Moral justification for the execution of criminals of war?

[The Grand Nudger]

I wonder, though....do you think that a society formed around the belief that we shouldn't kill people and animals, a more inclusive taboo, would be more or less conducive to capital punishment than one that did believe in human exceptionalism?

You think that people should never be killed, but that animals may be killed for the fun of it.  A killing is a killing, harm is harm, pain is pain.  So yes, it's pretty apparent that if even very bad people cannot be killed, there's a blanket over the one species that is based on membership rather than on merit-- clearly, exceptionalism.

I thinks it's a well demonstrated utilitarian rule for a society made of people.  I also think killing is killing..and pain is pain.  As I've already said, I have no problem at all acknowledging that there are things I like to do which Aren't Great - Bob.  This a direct observation that the set of the good as I see it is not entirely exhausted by nor does it contain every representative of the set of things I like.

The problem is that "normative beliefs" can include things like "Niggers is savages and ain't Christian, and as their souls (if they even have souls) is anyway condemned by the Lord, the white man may do with them as he wishes."  You can have enforced compliance for those beliefs, too, based on the sincere belief of the population that what they WANT is really good, filled in with "rational" arguments once the rule is already agreed upon.  Preachers, politicians, children and housewives will parrot each other in an idea so common that it is "known" to be true.

Spackle works wonders.

Sure, our normative beliefs have been known to contain a number of horrid things, and?  Some of them were mistakes explained solely by ourselves as subjects - the way we might feel about x.  Others mistakes made because of some assertion that x was good for society.  Yet more still mistakes about items of fact.  If we're even allowing for such statements to be mistaken....but ofc, if we're not...then what's the problem with those normative statements anyway?

I think we would both be comfortable allowing for human beings to be able to get things wrong any number of ways.  Sure, their feels - but not just their feels.  No?