On Not Being A Murderer
“I did that,” says my memory. “I could not have done that,” says my pride, and remains inexorable. Eventually — the memory yields. –Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil
So when I’m staring at Resolved: It is morally permissible for victims to use deadly force as a deliberate response to repeated domestic violence, I realize that these debate topics really are getting worse. I am afraid, I am genuinely fearful, of what some kids are going to go spouting off for their affirmative cases. See, they’re going to be merging two claims that I just can’t reconcile: “I committed cold-blooded premeditated murder. And I’m a good person.” And I just can’t imagine that they’re going to say anything that could re-affirm my alleged faith in humanity. What I can imagine is that they’ll make me want to go home and consult my liquor cabinet for the opinion of Dr. Rum, which is a terrible way to reaffirm my faith in humanity. So here’s what I’d generally say against them…
There’s an old saying that it’s easier to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. And I suspect that it’s especially true when asking, as the affirmative is, for permission to commit not just murder, but premeditated murder. We know it’s premeditated because they’re asking for permission.
But let’s analyze the resolution a bit:
- Use Deadly Force: this indicates that somebody is going to die. Not just have a few bones broken. Not just be shown the error of their ways. But rather die, absolutely. That is what deadly means. It seems reasonable, in the context of a response, that it will be the person inflicting the Repeated Domestic Violence (but this is not an absolute certainty based on the result of the deliberations).
- Repeated Domestic Violence: this indicates that there are extenuating circumstances to the use of deadly force. But this is also low bar — we’re not talking about kidnapping somebody, or sexually abusing them, both of which tend to not be classified as “domestic” at all. Yet it is not an entirely low bar, as the domestic violence is repeated domestic violence. The thing about “repeated” means that it become a pattern of domestic violence and, importantly, is predictable.
- Deliberate Response: these words really slow down the action of using deadly force. This isn’t a matter of accidentally shooting somebody who is threatening you. This is deliberating over an assortment of options and deciding that the best response, the best option to be held response-able for, to the domestic violence that is predictably going to happen isn’t just murder, but murder that has — at this point — been premeditated.
- Permissible: indicates the source of permission, or what the person is coming to for authorization or consent prior to the action. In other words “Hey, I’ve gone over my options and I really think I should kill that son-of-a-bitch. Is that okay?” But “Is that okay” isn’t really the modifier because of the word…
- Morally: The question of morality is a question of “is it good or bad,” requiring judgment. So the question isn’t “is that okay?” but rather “can I still be a good person?” And that’s what the affirmative is really asking about: Can somebody still be considered a good person if they commit premeditated murder?
The crucial thing to bear in mind is that if the extenuating circumstances render the action amoral, then we have not demonstrated moral permissibility, but rather the limitations of appealing to morality for authorization to do what we think — whether rationally or irrationally — has to be done.
Now generally as a society, we like to not think that a victim is able to rationally deliberate their way to the belief that premeditated murder is a good thing to commit. When a victim uses deadly force, we believe that the abuse has driven them to irrational behavior, to primal behavior, to amoral behavior. Murder is bad, but the extenuating circumstances may prevent us from passing that judgment — and that prevents us from establishing that murder in those circumstances is morally permissible in the same way it prevents us from deeming that murder to not be morally permissible (though in both cases, after the fact so it’s no longer a question of permissibility at all).
But what if society is so rotten, so horrid, that the victim can be of sound mind and have no better recourse than premeditated murder? At this point, the murderer becomes amoral not because they have become primal, but because the morality of their society is not adequate to judge the goodness or badness of their actions. In as much as they are incomparable, they have gone beyond the definitions of good and evil (as Nietzsche would put it). The words exist only to communicate meaning between people, so the murderer would have to change the definition of “good” from what could be recognized, thus moving them into amoral territory. Had anybody else been available and willing to deem the murder “morally permissible” then there would have almost certainly been another option for ending the abuse that didn’t involve premeditated murder. I don’t think society is that rotten or horrid, but I’m not a young woman living in the tribal regions of Afghanistan so I understand that my perspective may be limited.
The affirmative wants you to believe that somebody can repeatedly find themselves in a bad situation — not so bad as being kidnapped or raped repeatedly, but still on the receiving end of physical violence — and rationally think about how to respond to the situation, and decide that premeditated murder — not leaving, not calling for help, not calling police, not even merely wounding the abusive bastard, breaking a few bones with a tire iron for example — but premeditated murder really is the right thing to do, based on our general understanding of how good people, morally upstanding people, behave. Because good people commit premeditated murder all the time, don’t you know?
I’m reminded of a story where some Jewish Rabbis thought it would be good to commit premeditated murder. So they take an adulteress — because they weren’t particularly libertine in their views on sexuality — to a leading philosopher of the day, a guy named Jesus (or Joshua, really — it was the same name, we’ve just translated it two different ways) asking for him to confirm that what they were going to do was morally permissible. And he says to them, “Well, the law says your actions are okay. But I think you really should let the one of you who is in every way blameless of any wrongdoing, ever, start the execution.” And there’s this quiet moment as they think about how good they are good at seeming to be, but they all know their shortcomings. They are moral upstanding people based on their society’s understanding of morality. But moral enough to continue being good while committing premeditated murder even though their law said it was okay? Maybe not so much. And as they’re thinking about this, as they’re thinking “Hey, I’m a good person” — because that’s how our pride, how our ego, defends our psyche — they realize “And I won’t be if I’m a murderer.” And so they wander off. They exit the situation. And when they’re gone, Jesus turns to the woman and says “Huh, they’re not condemning you to death after all. And neither am I. Live well.” And the thing that is deeply interesting about this story is that there is no moral permissibility given. There is neither consent nor condemnation for anybody in it. It is, on the whole, entirely amoral: nothing actually happens. And yet the one thing it shows is this: if we feel like we have to ask “is this morally permissible? Will I still be a good person if I do this?” and deliberate over the answer, then the correct answer is probably NO and we’re just trying to convince ourselves otherwise so we can feel better about doing the wrong thing anyway.
Is all that too long to use as a negative case? Probably. And the affirmative is almost certainly going to be using absurd definitions that will need to be overcome first. And I didn’t even propose a value because the resolution appears to be utterly devoid of higher values, with one side advocating murder and the other side apparently complacent to abuse.
In the simplest terms, when somebody says “Yeah we killed him; but trust us, this guy was horrid!” trusting them is not what I’m going to be doing because they’re the baddies.