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I’m always confused why conservatives tend to support the death penalty. The conservative ethos is to reduce the power of the state to prevent abuse, but givin

by dimal 3y ago

I’m always confused why conservatives tend to support the death penalty. The conservative ethos is to reduce the power of the state to prevent abuse, but giving the state the right to kill a citizen clearly goes against that. How can you mistrust the state in almost every aspect of society, yet trust it to only kill people that “deserve” it?

junofan 3y ago
I think most people would be in favor of more protections. But even Socrates argued for the death penalty. Upholding the norm of proportionality in Western philosophy isn’t generally seen as abuse.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- lapcat 3y ago
  > But even Socrates argued for the death penalty. This is a gross misunderstanding. Socrates was sentenced to death for "corrupting the youth" in a sham trial. Some friends of Socrates offered to smuggle him out of Athens and escape his death sentence, but Socrates argued against that, for various reasons. There's no evidence that Socrates supported and promoted the death penalty in the abstract.
  - brookst 3y ago
    This. And even if Socrates wrote an eloquent argument for the death penalty, he would be the first to reject the use of his name as an argument unto itself.
dbmikus 3y ago
The two party system oversimplifies things, so you end up with "small government" and "traditional government" in the same bucket.
- lapcat 3y ago
  Exactly. This needs to be said more. The political party duopoly in the US and some other countries belies a vast range of political beliefs in the population. If you look closely at each party, there are many competing factions within, often vehemently opposed. The words "conservative", "liberal", "right", "left", etc., are practically meaningless, and I'm old enough to have seen them change over the decades, sometimes radically. They're nothing but trendy labels.
  - analog31 3y ago
    Indeed, the duopoly tends to become attached to social divisions, and you could choose any of those divisions to label the parties: Liberal vs conservative Secular vs religious Governance vs identity politics The list goes on and on. In an odd historical analogy, the electric charges were originally assigned "negative" and "positive" according to what happened when they were combined, with no hypothesis as to the underlying cause.
lapcat 3y ago
> The conservative ethos is to reduce the power of the state to prevent abuse It's not. Maybe you're thinking of libertarianism? The conservative ethos is to preserve and promote a social hierarchy. This requires both winners and losers.
- d-z-m 3y ago
  > It's not. Limiting the power of government is a central idea in conservative thought, especially in America[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_Sta...
  - lapcat 3y ago
    That's what they may claim, but their actions speak much louder than their words. Just look at what happens whenever they take political power. They profess "local control" when they only have control of the localities; when they achieve power at the state or federal level, they immediately place restrictions on the ability of localities to set their own rules and laws. (I've seen this happen over and over.) And traditionally over the decades, conservatives have been and continue to be the biggest proponents of censorship: in schools, in the media, in businesses, etc. I think the fairest thing to say, from that Wikipedia article, is this: "Conservatism in the United States is not a single school of thought." "The history of American conservatism has been marked by tensions and competing ideologies". Limit government interference in the market? Yes. Defund the police: Hell no. Defund the military: Mostly no. Defund the IRS? Hell yes. Let anyone who wants to marry get married? Let anyone who wants to have an abortion get an abortion? Go burn in hell. It really varies depending on the issue. I would claim that these apparent contradictions all make sense if the goal is to preserve and promote a social hierarchy. One might wonder how Christianity and capitalism are even compatible. Read what Jesus said about money! Sometimes it appears that most contemporary conservative Christians in the US have not read The New Testament at all, and in some other countries, such as in South America, Christian social movements tend to be (more naturally IMO) explicitly anti-capitalist. I have this strong impression that US conservative Christians have come to believe that the so-called Invisible Hand of the market is actually God sending reward and punishment, which is why it's now ok and even praiseworthy to seek after and accumulate wealth.
switch007 3y ago
I guess the desire to control others (sorry, "preserve law and order") sometimes overrules the principle of small government.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
CivBase 3y ago
American conservatism advocates for small government on economic issues, but not societal issues.
api 3y ago
That’s not the conservative ethos. Conservatives historically support the maintenance of what they see as natural or divinely ordained hierarchy, including via the power of the state. Libertarians being called conservatives is a strange Cold War aberration emerging from their mutual opposition to authoritarian Marxism. Now that the USSR is gone and that type of Marxism is mostly very fringe, conservatives are reverting to their historical mean and kicking out libertarians. This is what national conservatism and to some extent MAGA is about.
UncleMeat 3y ago
The conservative ethos is that there are good people and bad people and that good people deserve protection and bad people deserve what is coming to them. You get shunted into the "good people" or "bad people" as a whole. This permits almost unlimited punishment for somebody once they have been categorized as "bad people." This can happen because they committed a crime, even if that crime is wholly unrelated to the situation at hand. It can even happen because they did something like mouth off to a cop. As long as the state violence is happening to the other tribe, the conservative vision of justice is totally okay.

by dimal 3y ago

junofan 3y ago

I think most people would be in favor of more protections. But even Socrates argued for the death penalty. Upholding the norm of proportionality in Western philosophy isn’t generally seen as abuse.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
lapcat 3y ago
> But even Socrates argued for the death penalty. This is a gross misunderstanding. Socrates was sentenced to death for "corrupting the youth" in a sham trial. Some friends of Socrates offered to smuggle him out of Athens and escape his death sentence, but Socrates argued against that, for various reasons. There's no evidence that Socrates supported and promoted the death penalty in the abstract.
- brookst 3y ago
  This. And even if Socrates wrote an eloquent argument for the death penalty, he would be the first to reject the use of his name as an argument unto itself.

dbmikus 3y ago

The two party system oversimplifies things, so you end up with "small government" and "traditional government" in the same bucket.

lapcat 3y ago
Exactly. This needs to be said more. The political party duopoly in the US and some other countries belies a vast range of political beliefs in the population. If you look closely at each party, there are many competing factions within, often vehemently opposed. The words "conservative", "liberal", "right", "left", etc., are practically meaningless, and I'm old enough to have seen them change over the decades, sometimes radically. They're nothing but trendy labels.
- analog31 3y ago
  Indeed, the duopoly tends to become attached to social divisions, and you could choose any of those divisions to label the parties: Liberal vs conservative Secular vs religious Governance vs identity politics The list goes on and on. In an odd historical analogy, the electric charges were originally assigned "negative" and "positive" according to what happened when they were combined, with no hypothesis as to the underlying cause.

lapcat 3y ago

> The conservative ethos is to reduce the power of the state to prevent abuse It's not. Maybe you're thinking of libertarianism? The conservative ethos is to preserve and promote a social hierarchy. This requires both winners and losers.

d-z-m 3y ago
> It's not. Limiting the power of government is a central idea in conservative thought, especially in America[0]. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservatism_in_the_United_Sta...
- lapcat 3y ago
  That's what they may claim, but their actions speak much louder than their words. Just look at what happens whenever they take political power. They profess "local control" when they only have control of the localities; when they achieve power at the state or federal level, they immediately place restrictions on the ability of localities to set their own rules and laws. (I've seen this happen over and over.) And traditionally over the decades, conservatives have been and continue to be the biggest proponents of censorship: in schools, in the media, in businesses, etc. I think the fairest thing to say, from that Wikipedia article, is this: "Conservatism in the United States is not a single school of thought." "The history of American conservatism has been marked by tensions and competing ideologies". Limit government interference in the market? Yes. Defund the police: Hell no. Defund the military: Mostly no. Defund the IRS? Hell yes. Let anyone who wants to marry get married? Let anyone who wants to have an abortion get an abortion? Go burn in hell. It really varies depending on the issue. I would claim that these apparent contradictions all make sense if the goal is to preserve and promote a social hierarchy. One might wonder how Christianity and capitalism are even compatible. Read what Jesus said about money! Sometimes it appears that most contemporary conservative Christians in the US have not read The New Testament at all, and in some other countries, such as in South America, Christian social movements tend to be (more naturally IMO) explicitly anti-capitalist. I have this strong impression that US conservative Christians have come to believe that the so-called Invisible Hand of the market is actually God sending reward and punishment, which is why it's now ok and even praiseworthy to seek after and accumulate wealth.

switch007 3y ago

I guess the desire to control others (sorry, "preserve law and order") sometimes overrules the principle of small government.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

CivBase 3y ago

American conservatism advocates for small government on economic issues, but not societal issues.

api 3y ago

That’s not the conservative ethos. Conservatives historically support the maintenance of what they see as natural or divinely ordained hierarchy, including via the power of the state. Libertarians being called conservatives is a strange Cold War aberration emerging from their mutual opposition to authoritarian Marxism. Now that the USSR is gone and that type of Marxism is mostly very fringe, conservatives are reverting to their historical mean and kicking out libertarians. This is what national conservatism and to some extent MAGA is about.

UncleMeat 3y ago

The conservative ethos is that there are good people and bad people and that good people deserve protection and bad people deserve what is coming to them. You get shunted into the "good people" or "bad people" as a whole. This permits almost unlimited punishment for somebody once they have been categorized as "bad people." This can happen because they committed a crime, even if that crime is wholly unrelated to the situation at hand. It can even happen because they did something like mouth off to a cop. As long as the state violence is happening to the other tribe, the conservative vision of justice is totally okay.