Just been reading this - right-wing Arizonan vigilantes kill two Mexicans (a nine year old girl and her dad) in cold blood.
These 'minutemen' are everything I hate. Vicious bigoted rightwing gun-loving nutjobs. Who killed a nine-year old girl, ffs. But I still don't think they deserve the death penalty. No matter what the wrong they've committed, executing them would still simply compound it.
At the risk of total solipsism - the important thing here is obviously the people who were murdered - cases like this create interesting dilemmas. Do we only oppose the death penalty in cases where we can feel some understanding for the social, structural and/or medical reasons why people end up committing the 'ultimate crime' (even if we might not want them living next door). Or do we oppose it in all cases, no matter how egregious the crime or ideologically repellent the murderer?
This is why I find Amnesty International and Liberty so admirable - they seem to consistently oppose the wrongs committed by governments and states no matter how individually unpleasant are some of the people they help. Human rights if they are to mean anything apply to everyone, including people who we should loath on almost every count.
At the personal level, though, such cases seem mainly to serve toward reinforcing smug liberalism in its ultimate Guardianista incarnation......
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