also, as i thought about your questions, a useful distinction occurred to me:

"Is killing someone who is in the process of committing rape, murder? Is hunting down the person who killed your child five days ago and killing him murder?"

how do we know this? who knows this? who decides and has the right to make such a determination?

these places where ethical rubber meets societal road seem like the real pivots of a society.

you can say "this person killed my child" but how do we know you speak truth and why should any accept or presume that?

much of society results in process to reach principle and that tends to be where the mischief lies.

known axiomatic salients are great in textbooks, but rare in reality.