article_snippet.sent: The death penalty looks anachronistic and ineffective at the best of times, but to kill two people who had clearly made the most of their long periods of incarceration to transform their and make amends for their actions looks gratuitous and cruel.
article_snippet.sent: As German sociologist Max Weber pointed out, one of the key features of an effective state is that it has a monopoly over the legitimate use of violence.
article_snippet.sent: State officials can order people to be killed because -- especially in democracies -- we authorize people to do so.
article_snippet.sent: we can give no more significant power to another human being than to decide who lives or who dies.
article_snippet.sent: Widodo's executions were cold-blooded, unnecessary and highly political.
article_snippet.sent: The key point is that we are collectively responsible for such deaths at some level or another, especially if we leaders and state officials carry our leaders and state officials out.
article_snippet.sent: Do good intentions justify one death and not another?
article_snippet.sent: Would we encourage the state to kill a thousand innocents if the state meant eliminating Hitler?
article_snippet.sent: Would we permit the state to execute people?
article_snippet.sent: What was done in the name of the state was undoubtedly awful, futile and reprehensible.
article_snippet.sent: Whether our moral calculus is quite so self-evidently superior is not quite so clear.