Daily Inspiration Quote by Benjamin Tucker

Tucker’s move here is pure rhetorical judo: he doesn’t deny the moral charge that capital punishment is “murder,” he challenges the accusers to show their work. The line is framed like a polite request, but it’s really a trapdoor. If the state kills and we call it murder, then either “murder” no longer means what we think it means, or the state’s authority is far shakier than respectable society wants to admit.

The intent is diagnostic, not sentimental. Tucker is probing for the hidden axioms that let people condemn execution as uniquely evil while still accepting the scaffolding that makes execution possible: monopoly on violence, legitimacy by statute, collective punishment administered as “justice.” His phrasing, “upon what principle of human society,” expands the argument beyond individual empathy into the architecture of social order. He’s asking whether anti-death-penalty rhetoric is grounded in a coherent theory of rights and authority or just a fashionable moral shudder.

Context matters: Tucker, an American individualist anarchist, distrusted state power as a machine that launders coercion through procedure. In that light, “murder in its worst form” isn’t simply an abolitionist slogan; it’s an accusation that the state commits violence with paperwork, robes, and civic applause. Tucker’s subtext: if you truly believe execution is murder, you’re already halfway to indicting the institution that performs it. If you don’t, you’re relying on a convenient exemption called sovereignty.