The Death Penalty and the Social Contract

[The Parkus Empire]

Welcome to another Parkus thread. Just so you're all aware, this is a conservative safe space. So let's avoiding treading in order to avoid triggering.

What is your opinion of "social contract" theory? Does it possess validity?

What is your opinion on the death penalty? Does the government have the right to kill? I made an extensive post on this in the monarchist thread.

Now as I also said, I would talk about the importance of coercion to the social order.

Let's open with this

All grandeur, all power, all subordination to authority rests on the executioner: he is the horror and the bond of human association. Remove this incomprehensible agent from the world and at that very moment order gives way to chaos, thrones topple and society disappears.

What does de Maistre mean by this? To those unfamiliar with conservative theory, it might sound like sheer lunacy. Perhaps an earlier quote by myself might explain it:

There are two reasons the state abolishes the death penalty. The first is mercy, as exemplified by Vladimir the Great. The second is a collapse in the belief in moral truth, and idea of morality as a matter of preference. This leads to a moral diffidence, the state becomes no longer sure (or even outright rejects) that it is fit to determine if someone deserves to die, as best exemplified by the EU. The state feels increasingly uncomfortable judging anyone, as it's "not the state's business" to do so, as to do so would mean the state has authority to enforce morality. Law must now be rationalized as a way of diagnosing illness, it becomes a sort of service for criminals, to heal them (obviously this cannot be reconciled with the death penalty). The state becomes morally impotent, even as it becomes increasingly large in "services", which allow the government to be increasingly controlled by bureaucratic specialists rather than representatives. And as the state becomes morally impotent, society ceases to grasp justice, it becomes redefined in the impotent way: instead of one's behavior toward society defining one as just or unjust, the determination is society's treatment of oneself: "privilege" becomes the concern rather than sin, and responsibility is abolished. Now Nietzsche understood this quite well (if not as well as Dostoevsky), and traced it back to Christianity which says, "blessed are the persecuted" and "woe to the prosperous," although Nietzsche inappropriately grafted the modern motivation on to Christianity, which is wrong: Christianity says rejoice when you are treated poorly for Christ's sake, and bless those who persecute you. Modern motivation is rather about savoring indignation, which is not really Christian. Christianity tells us that however bad we have it, we deserve worse, and that everything short of infinite torment is a matter of mercy to be thankful for, and not to begrudge others for receiving.

I will elaborate further by posting the passage which caused me to write that

I will not end this chapter without making a reflection which appears to me of the utmost importance: if such effects have been produced by the suppression of the penalty of death in political crimes, how far would its ravages reach if the suppression were extended to common crimes? Well, now, if there be one thing evident to me, it is, that the suppression of the one involves the suppression of the other at some time more or less distant, and I also think it beyond all doubt, that the suppression of the penalty of death, in both conceptions, leads to the suppression of all human penalties. To suppress the highest penalty in the crimes which attack the security of the State, and with it of the members who compose it, and retain it in those perpetrated only against individuals, appears to me a monstrous inconsistency, which cannot long resist the logical evolution of human events. On the other hand, to suppress as excessive the penalty of death in the one and the other, is the same as to suppress all kind of penalty for inferior crimes; for when a penalty less than that of death is applied to the former, any that may be applied to the latter must be wanting to the laws of just proportion, and will be resisted as oppressive and unjust.

If the suppression of the penalty of death in political crimes is founded on the negation of political crime, and this negation on the fallibility of the State in these matters, it is clear that every system of penalty falls to the ground; for fallibility in political things supposes fallibility in all moral things, and fallibility in the one and in the other carries with it the radical incompetence of the State to qualify any human action as a crime.

Well, now, as this fallibility is a fact, it follows that in this matter of penalty all governments are incompetent, because all are fallible.

One can only be accused of crime by him who can accuse him of sin, and he only can impose penalties for the one, who can impose them for the other. Governments are not competent to impose a penalty on man, except in quality of delegates of God; and human law has power only when it is the commentary of the divine law. The negation of God and of His law on the part of governments, is equal to the negation of themselves. To deny the divine and affirm the human law, to affirm crime and deny sin, to deny God and affirm any government whatever, is to affirm what is denied; and to deny what is affirmed is to fall into a palpable and evident contradiction. Then the blast of revolutions begins to blow, which will soon restore the empire of logic which presides at the evolution of events, suppressing human contradictions with an absolute and inexorable affirmation, or with an absolute and peremptory negation.

The Atheism of the law and of the State—or what in the end is the same, but expressed in a different manner, the complete secularisation of the State and of the law—is a theory which does not square well with that of penalty, the one coming from man in his state of separation from God, and the other from God in his state of union with man.

It would appear that governments know, by means of infallible instinct, that only in the name of God can they be just and strong. And so it happens that when they begin to be secularised, or to separate from God, they immediately relax in their penalties, as if they felt their right diminished. The lax theories of modern criminal jurists are contemporaneous with religious decadence, and their rule in modern codes with the complete secularisation of political powers. Since then the criminal has been so transformed in our eyes, that the children regard as an object of pity what was a subject of horror to their parents. He who yesterday was called a criminal, is to-day called eccentric or mad. Modern Rationalists call crime misfortune. The day shall come when the government will pass into the hands of the unfortunate, and then there will be no other crime but innocence. The theories on penalty held in absolute monarchies in their days of decay, were followed by those of the Liberal schools, who brought them to the present pass. After the Liberal come the Socialistic schools, with their theory of holy insurrections and heroic crimes. Nor shall these be last; for away there on the far-off horizon new and more bloody auroras begin to dawn. The new gospel of the world is perhaps being written in a prison; the world will only get what it deserves, when it is evangelised by the new apostles.

Those who made people believe that the earth can be a paradise, have made them more easily believe it can be a paradise without blood. The evil is not in the illusion; it is in the fact that, precisely on the moment and hour the illusion would be believed by all, blood would flow even from the hard rocks, and earth would be transformed into hell. In this obscure and lowly valley man cannot aspire to an impossible happiness, without incurring the misfortune of losing the little he has.

What does this all mean? It means that supreme coercion must rest on the right to kill. If you refuse to pay taxes, for example, the government sends men to lock you away as punishment, you have no right to defend yourself against these men. If you take out a gun and say, "I'm not going," they will not leave you alone, they will kill you. Even when death is not the punishment itself, death is always reserved as the alternative punishment. You either accept your whipping, or you die. And tracing this down, it holds everything together. If a couple is married, we hold them together by coercion--they need the government's authorization to divorce, and if the man decides he doesn't want that and tries to circumvent it by marrying again without divorcing, that's bigamy, a crime. When coercion is renounced, everything starts to fall apart, people get "no-fault divorce" and other ridiculousness, trying at once to support marriage with coercion (since even still divorce must be authorized by the government), while at the same time removing coercion, to create a coercion-free government and consequently a coercion-free society. Which cannot hold together, and here I quote a passage by Edmund Burke (that I have quoted much on this board) which he wrote in rebuke to the Whigs after they excommunicated him.

I cannot too often recommend it to the serious consideration of all men, who think civil society to be within the province of moral jurisdiction, that if we owe to it any duty, it is not subject to our will. Duties are not voluntary. Duty and will are even contradictory terms. Now, though civil society might be at first a voluntary act (which in many cases it undoubtedly was), its continuance is under a permanent, standing covenant, co-existing with the society; and it attaches upon every individual of that society, without any formal act of his own. This is warranted by the general practice, arising out of the general sense of mankind. Men without their choice derive benefits from that association; without their choice they are subjected to duties in consequence of these benefits; and without their choice they enter into a virtual obligation as binding as any that is actual. Look through the whole of life and the whole system of duties. Much the strongest moral obligations are such as were never the results of our option. I allow, that if no supreme ruler exists, wise to form, and potent to enforce, the moral law, there is no sanction to any contract, virtual or even actual, against the will of prevalent power. On that hypothesis, let any set of men be strong enough to set their duties at defiance, and they cease to be duties any longer. We have but this one appeal against irresistible power—

"Si genus humanum et mortalia temnitis arma,
At sperate Deos memores fandi atque nefandi."

Taking it for granted that I do not write to the disciples of the Parisian philosophy, I may assume, that the awful Author of our being is the Author of our place in the order of existence; and that, having disposed and marshalled us by a divine tactic, not according to our will, but according to his, he has, in and by that disposition, virtually subjected us to act the part which belongs to the place assigned us. We have obligations to mankind at large, which are not in consequence of any special voluntary pact. They arise from the relation of man to man, and the relation of man to God, which relations are not matters of choice. On the contrary, the force of all the pacts which we enter into with any particular person, or number of persons, amongst mankind, depends upon those prior obligations. In some cases the subordinate relations are voluntary, in others they are necessary—but the duties are all compulsive. When we marry, the choice is voluntary, but the duties are not matter of choice. They are dictated by the nature of the situation. Dark and inscrutable are the ways by which we come into the world. The instincts which give rise to this mysterious process of nature are not of our making. But out of physical causes, unknown to us, perhaps unknowable, arise moral duties, which, as we are able perfectly to comprehend, we are bound indispensably to perform. Parents may not be consenting to their moral relation; but consenting or not, they are bound to a long train of burthensome duties towards those with whom they have never made a convention of any sort. Children are not consenting to their relation, but their relation, without their actual consent, binds them to its duties; or rather it implies their consent, because the presumed consent of every rational creature is in unison with the predisposed order of things. Men come in that manner into a community with the social state of their parents, endowed with all the benefits, loaded with all the duties, of their situation. If the social ties and ligaments, spun out of those physical relations which are the elements of the commonwealth, in most cases begin, and alway continue, independently of our will, so, without any stipulation on our own part, are we bound by that relation called our country, which comprehends (as it has been well said) "all the charities of all." Nor are we left without powerful instincts to make this duty as dear and grateful to us, as it is awful and coercive. It consists, in a great measure, in the ancient order into which we are born. We may have the same geographical situation, but another country; as we may have the same country in another soil. The place that determines our duty to our country is a social, civil relation.

None of this is meant to suggest that consent should not play a role, even a major role in society. It should play as wide of a role as the people are capable of. Or, as Calhoun said,

It follows, from what has been stated, that it is a great and dangerous error to suppose that all people are equally entitled to liberty. It is a reward to be earned, not a blessing to be gratuitously lavished on all alike—a reward reserved for the intelligent, the patriotic, the virtuous and deserving—and not a boon to be bestowed on a people too ignorant, degraded and vicious, to be capable either of appreciating or of enjoying it. Nor is it any disparagement to liberty, that such is, and ought to be the case. On the contrary, its greatest praise—its proudest distinction is, that an all-wise Providence has reserved it, as the noblest and highest reward for the development of our faculties, moral and intellectual. A reward more appropriate than liberty could not be conferred on the deserving;--nor a punishment inflicted on the undeserving more just, than to be subject to lawless and despotic rule. This dispensation seems to be the result of some fixed law—and every effort to disturb or defeat it, by attempting to elevate a people in the scale of liberty, above the point to which they are entitled to rise, must ever prove abortive, and end in disappointment. The progress of a people rising from a lower to a higher point in the scale of liberty, is necessarily slow—and by attempting to precipitate, we either retard, or permanently defeat it.

How to gauge how much liberty a people can handle? The conservative Founding Fathers articulated this quite simply

Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

No human society has ever been able to maintain both order and freedom, both cohesiveness and liberty apart from the moral precepts of the Christian Religion. Should our Republic ever forget this fundamental precept of governance, we will then, be surely doomed.

I believe that religion is the only solid base of morals and that morals are the only possible support of free governments.

Our liberty depends on our education, our laws, and habits...it is founded on morals and religion, whose authority reigns in the heart, and on the influence all these produce on public opinion before that opinion governs rulers.

Joseph de Maistre articulated in his deliciously blunt way.

Wherever any religion other than Christianity is practised, slavery exists as of right, and wherever religion grows weak, the political power becomes proportionately more dominant and the nation is less fit to enjoy general liberty.

Note that de Maistre here is no trying to justify colonialism or anything like that, he is making a descriptive observation. His general warning in fact is to the Czar of Russian concerning the abolition of serfdom, since he says the Church there is not powerful enough, and to preemptively abolish serfdom.

As these serfs receive their liberty, they will find that they are placed between teachers who are more than suspect, and priests who are weak and enjoy no special consideration. Exposed in this unprepared fashion, they will infallibly and abruptly pass from superstition to atheism and from passive obedience to unbridled activity. Liberty will have the same effect on these temperaments as a heady wine on a man who is not used to it. The mere sight of liberty given to others will intoxicate those who still do not share it. With men's minds prepared in this way, any University Pugatscheff has only to appear (they can be manufactured easily enough, as all the factories are open) and if we add indifference, incapacity, the ambition of a few nobles, foreign bad faith, the intrigues of a detestable sect which never rests, etc., etc., the State, according to all the rules of probability, will literally burst asunder, like an over-long beam which only holds firm at the two extremities. Elsewhere there is only one danger to fear; here there are two

If an emancipation of the serfs is to take place in Russia, it will come about in the course of nature. Quite unforeseen circumstances will make it generally desirable. The whole process will take place quietly and will be carried through with- out a hitch (like all great enterprises) . If the sovereign gives his blessing to this national movement, it will be his right and his duty to do so ; but God forbid that he should ever stimulate it of his own accord!

To return to the Leitmotif:

As a crowning danger, Russia, alone amongst nations, ancient or modern, refuses to exercise the death penalty in the public interest; a circumstance which must be borne in mind.

To add to this, it is a necessary consideration that the death penalty is totally incompatible with social contract theory. In social contract theory, the majority (or monarch) does not simply "subjugate" the minority, the minority supposedly consents. Even if they don't know it:

When therefore the opinion that is contrary to my own prevails, this proves neither more nor less than that I was mistaken, and that what I thought to be the general will was not so. If my particular opinion had carried the day I should have achieved the opposite of what was my will; and it is in that case that I should not have been free.

This in fact is very similar to what Hobbes says, only Roussseau substitutes the majority for the monarch

For it has been already shown that nothing the sovereign representative can do to a subject, on what pretence soever, can properly be called injustice or injury; because every subject is author of every act the sovereign doth

However if we take a moment to examine this, we find it utterly ludicrous to believe that a man can will his own death without him knowing it himself, even to protest being killed at loud cries, while supposedly still willing his death according to those who are putting him to death. Now death is the simplest example, the purest. But it applies to all manner of coercion. To tax a man when he protests, is no more consensual than to kill a man when he protests. Mind you, what I saying here is not that it is "wrong" to do these things without consent. Rather what I am asserting is that the social contract theory is worthless, baseless nonsense. Society is based on domination and coercion, there are simply very camps over who has the authority to dominate and coerce. Domination and coercion must ultimately be realized in killing, or at least the right to kill.

[Conserative Morality]

You are absolutely right; people who do not believe in the social contract should be exiled.

[The Parkus Empire]

You are absolutely right; people who do not believe in the social contract should be exiled.

This is an interesting point, because it shows that consent over your land being seized is irrelevant.

[Thermodolia]

TL;DCTR

[Conserative Morality]

This is an interesting point, because it shows that consent over your land being seized is irrelevant.

Of course! The social contract refers to rule over people, not land. Land does not need consent. This may be a shocking notion to you, that land does not have personhood, but I assure you, in most societies it is true!

[The Parkus Empire]

This is an interesting point, because it shows that consent over your land being seized is irrelevant.

Of course! The social contract refers to rule over people, not land. Land does not need consent. This may be a shocking notion to you, that land does not have personhood, but I assure you, in most societies it is true!

No, but in liberal (as opposed to leftist) social theory, private property is generally held to be a human right.

[Conserative Morality]

No, but in liberal (as opposed to leftist) social theory, private property is generally held to be a human right.

"Human right"

That's a very modern term, Parkus, are you sure you're talking about liberal (as opposed to leftist) social theory?

[The Parkus Empire]

No, but in liberal (as opposed to leftist) social theory, private property is generally held to be a human right.

"Human right"

That's a very modern term, Parkus, are you sure you're talking about liberal (as opposed to leftist) social theory?

Yes, absolutely.

[Thermodolia]

No, but in liberal (as opposed to leftist) social theory, private property is generally held to be a human right.

"Human right"

That's a very modern term, Parkus, are you sure you're talking about liberal (as opposed to leftist) social theory?

But CM land isn’t Human so it can’t be a human right

[Conserative Morality]

Yes, absolutely.

I think you're very mistaken. You should be talking about natural rights. Human rights are a leftist invention.

[Conserative Morality]

"Human right"

That's a very modern term, Parkus, are you sure you're talking about liberal (as opposed to leftist) social theory?

But CM land isn’t Human so it can’t be a human right

And speech isn't human so it can't be a human right here! And religion certainly isn't human, so it can't be a human right! I think I see where Parkus is going with this.

[The Parkus Empire]

Yes, absolutely.

I think you're very mistaken. You should be talking about natural rights. Human rights are a leftist invention.

Natural rights are a kind of human rights, derp.

[Conserative Morality]

Natural rights are a kind of human rights, derp.

... no, the concepts are quite distinct. This just, again, shows the paucity of your understanding of those you profess to oppose.

[The Parkus Empire]

Natural rights are a kind of human rights, derp.

... no, the concepts are quite distinct. This just, again, shows the paucity of your understanding of those you profess to oppose.

Quite wrong. "Human rights" are rights common to all humans. "Natural rights" are rights common to all humans, endowed by the Creator.

[Conserative Morality]

... no, the concepts are quite distinct. This just, again, shows the paucity of your understanding of those you profess to oppose.

Quite wrong. "Human rights" are rights common to all humans. "Natural rights" are rights common to all humans, endowed by the Creator.

Human rights are rights agreed to belong to all humans. Natural rights are rights agreed to be possessed by people by their nature. Natural rights theory holds that they can be traded away in the social contract, as seen in the early days of America and the relation of the natural rights laid out by the Federal government and the ability of the States to override them in their own contracts with their citizens. Human rights theory holds that any such violation is illegitimate and that people do not have the right to trade away their rights as part of a contract.

[The Parkus Empire]

Natural rights theory holds that they can be traded away in the social contract,

Not all of them.

"That all Men are born equally free and independant, and have certain inherent natural Rights, of which they can not by any Compact, deprive or divest their Posterity; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursueing and obtaining Happiness and Safety."

[Genivaria]

Yes, absolutely.

I think you're very mistaken. You should be talking about natural rights. Human rights are a leftist invention.

He's presented ancap logic as 'liberal' because it defended private property.
I think he's stuck on that.

[Conserative Morality]

Natural rights theory holds that they can be traded away in the social contract,

Not all of them.

"That all Men are born equally free and independant, and have certain inherent natural Rights, of which they can not by any Compact, deprive or divest their Posterity; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursueing and obtaining Happiness and Safety."

"deprive or divest their Posterity"

[The Parkus Empire]

I should also add that I myself strongly support the right of private property. When Richard II confiscated Henry Bolingbroke's estate, the ensuing rebellion was fully justified.

[Conserative Morality]

I should also add that I myself strongly support the right of private property. When Richard II confiscated Henry Bolingbroke's estate, the ensuing rebellion was fully justified.

"Killing people is fine but God forbid you take their holy property!"

[Genivaria]

I should also add that I myself strongly support the right of private property. When Richard II confiscated Henry Bolingbroke's estate, the ensuing rebellion was fully justified.

Property is a lesser concern than PERSONAL liberty.
I'm far more concerned about the possibility of getting a black sack over my head and getting tossed into the back of a non-descript van because I disagreed with the government.

[The Parkus Empire]

Not all of them.

"That all Men are born equally free and independant, and have certain inherent natural Rights, of which they can not by any Compact, deprive or divest their Posterity; among which are the Enjoyment of Life and Liberty, with the Means of acquiring and possessing Property, and pursueing and obtaining Happiness and Safety."

"deprive or divest their Posterity"

Correct, you can surrender property rights, with consent. If you exile someone and take his land for refusing to consent, well....

[The Parkus Empire]

I should also add that I myself strongly support the right of private property. When Richard II confiscated Henry Bolingbroke's estate, the ensuing rebellion was fully justified.

"Killing people is fine but God forbid you take their holy property!"

Killing someone arbitrarily obviously isn't fine, it would be tyranny.

[The Parkus Empire]

I should also add that I myself strongly support the right of private property. When Richard II confiscated Henry Bolingbroke's estate, the ensuing rebellion was fully justified.

Property is a lesser concern than PERSONAL liberty.

Unless you believe in the soul, there is no real distinction.

[Conserative Morality]

Unless you believe in the soul, there is no real distinction.

lol