Judicial execution can never cancel or remove the atrocity it seeks to punish; it can only add a second atrocity to the original one ... So long as one sees killing as wrong there is no need to waste time with the deterrent argument, since it would be nonsense to try to prevent a theoretical evil in the future by perpetrating an actual one in the present.
Interpretation
Judicial execution cannot rectify a wrongdoing; it only perpetuates further violence.
Auberon Waugh's quote emphasizes the futility of capital punishment by arguing that inflicting death as a form of justice does not erase the initial crime but instead creates a new moral atrocity. He critiques the idea that execution can serve as a deterrent, asserting that one cannot justify future potential wrongs by committing actual wrongs in the present.
In practice
During a debate on criminal justice reform, one might use this quote to argue against the death penalty.
I lean over you, your equal, offering you a mirror for your perfect nothingness, for your shadows which are neither light nor absence of light, for this void which contemplates. To all that which you are, and, for our language, are not, I add a consciousness. I make you experience your supreme identity as a relationship, I name you and define you. You become a delicious passivity.
It is out of the question that the task of socialist women's activity should be to alienate proletarian women from duties as wives and mothers; on the contrary, it must operate so this task is fulfilled better than before, precisely in the interests of the proletariat.
An infinite God can give all of Himself to each of His children. He does not distribute Himself that each may have a part, but to each one He gives all of Himself as fully as if there were no others.
Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane... There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions.
Look around, and you see everywhere the exertions and acts of individuals restricted, regulated, or promoted, on the principle of the common welfare.
I returned to Jerusalem, and it is by virtue of Jerusalem that I have written all that God has put into my heart and into my pen.
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