> The death penalty for murder is understandable, even if you don't agree with it.
I love reading specifics of other cultures, exposing as they do the values that I mistakenly understood to be universal. Even secular, Enlightenment ideas are informed by Christian ideals regarding sin, salvation, forgiveness and redemption; I, not a Christian, nevertheless "hold these truths to be self-evident". A culture without that tradition no doubt finds our Western system to be at least as bizarre.
Even so, our own legal system is less concerned with lofty ideas of Justice than it is with maintaining order and stability. If you read through this system again in that light, all of it seems quite rational. A society in which there is no central authority decides transgression and punishment based on centuries of tradition, a history of trial-and-error, so to speak.
> But killing other innocent people as a penalty for murder is indefensible, even if they are from the same family as the murderer.
From the perspective of the legal system, the family is not innocent: they produced and raised a murderer and outlaw. For the sake of the broader community, the family must be corrected.
I love reading specifics of other cultures, exposing as they do the values that I mistakenly understood to be universal. Even secular, Enlightenment ideas are informed by Christian ideals regarding sin, salvation, forgiveness and redemption; I, not a Christian, nevertheless "hold these truths to be self-evident". A culture without that tradition no doubt finds our Western system to be at least as bizarre.
Even so, our own legal system is less concerned with lofty ideas of Justice than it is with maintaining order and stability. If you read through this system again in that light, all of it seems quite rational. A society in which there is no central authority decides transgression and punishment based on centuries of tradition, a history of trial-and-error, so to speak.
> But killing other innocent people as a penalty for murder is indefensible, even if they are from the same family as the murderer.
From the perspective of the legal system, the family is not innocent: they produced and raised a murderer and outlaw. For the sake of the broader community, the family must be corrected.