Look I know murder isn't always the solution but if it's a character like the Joker who's just going to keep breaking out of jail and killing people, I really don't see why it's unthinkable to try to get them out of the picture for good. At some point it becomes more wrong to not kill them. Batman could've saved hundreds of lives if he'd just snapped the Joker's neck years ago.
Asked by Anonymous
I’m sorry, but that’s not true for Batman, and it’s not true for you. That’s what’s easiest, not what’s right.
If the Joker is caught and tried by a jury of his peers and given the death penalty, well, that’s the state, the system, deciding that such a punishment is fair and just. Anything else is a unilateral decision, and simply murder—especially if the Joker doesn’t pose an immediate threat to the person in question (such as, say, Batman.)
I’d go further than this and say that it’s still murder whether it’s legitimised by state power or not. Whether in comic book universes or real life, there is no moral justification for taking the life of a human being, however abhorrent their crimes, who is locked safely away from the population at large.
Not the Joker, not Charles Manson, not Hitler or Stalin, or any other hypothetical we could throw in. Either individual lives have an intrinsic value, or they don’t.
