You should not take the content of your intuitive response as evidence until you have submitted your psychological reaction to what I call cognitive psychotherapy. You should do what you can to learn as much as possible about the origin of your reaction.

I want to think that there are better ways of obviating murder than to resort to capital punishment, but I realise that this may be wishful thinking on my part.

What we need is legislation, not negotiation, for the entire globe.

It is obvious, I think, that national democracy withers. This has to do with globalisation.

We own ourselves. This is the core of a libertarian theory of rights. But on this theory, while we are at liberty to kill ourselves (regardless of the consequences of others), we are not allowed to kill others, not even if this means that there we be fewer murders in the future, totally speaking.

I believe that one basic question, what we ought to do, period (the moral question), is a genuine one. There exists a true answer to it, which is independent of our thought and conceptualisation.

I have been brought up in a culture where capital punishment is indeed anathema. I have always thought of myself as a principled opponent to capital punishment. However, when thinking about how the topic is handled in other cultures, in particular the American, Russian and Chinese ones, I have realised that my own tack on the issue was utterly superficial.