Justified Killing - Progressive vs Conservative morality

[Starlight]

Progressive morality tends to be guided by clear general principles, which usually include the principle of maximizing freedom and wellbeing for intelligent beings. How progressives tend to approach the question of whether a killing is justified is usually by application of that principle. Conservatives, on the other hand, seem to have a much more ad hoc morality, which does not usually seem reducible to clear principles like progressive morality, but rather seems to be an ad hoc and subjective mixture from many sources.

Let us consider different types of killings, and to what extent progressives and conservatives generally tend to view them as justified:

Type of killing	Typical progressive view	Typical conservative view
In war	Generally unjustified	Generally justified
Death penalty	Generally unjustified	Generally justified
Police killing of a criminal	Generally unjustified	Generally justified
An intelligent animal	Generally unjustified	Generally justified
Abortion	Generally justified	Generally unjustified
Euthanasia	Generally justified	Generally unjustified
As a last resort in defense of a life	Generally justified	Generally justified

On the whole, it can be seen that conservatives tend to think the taking of life is justified more often and in more circumstances than progressives (so the "pro life" label for conservative views on abortion certainly doesn't generalize to the rest of their morality). The only cases both sides agree on is in defense of one's own life, and even then there is a substantial difference with conservatives generally having far greater readiness to kill (e.g. conservatives support "stand your ground" laws justifying the killing of a person in a public place if the person is threatening, and tend to be more supportive of laws enabling people to kill burglars in their own home; whereas progressives would tend to say that killing in self defense is only justified as an absolute last resort if there is a clear and imminent threat to a life).

The only cases where progressives tend to justify killing more than conservatives are abortion and euthanasia, because in both cases they apply the general principle of maximizing freedom and wellbeing for intelligent beings. Since the fetus is not yet an intelligent being then abortion is okay; and the freedom to end one's life if one's wellbeing is severely compromised due to illness follows straightforwardly from the general principle.

The extremely divergent views in the above table tend to lead both sides to consider the other absolutely horrible and immoral people. It certainly horrifies me on a constant basis the cavalier way conservatives in their forum approach the topic of killing people, and I've repeatedly been utterly disgusted by conservative posters here who justify everything from police shooting unarmed people in their custody through to large wars that kill hundreds of thousands of people, and find their views repulsive and immoral and evil. I'm told they have similar views of me. Naturally, of course, it is possible for a person to be somewhere between the extremes and to be a 'centrist' between the two views or lean somewhat towards one side without completely embracing the positions listed above.

I invite conservatives here to explain to me their so-called morality... why are some types of killing justified and others aren't in your view? Do you have any general principles? Or do you just get your justifications for killing people from the society around you? Is there any one coherent overall principle that explains your views on all these issues, or is it a mismash of many different ideas with your view on each issue coming from a different idea or different source?

[Spartacus]

Your OP seems to do a little too much in the way of treating loose coalitions-- both progressive and conservative-- as coherent and common ideological stances. For example, there's the distinction between classical liberalism and various strains and schools of thought within the Christian intellectual tradition-- and even within a particular denomination, the tradition is not univocal.

As for me, the inherent (cannot be lost or renounced) dignity of human life is the central principle. For the other stuff... War and capital punishment are theoretically justifiable as acts of collective self-defense. The direct and intentional killing of an innocent human life is wrong, therefore euthanasia and abortion are wrong. Animals do not have the same inherent dignity as human beings, but like all of God's creation, must be treated with respect.

[Starlight]

Your OP seems to do a little too much in the way of treating loose coalitions-- both progressive and conservative-- as coherent and common ideological stances.

Well within the US progressives and conservatives are common labels for fairly clear ideological groups, and people who apply those labels to themselves and hold the above list of positions are present on this forum.

Obviously you are one of several posters here who holds neither view, and your views come from quite a different perspective, and in this forum you sometimes agree with conservatives and sometimes with progressives on various issues.

As for me, the inherent (cannot be lost or renounced) dignity of human life is the central principle.

Okay. That principle explains the second set of three conservative positions (animals, abortion, euthanasia). However I would have thought that a strong respect for human life would lead to taking progressive positions on the first set of three (war, death penalty, police killings) - progressives usually state their respect for life as being the key reason they take the positions they do on these issues.

Do you see your principle of the dignity of human life as an essentially religious one? (e.g. due to either humans having souls, or because God commands it in the bible) I am struggling to see a secular justification for adherence to that principle... i.e. what would it be about human life that gives it inherent dignity when an animal that shares 99% of its genome with humans is regarded as not having inherent dignity and to be killable?

War and capital punishment are theoretically justifiable as acts of collective self-defense.

Well certainly in some instances. However with the death penalty there are obviously other ways to do self-defense (e.g. life imprisonment) that do not violate your inherent dignity of human life principle espoused above, so it seems like you ought to be strongly against the death penalty. And most wars are not wars of self-defense... so do you view most wars as wrong?

[Cow Poke]

You seem to ignore the fact that Police killing of a criminal (Generally unjustified) can actually be the same as "As a last resort in defense of a life" (Generally justified).

[Sea of red]

You know this thread is a goner, right?

[One Bad Pig]

What about progressives like Benito Mussolini and Josef Djugashvili?

[Sea of red]

What about progressives like Benito Mussolini and Josef Djugashvili?

[demi-conservative]

On the whole, it can be seen that conservatives tend to think the taking of life is justified more often

Over last 30+ years, number of abortions in US at least 700k to 1 million+. Per year!



What is number of people killed in war in that time? Number killed by police? Death penalty?

[One Bad Pig]

He was quite progressive, and was admired by progressives in the US before WW II. He broke with the communists, but he was still pretty far left.

[rogue06]

What about progressives like Benito Mussolini and Josef Djugashvili?

Iosif Djugashvili.


Pedantic man FTW!

[One Bad Pig]

Iosif Djugashvili.


Pedantic man FTW!

One transliteration is as good as any other.

[guacamole]

I invite conservatives here to explain to me their so-called morality... why are some types of killing justified and others aren't in your view? Do you have any general principles? Or do you just get your justifications for killing people from the society around you? Is there any one coherent overall principle that explains your views on all these issues, or is it a mismash of many different ideas with your view on each issue coming from a different idea or different source?

I won’t retype the argument, but I agree with Spartacus on your treatment of loose coalitions, and furthermore, I would quibble with the breakdown of the categories of specific acts, but that gets at the heart of my point;. Mainly, I’m not impressed by either conservative or liberal justifications for state-sanctioned killing. It is essentially the same position, and the sides differ on the details. The slippery ad hoc part is usually the self-defense justification. Almost all people who kill want to use the “self-defense” justification; And please note, I’m arguing not that self-defense is a coherent moral justifications (though it can be), I’m arguing that usually, we decide who we want to kill, and then decide how it is self-defense. I’m arguing that our self-justification is usually self-deception.

Abortion Feminists argue the self-defense position that the life of the mother bears more moral significance than the life of the fetus.

Capital Punishment Supporters (I will not argue all conservatives do this. Catholic objections to capital punishment are well documented.) assert that the state must kill as a deterrent, essentially a self-defense argument. Some liberals, despite their protestations, have an essentially pro-death penalty point of view in recommending life in prison as if that is not a death sentence, dragged out over the course of decades.

Military Offenses with Civilian Casualties The “Just War” doctrine is self-defense in military drag, never mind nukes, firestorms, napalm, and poison gas.

It gets worse the more that we peel back layers. The same person who argues that abortion is repellent because we are murdering the innocent is content to justify killing the innocent in a military offensive. The same person who condemn s murdering the innocent in a military offensive does not allow for that objection when it comes to abortion. The specific terms of the justification are not applied, for the most part, consistently. Both make allowance that the share- holders of a health insurance business, in self-defense, can take an innocent life, and that it is allowable because capitalism demands that the best good be defined by market forces even if the innocent are caught in the meat grinder of making money. And all of this, so long as we don’t get our own hands dirty--because we don’t have to get our hands dirty, is acceptable, and if some part of the complex calculus of murder goes awry, then we are not personally responsible because we did not do it.

Furthermore, the moral objectivists arguments imply that the justifications are relative (though, admittedly not in those words), while the relativists argue that there is good reason to kill or not kill aside from personal or cultural preference. It’s mind boggling.

There are so many layers of self-deception that the most coherent sides I can conceive of are:

1. It’s okay to kill some people (99.9% of people live here.)
2. We should not kill people because we don’t know how to determine if it is right or wrong.

Fwiw,
Guaca.

[Bill the Cat]

Conservatives, on the other hand, seem to have a much more ad hoc morality,

Wrong. It's pretty tight. We believe killing is only justified in times of war (only hostile enemy combatants currently engaged in acts of war) and for self-defense and defense of the innocent.

[rogue06]

He was quite progressive, and was admired by progressives in the US before WW II.

In the British version of the movie Anything Goes, some of Cole Porter's lyrics in the song "You're the Top" were rewritten by P. G. Wodehouse and included "You’re Mussolini, you’re Mrs. Sweeney," to replace "You’re an O’Neill drama, you’re Whistler’s mama."

[LeaC]

Type of killing	Typical progressive view	Typical conservative view
In war	Generally unjustified	Generally justified
Death penalty	Generally unjustified	Generally justified
Police killing of a criminal	Generally unjustified	Generally justified
An intelligent animal	Generally unjustified	Generally justified
Abortion	Generally justified	Generally unjustified
Euthanasia	Generally justified	Generally unjustified
As a last resort in defense of a life	Generally justified	Generally justified

What does this even mean? I don't consider myself a progressive or conservative, but I know plenty of examples of people who do(on both) who don't fit your categories, and I don't see the purpose to broad generalizations about complicated issues. If you're in an unjustified war, but taking a life is the last resort to save your life, does that make it justified to progressives? There are conservatives who are anti-death penalty. The word criminal tends to conjure up images of someone who committed a violent crime, rightly or wrongly, and if you clarified that this is what you meant to a "progressive", or clarified that the criminal could be anyone from a jaywalker to a serial killer to a "conservative", there'd be far more agreement between them than what your chart implies. As it is, you're only offering likely responses measuring the level of outrage and knee-jerk answers to a sensitive, popular issue.

I'm a vegetarian, and I don't understand the context of 'death of an intelligent animal' well enough to say whether it's justified or not. What animal, and why? I don't believe it would be "justified" to kill an ant purely for the sake of human cruelty, though it's neither an intelligent animal nor an act anyone would stop me from doing. Who other than the completely ignorant or politically apathetic would be able to come up with these answers to this chart? Under what circumstances do all progressives find most euthanasia justified, and how much thought and research have you really put into it? I suspect I do know the answer to the last question, at least.