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Notes -
The opposite of an isolated demand for rigor would be an overall demand that life imprisonment also be off the table, on the same grounds. And while as a libertarian I should be as shocked (shocked!) that the government is allowed to steal someone’s life as to compel their death, the system is practically as sane as it can be in order to protect us citizens (us law-abiding, tax-paying, workaday folks, to really rub it in) from dastardly criminals of both the organized and the chaotic sorts.
So, no, death is a Schelling fencepost at the very cliff-edge of the slippery slope, not to protect the criminals from falling off, but to protect us from being the ones who push off the innocent. If we can’t be certain with no reasonable doubt when testing all the variables, we should play by Batman rules.
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