...Historical experience shows us that the social contract can be modified in just such repugnant ways. Just one example is the fate of a good many new England "witches."...And should they achieve a majority, they would be stopped by who?
Then absent an external standard - the "inaleinable right" - one is more or less reduced to appealing to the better angels of the mob, isn't s/he? Something like the so-called "critical studies" people at the Harvard School of Law who argue that the law should be "socialized" -
i. e., it should reflect what a majority of people think it ought to be.
...And no doubt you would have a similarly facile explanation of how capital punishment does not really deprive one of life
And why do you think I'd suggest that? Dead is dead, the ultimate separation of life from liberty. Incarceration or other imposed servitude separates one from the ability to exercise some or even most of his/her liberties, but it does not do so immutably and irreversibly.
