The murder of Brian Thompson is a morally and emotionally challenging event. Many people feel that some sort of justice was administered, even though the matter concerns premeditated murder. What is justice in this situation? Why has this event provoked such strange and passionate reactions?
We return to a topic I wrote about recently, the difference between deontological and consequentialist moralities. In the deontological sense, murder is usually considered to be wrong (it depends on precisely which deontological system we are referring to, but most moral systems tend to say that murder is always wrong). In the consequentialist sense, murder can be moral if the results are sufficiently beneficial. The idea that this murder was justice derives from a consequentialist understanding of justice: a sufficiently ostentatious display of a punishment for a behavior, even a brutal and disproportionate punishment (think cutting the hand off of a thief and hanging it above the city gate), can prevent the offending behavior from re-occurring and thus in the long term improve the aggregate quality of life.
When I posted on social media explaining the consequentialist justice argument, a wise acquaintance responded asking if it was not exactly the same as pro-lifers advocating the killing of a doctor who performs abortions. He also posted Meditation 17 by John Donne:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
I appreciated the critique and understood the invocation against murder. I agree that consequentialist reasoning can potentially be used to excuse anything, and a world in which more people felt emboldened to murder those they had sociopolitical disagreements with would be a worse one for everyone. But consider the following: what if Thompson had been shot with a bullet that instead of inflicting physical damage had instead inflicted bankruptcy and years of heartache and misery like his choices had done to his clients?
What I mean to say is, consequentialist excuse for murder is a game anyone can play at, progressives and pro-lifers alike, yes, but for those who revel in the murder, Brian Thompson’s own actions and executive choices as symptomatic of another brand of legal and moral decay, one that allows the wealthy and powerful to prey on the weak with complete impunity so long as it follows the byzantine prescriptions of laws written by the same ilk for their own benefit. Should the penalty for this immorality be murder? Deontologically, clearly not. Even consequentially, as I said, it would be bad if everyone started murdering everyone they disagreed with. But I think even deontologists agree that there should be severe punishment for the actions of Brian Thompson and those who do similar things – enough to force those in his position to think twice about the welfare of their clients whose lives and livelihoods depend on the companies delivering certain services. This is a legal and institutional failure. The solution for the pro-lifers was to take control of institutions and effect the legal changes to make abortion stop in the polities they control.
The answer is institutional and legal, then: if the clients of a company could all get together and vote to dispense bankruptcy and misery on CEOs who did this kind of thing to them, then that would probably be a better world from both consequentialist and deontological perspectives.
Until then, the question is: which is closer to justice for the actions of Brian Thompson: murder, or impunity?
Whither the West? 
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