As always in threads on this topic, the word 'civilised' is being flung emotively around as a sort of shibboleth with no thought as to its connotations. All 'civilisations' known to history [Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Ancient Mesapotamia, Ancient Egypt, China, Japan, medieval, early modern and modern Europe ...] used capital punishment up to, at earliest, the C19. In what sense are those asseverating that it can form no part of the usages of a 'civilised' society using the term 'civilised', except as a loose, emotive,tendentious, catch-all, and hence entirely meaningless, boo-word?

And is there not perhaps some Eurocentrist racism at work in the implication that those many societies & cultures, esp in the Mid-East & Far-East, which notoriously still readily execute people, cannot therefore be considered as 'civilisations? *


~M~

*{Get the buggers with accusations of 'racism' [another of those boo-words, actually] and they will soon stop & consider!}


Let me stress yet again that I am not commenting on the use of Cap-pun, on which I am ambivalent these days; but am protesting against a distressing abuse of our beautiful and should-be-expressive language.