The Stupid Reason

I'm cleaning out my older drafts with this post.

A while back Matthew Yglesias responded to another liberal who was pontificating about capital punishment.

Richard Cohen argues against the death penalty, stating that "the power to take life is too awesome to be given to government." Well, perhaps. ... But the state can make war, and therein regularly holds life and death in the balance.

I agree with Yglesias. "The goverment can't be trusted with life and death" is great rhetoric. It will touch a limited government nerve in Conservatives. Liberals will like it because it gets them what they want. But when you really think about it, this is stupid reason to oppose the death penalty.

What do I mean? Well if the government can't be trusted with the power of life and death then why do we have a military? Thats basicly what they do isn't it? The military kills people and destroy things in defense of us and ours. And operating this efficient killing machine is a core mission of any government.

That not enough? When a federal law enforcement agent comes knocking on your door, do you think they will be armed? Yes. With a deadly weapon? Yes. Do you have a problem with this? Probably not. So you really don't have a problem with equipping an arm of the federal government with the capacity to kill at their own discretion? Well you probably didn't think of it that way, did you? Law enforcement is also a core mission of government, by the way.

A functioning government requires the ability to take human life. This is fundamental to its core processes and the government does these things with significantly lower standards of evidence than modern courts. Usually it requires little more than the perception of an imminent threat.

That is why "the government can't be trusted with life and death" is a stupid reason.