[schroedy]

I guess this is high falootin' philosophy, but I simply cannot see how anything could be more cold-blooded and morally wrong than the death penalty.

People who have no familiarity with another person methodically and without remorse extinguish his life. There is absolutely no mitigating factor here -- no emotion, no financial reward, no miscast patriotism, no paranoid delusion . . . .

If I as an individual were to execute (pun recognized, if not intended) such a plan, the world would universally respond with outrage. I don't see how society doing it, even in the name of order, security or vengence makes it any less morally reprehensible.

If killing people is wrong, the death penalty is the wrongest of all possible killings. If killing people is not wrong, then the death penalty is wrong, or at least senseless.

To me, the death penalty is inherently illogical. Like the bumper sticker says, "Why do we kill people who kill people to show people that killing people is wrong?"