Chris proposes three reasons why libertarians might support the death penalty. I have my doubts about the first of them, which says that 'If the victim would have wanted the death penalty enforced, then it should be' - this because for a libertarian only the victim counts. Even so, the assumed wants of the victim can't be a sufficient consideration. What if he or she wanted punishment of the perpetrator's descendants unto the twelfth generation? But, anyway, Chris's second reason for libertarians is the one I mainly wanted to focus on:
Libertarians are libertarians because they believe that freedom is colossally valuable. A lifetime in prison, without hope of freedom, is therefore a crueller punishment than death. Capital punishment, then, is more humane than imprisonment...
Yikes. I would hope that some libertarians might think freedom would be scarce for them whether they were dead or in prison, but at any rate they'd like the choice of prison, in view of the final nature of the alternative to it; might think that, as reduced as their freedoms would be in prison, they would have more freedoms there than they would once no longer in the land of the living. Other libertarians might think differently, of course.
