If your education in history is so concentrated in political philosophy I suggest broadening it. You might see that the idea of justified retribution or usually illusory and always cold comfort. If you think maximizing freedom and social flourishing has been a pressing concern you might look to the Mongols, Confucian philosophy or any of the great Muslim empires. Human flourishing they believed in but in an extremely different form to anyone who’s an intellectual descendant of Enlightenment thinkers. Flourishing their way. Freedom, certainly not. There’s a right way to be and we should follow it.

If your first and second paragraphs are consistent I don’t see how. Should you feel like continuing this my email is in my profile.