I’m disturbed by the killing of Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, and I believe everyone ought to be disturbed by it. What disturbs me more than just the killing, is the public response to the killing, and how many people are celebrating the killing of a man. Regardless of what you think of his ethics, killing a man in cold blood on the street is wrong, and the fact that others cannot imagine themselves in a similar situation, and thinking that it would be wrong if it happened to them, demonstrates how most people lack empathy. This is by far the most disturbing realization of the killing, and it troubles me that most people seemingly do exhibit psychotic tendencies. This killing not only demonstrates the natural immorality of human beings, but the weakness of utilitarian thought.
If we were to look at the situation from the perspective of the veil of ignorance, we would have to decide whether we would want to live in a society where it was ethical to kill someone in cold blood, regardless if they were guilty of a crime or not, on the street. Would you want to live in a society where you had a 1% chance (1/100) chance of that occurring? I certainly would not want to live with those chances. Nor do I believe that any rational person would want to gamble their lives with those chances. However, I have seen arguments from people that the killing is justified because the CEO’s company was denying insurance claims for health care treatments, leading to lower quality of life, or even death in some cases. They argue that killing the CEO is good because it avenges the pain and suffering he caused through the decisions of his company, and it will terrorize other CEO’s and corporations to not engage in unethical behavior. There are two major issues with this line of thinking.
The first is that doing an unethical action in the pursuit of creating good ethics overall poisons the good ethics with the bad ethics. This is the fruit from the poisoned tree. You may believe you are creating an overall good by conducting an evil action, but in reality, you are just doing an evil action, and justifying it by convincing yourself that you are doing it for a greater good. This is the main weakness of utilitarianism, and why I believe overall utilitarianism is an unethical system.
Secondly, and more directly, terrorizing people does not work in the way most people believe it does. You can look at terrorists throughout history, and a uniting trend among terrorist groups is the tendency to be wiped out by a larger, more organized force, after they engage in terrorism. This is not universally true, but just in the 20th century alone, the overwhelming majority of terrorist fighters have been killed by governments. Furthermore, the cause that the terrorists are fighting for is usually harmed by the acts of terrorism. Theodore Kazcynski only created an image of a lunatic Luddite, living in the mountains who mailed bombs to people because he suffered from mental illness, rather than someone who had thoughtful concerns about technology. Osama bin Laden believed that Americans were soft, and that the 9/11 terror attacks would motivate America to leave the Middle East. Both of these men were either incarcerated for life, or killed by a government.
At best, terrorism harms the average person either through the response of government, usually by violently cracking down or civil liberties or natural rights, or people themselves are injured or killed in a reign of terror. The French Revolution is a perfect analogue description as to what could occur. During the French Revolution, people were unjustly imprisoned and or executed. Many were imprisoned simply because someone with power did not like them, or their neighbor had an issue or some conceited jealousy, and reported the victim to the Revolutionary Government. Many were executed without a formal charge or trial. Even Maximilien Robespierre was executed under rather ambiguous circumstances. As I stated above, I do not believe that people would want to live in a French Revolution style situation, where they could be killed on the street under the presumption that they had engaged in a morally evil act.