Have you ever heard of the
Natural Law? The basic premise that right and wrong become somewhat obvious by experience and by consensus of many people over broad regions. For instance the Natural Law can explain the universal belief that murder is wrong. Some may even say it is obvious. That is why most grown humans have a basic knowledge of right and wrong. We're not speaking of what they do, but what they know. When a man robs a liquor store, he's know it's wrong. When a man says something mean to a friend, he knows it's wrong. If I call you an asshole, you don't feel cheered up, because your natural feelings tell you something is wrong. The Natural Law thus explains why a man has a right to live and to be free, because people know instinctively that murder is wrong and so is captivity or servitude. Even the Founders understand, though they did it, that slavery was wrong.
Murder is defined as the
illegal killing of a human being.
The fact that murder is only the
illegal killing of human being is proof that there exists a gray area on this matter. Laws are malleable and dependent on culture. If laws were universal, then an argument could be made, but they are different everywhere.
Right now, killing someone in an organized Duel is "murder", but it wasn't 200 years ago. So is it always wrong to murder someone in a duel, or is it dependent on the laws?
Seeking out and murdering the man who raped and murdered your child but got off on a technicality is something I find to be morally OK. But it gets classified as murder, because it is illegal, but I don't think that the person who does this is morally wrong. Do you? It's "murder" by the above definition, and that's always wrong, right?.
Whereas when the same guy
doesn't get off on a technicality and the state kills him, it's legal. Therefore people feel it is morally correct for this guy to be killed. It's the exact same thing except in this case, the state has been given power to kill the man that the ordinary citizen and victim do not have, therefore I think it is morally INcorrect. The state should not have more power than the people have.
Arguing that the morality of killing a human is dependent on legality is just silly. It is a way to justify killings that you agree with so that it doesn't get classified as "murder" so that one can continue to feel that "murder" is always wrong. To me, murder is the willful killing of a human being. It is not always wrong.
These justifications of "legal" vs, "Illegal" are irrelevant in the actual moral discussion because legal killing can be more "wrong" than an illegal killing.
For example, the
illegal killing of a guilty man is not as morally incorrect as the
legal killing of an innocent man. And these aren't just hypothetical. Innocent people have been killed legally, and guilty people have been killed illegally over and over again throughout history.
How does that reality fit in with the black and white vew that legality is nthe only barometer of morality?