Comment & Debate
Steven Farrell, professor of political economy at George Wythe College, “A Conservative Case for the Capital Punishment” 3/18/05 – “The legitimate role of government involves the protection of life, liberty and property. Just as the role of the government is to raise an armed force and rain down deadly force upon a bloodthirsty invading army, so also the government is duty bound to inflict death upon the man who chooses to slaughter fellow citizens in their own backyards. Few, if any, object to the use of deadly force against an invading army. Yet those invading soldiers, ordered to fight and likely whipped up by propaganda to go into battle, are far less deserving of death than the assailant who has been proven guilty and convicted in a court of law, by a jury of his peers, of shedding the innocent blood of his neighbor – and this of his own free will. Yet we do and must condone war in such situations. Governments must protect life. This is no less true regarding individual life.”
Michel de Montaigne – “One of the uses of our system of justice is to warn others… We are reforming, not the hanged individual, but everyone else.”[1]
Napoleon – “The art of policing is, in order not to punish often, to punish severely”[2]