I truly believe that murder can never be justified, but these articles made me think twice about the justification of murder in a political sense. I found these articles enlightening but at the same time I could not help but read with a skeptical lens. In the first article, Andrade’s “The Perennially Difficult Debate Around Tyrannicide”, one point that stuck with me was his point about the Trolley Problem. In high school we debated the trolley problem for weeks in my world literature class. I always thought I knew my answer and I always believed all murder in unjustifiable no matter what until Andrade compared the idea of pushing a man off a bridge to stop the trolley to tyrannicide. Can it really ever be just about numbers? Is it better to kill one person on the tracks than five people on different tracks? Is it better to kill one leader than have that leader persecute, discriminate, exploit and in some cases kill millions of citizens? When I think about Iraq and Libya’s struggles, and what the murder of their leaders’ (Hussein and Gadaffi) murders produced for their countries; some might argue their murders sparked greater unrest than when they were in power. I agree with Andrade’s comment that each leader-follower situation, tryanical or not, should be treated as a case-by-case basis and there is no blanket statement that can or should be used to talk about the justification of tryannicide.
George’s “Distinguishing Classical Tyrannicide from Modern Terrorism” was more difficult to follow but equally enlightening. One of the most interesting part of the article was when George comments on how the Western Cult of Tyrannicide has glorified tyrannicide as a spotless symbol of democracy whereas assassinations and parricide are dishonorable and polluted. If killing people is amoral for assassination and parricide, why is it “moral” to kill in the name of tyranny? It might be easier to justify to a certain extent, but justification and morality are different things. Maybe terrorism is easily misunderstood and misrepresented as tyrannicide but making that distinction is again a case-by-case basis.
I also found the mention of the trolly problem in Andrade’s article very interesting, because I also discussed it in in high school. This has always been such a difficult concept for me to comprehend because it is hard for me to think of one human life as just a number and the lower number is the better choice. I also agree with the fact that George focused on the glorified aspects of tyrannicide and I was confused in the beginning as to why he would focus on it.