Re: Is the death penalty Extropian?

Dick.Gray@bull.com
Wed, 25 Nov 1998 09:08:44 -0700

At 07:15 AM 11/24/98 -0800, someone wrote:
>
>"Is the Death Penalty Extropian?"

Absolutely not! Being an initiation of force, it's inconsistent with the non-aggression principle. We can certainly find extropian means of dealing with violent offenders, means that don't entail our becoming murderers ourselves.

Someone else quoted Webster's definition of murder as "unlawful" killing. I would argue that that definition is conditioned by the statist equations "legal=good, illegal=bad", an egregiously false and destructive idea: how many of us support the War on Drugs or other prohibitions of victimless "crimes"? And as we all know, all sorts of predations by government and its beneficiaries are perfectly legal.

I submit that murder is more sensibly defined as "unjustified" or "wrongful" killing, which to me means killing for any reason other than in immediate defense of life.

Happy Day-Before-Turkey-Day (for all you Yanks), Dickola