Like other government executives before him, our President Duterte believes that the death penalty is affirmative of life. By failing to execute murderers or stop drug lords, we signal a lessened regard for the value of the lives of victims.
Society has a right to defend itself. The state has the responsibility to protect its citizens, by ensuring that the law is obeyed and violators are punished.
This is the standard “moral defense” of death as punishment. Even if executions don’t deter violent crime or the drug trade any more effectively than imprisonment, the death penalty is still required because it is the only means society has of doing justice in response to the worst of crimes.
RIGHTS OF SOCIETY ARE PARAMOUNT
“The rights of society are paramount. When we protect guilty lives, we give up innocent lives in exchange.
“When opponents of capital punishment say to the state, ‘I will not let you kill in my name’, they are also saying to murderers: ‘You can kill in your own name as long as I have an excuse for not being involved.’
“It is hard to imagine anything worse than being murdered while neighbors do nothing. But something worse exists. When those same neighbors shrink back from justly punishing the murderer, the victim dies twice.”
THIS IS POWERFUL REASONING.
President Duterte’s thinking on the trafficking of illegal drugs, drug lords and drug pushers, is roughly similar to this. He shares the frustration and anger of people who see that the Noynoy Aquino government did nothing to combat the drug menace. So what if suspects are killed during the drug war, to wipe out the menace?
~ Yen Makabenta
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