggest differences in rights - in both directions. In some cases, citizens should have rights that states should not. For example, were groups of people to parade outside my places of work and residence bearing placards and shouting slogans denouncing me, I would consider this harassment, and would see what legal remedies were available to me; however, I consider it entirely appropriate to do this to the state. Also, if a group of people don't like the way I'm living my life, then they can't try to vote my current personal regime out.

Finally, even if the state is a person, it's only one person, and there aren't that many of them worldwide. The lower the number of people can use force against me, the better.

Heavily regulated

The state may create regulations, and call them heavy, but we are entitled to disagree with it on whether they are heavy enough. For example, I consider the regulations used in this country to be inadequate, as evidenced by the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes. That does not mean that I consider the concept of adequate regulation to be invalid or meaningless, or equivalent to letting the state do what it pleases.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Part two:

Revolutionaries

There is no need for me to term them as revolutionaries, many of them self-identify as such, and continue to do so long after they have gained power (for example, labelling their men as revolutionary guards and their enemies as counter-revolutionaries and become new states (many of which go on to inflict extreme violence on their citizenry). If they identify or identified as revolutionary, and do not feel othered, I see no reason to contradict them.

Revolutionaries may be a part of the citizenry; however, the same is also true of the people who stand to be subjected to revolutionary terror (if it is that sort of revolution). In order to protect the second group of citizens, and also the citizens that act on behalf of the state, then the state must protect itself. This entails killing some citizens to save others, this is what protecting the citizenry means; exactly the same applies in the case of a shoot-out at an armed robbery (although in the robbery there is not a direct threat to the state). There is simply no way around this; if the state is not, under the correct circumstances and with the correct laws and with the right of citizens to protest and to bring legal actions against the state (etc.), able to use lethal force against (some of) its own citizens, then it is not able to protect (others of) its own citizens. Now I disagree with the excessive zeal with which the British state has pursued its defence of some British citizens and visitors, and the callous disregard for the lives and liberties of other British citizens and visitors; however, I don't disagree with the principles involved.

There are a couple of ways that you could arrange for that protection without giving the state special rights; however, I think that both are deeply flawed. You could experiment with adjusting the self-defence laws to cover the sorts of use of lethal force that armed police need to use in the course of their duties. The idea would be that members of the police would be entitled to defend themselves as private citizens using state-provided guns during police actions. However, this leaves me feeling deeply queasy; I'm sure that people who are more up on these sorts of things could tell me why this is a really bad idea. Another idea is to allow citizen's militias, with the idea that any group of citizens that took over the state would then have the militias to deal with. However, such organisations would necessarily have to not be a part of the state; the existence of large non-state (para)military organisations fills me with unease, especially whenever I hear what NRA supporters have to say. Again, I'm sure that more knowledgeable people than me could fill in the blanks on why this is a bad idea.

Finally, if states are people, then do they not share with people the right to self-defence?

[plexq.livejournal.com]

I hope you'll allow me clarify as you seem to have extrapolated in a rather bizarre direction:

Firstly, in the matter of justice, the state often acts with the interest of a single person, so to claim that the state is acting by the will of a committee or group in all situations and cases is incorrect, and thusly the derived conclusion that a state is more trustworthy with justice than an individual is also flawed, because in many very important specific cases, the state is acting on the direction of a single individual. This does not mean that all states act in this fashion, or that states that act in this fashion do so in all cases. To apply this information and say that if a state is a person and that they should be assigned the same 'rights' as a person doesn't really follow. A state is clearly not a person, and as I indicated should thusly not be afforded the same status.

I had written at some point a sentence talking about accountability which somehow got lost in the shuffle, I'll try to get back to that somehow.

If the state is clearly set up as an organization which exists to serve the citizenry, to protect them amongst other things, then one of the things agents of the state are going to have to do is use deadly force against both external threats to the citizenry and against members of the citizenry who are acting in a way as to harm other members of the citizenry (yes, this is a gross oversimplification). The problem I have is that there are too many states that exist not to serve the citizenry, but rather to serve themselves, and themselves can be interpreted in a few ways depending on the instance in question. Sometimes it is the members of the state as apart from the citizenry, sometimes it's the ideals that the state is supposed to exhort. So often agents of the state act in ways which will preserve members of the state over the lives of the citizenry. Sometimes they act to preserve an ideal upon which the state was founded which ends up in contradiction with the interests of the citizenry, but the state deems that the ideal in question is more important than the people who live under the control of the state.

Regulation is only part of the answer. Enforcement, Judgement and Accountability expand the system so it can be functional.

Individuals have to be accountable for their actions otherwise you won't have a functional society. The less common situation is that states need to be accountable for their actions also. To both their citizenry and to other states. This is where a functional democratic state wins. Elected officials whose election depends on their actions and thus accountable to their constituency regulate the actions of both the state and its agents and the citizenry. If the citizenry doesn't like how they regulate, they can elect someone else. They cannot make that choice however, if they are not informed about what the representative is doing, and therefore we need an agency that is independent from the state to report on what the state is doing. It is also wise therefore to ensure that your citizenry are capable of making an intelligent judgement about the ability of their representative to legislate. And therefore it is a requirement for the citizenry to be educated.

If any of those elements cease to function adequately, you will end up with a state that starts acting out of self-interest rather than the interest of its citizenry, and if the balance is not redressed, then it will spiral into a very bad situation, sometimes very quickly.

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

I hope you'll allow me clarify as you seem to have extrapolated in a rather bizarre direction

Three things: First, I'd taken you as being rather more absolutist on some points than your current post suggests. Second, my original complaint was against the state-as-person metaphor being taken too far - we now seem to be in agreement that this is a red herring. Third, I'm aware that my original statement was incomplete; your point about regulation being only part of the answer is well-made.

[plexq.livejournal.com]

I suppose that my short and terse reply could have easily been interpreted in such a fashion, my apologies.

It is difficult to balance the tendency of a faceless mass of committee to become so invested in process and procedure that it ceases to innovate or to reform at a fast enough pace for the community against the motivation of a reformist individual to push the state forward so quickly and in a direction that may not suit the citizenry, which could be either beneficial or detrimental. There are several cases of both in recent history: The civil rights movement comes to mind as one; Lindon Johnson (or was it Nixon) could not have got that legislation past a referendum, but in retrospect it seems that it was the right thing to do, and most folks today are glad of it.

I don't know how society can be successful in championing the reforms that are beneficial and those that are not. The reformers are often a small group of individuals pushing an agenda that is quite unpopular with a significant portion of the citizenry, though the reform is historically judged as a positive thing. This goes against the ilk of democracy in some ways, and is an interesting demonstration of how something that is a bit undemocratic can be quite positive.

[plexq.livejournal.com]

Revolutionaries often term themselves that because they feel (appropriately or not) as if they are outside of the process of government and unable to influence the decisions of the state in any way.

If there are citizens who feel that they must label themselves as revolutionaries then I feel that the state must accept some of the blame for that as it is the state who has failed to incorporate them as citizens into the process of government. That process includes all of the things I mentioned that make a useful feedback loop to enable governance that has the mandate of the people it has 'a monopoly of violence' over. I fear a good example of this is the large number of both legal and illegal immigrants in the US who are not officially 'citizens', but suffer under the 'monopoly of violence' of the state they reside in. They are not permitted to be a part of the political process, and thus the people who govern them do not have their support. A day may come when those people get fed up of being treated in such a fashion and decide to become revolutionaries, much like their predecessors did three hundred years ago revolting against the British government to found the very state that is now oppressing them. You cannot regulate against revolution, to do so simply invites it. The safest course of action for both the state and the citizenry (at least in my opinion) is to ensure that all that live within the purview of the monopoly of violence that the state exercises feel included and able to participate in the political process and feel that they are part of 'us' and not members of 'them'. That they can help the state as evolutionaries rather than surplant it as revolutionaries.

[(Anonymous)]

I guess we have different prototypical ideas of what a revolution is; my prototypes are the Russian revolutions of 1917. It is notable that the two revolutions had distinctly different characters. As I remember it: The February revolution was a true popular uprising - basically it was a bread riot that grew until it brought down the government. The October revolution was very different; the Bolsheviks had been a part of the emerging democracy, but the results of the elections tended to favour Mensheviks and Socialist Revolutionaries. This would not do for the Bolsheviks, who drew their sense of legitimacy not from popular support but from Marxist ideology, so they launched a second revolution to seize power. Early on in Bolshevik rule, the results of an election for the Constitutional Assembly were basically ignored - the Assembly was closed down after only one day. The revolution was followed by a long period of civil war.

I'm concious that I'm late for work...

[ptc24.livejournal.com]

Ooops, that was me, in case you hadn't guessed.

Anyway, there's a difference between genuinely popular revolutions (most of which I seem to be broadly in favour of, the first 1917 revolution being one of these), actions by disenfranchised minorities seeking representation (well, it depends what it is they want), and armed minorities who conceive of themselves as having a right to rule (I would put the second 1917 revolution in this category, although often these are (drawn from) the old guard who were deposed in a previous revolution). Making moves to include the second is a good way of delivering just and stable government; however I think that throughout history there are too many cases of the third to discount. As such, it is important to consider what our last resorts are, and under what circumstances we should consider checking into them.

[plexq.livejournal.com]

A very good point. I suppose this is where the idea of the 4th amendment comes from in the US, that should an armed minority rise up and attempt to seize power, the citizenry has the right to make armed resistance against such an uprising and seek to, by force, restore a government to power who has the mandate of the people. Not sure how well this would work in practice in the 21^st century, but it is at least an interesting idea.

It is certainly very scary to me that there are people out there that believe in ideals so strongly that they trump the lives and well-being of the people. Perhaps that is a somewhat functional description of extremism. I am quite scared that I live in a country (the US, though I am a UK citizen) where this seems to be the prevailing direction.