liberal liberate libertine liberace

Should leaders be given more leeway in deciding things such as who dies and who doesn't? Machiavelli thought so.

Machiavelli argued that political judgment, to be effective, must follow principles more ruthless than those acceptable in ordinary life. He wrote that “it is necessary for a prince wishing to hold his own to know how to do wrong, and to make use of it or not according to necessity.” Roosevelt and Churchill knew how to do wrong, yet they did not demand to be judged by different ethical standards than their fellow citizens did. They accepted that democratic leaders cannot make up their own moral rules, a stricture that applies both at home and abroad — in Guantánamo, at Abu Ghraib or anywhere else. They must live and be judged by the same rules as everyone else.

Or, should they be held to the same moral standards that we would all hold ourselves to? As such, do you personally feel you have the right to condemn someone to death for what you might think is the greater good . That, of course, assumes that you have some special ability to calculate what that greater good is. I bet you'd get a different answer if you queried the folks who you just condemned to death.