Death and the Nation State

Curious comment from Glenn Reynolds (the Instapundit) today. He says:

I think that's right. I feel somewhat that way about capital punishment. I'm utterly unpersuaded by the argument that there is something uniquely immoral about state-sanctioned killing. (At its core, the nation-state is all about killing; everything else is window-dressing). But I'm quite persuaded, as I've written before, by what Charles Black called "the inevitability of caprice and mistake" in the application of the death penalty.

I don't believe Reynolds makes himself out to be a Christian, at least not of the type who reads authors like Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder & William Cavanaugh, yet this read (in the parenthetical statement) on the nation state sound right in line with what they say.