Quote Originally Posted by Khendraja'aro View Post
But to make the death penalty stuff more clear: It does not allow for moderation. You cannot half kill someone or kill him only a little bit. It's either-or. And that makes it extreme.
So says a 21st century abolitionist.

For nearly all of human history the notion of murder being a capital crime has never been extreme. Instead the questions would not be over the sentence but would be over how you treat a suspect prior to their execution. Habeas corpus, the right to a fair trial - all of these have evolved long before the notion that murders shouldn't die.

If you were to go back a few hundred years and say to people that a convicted murderer should be kept alive for upto 20 years in jail, given multiple chances to appeal etc before carrying out the sentence they'd probably think you were extreme - but not in the direction you're thinking. America's implementation of the death penalty viewed through the prism of history is far from authoritarian. So yes extremism changes.