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No, no, we can't have the pouting. I can't take it. If this goes on too long and someone wants to move it over to the death penalty thread...*sigh*...okay, but (a) it looks like a dormant hornet's nest I'd as soon not stir up, and (b) I don't think I have much of anything really all that profound or revolutionary to say on the subject.
Therefore, threadrot on:
When I say that I support the death penalty in theory, what I mean to say is that -- at least here in the US -- the application of the death penalty appears to be both frighteningly racist and (perhaps even worse) to take the lives of a LARGE number of people who are later found to be not guilty. Leaving aside whether whether anyone can do anything that warrants his/her death, these people are not guilty of anything at ALL. Clearly, if the state is going to put people to death, it's not too much to ask that the state be damn sure they did something...right? But (particularly here in America) it would seem that the standards are none too rigorous that way. So it's hard to support the death penalty as it is, in fact, being enforced.
However...
I cannot help but ascribe nothing but simple squeamishness to a person who would put forth the serious argument that, say, Jeffrey Dahmer deserved to live. Killed in prison (while on work detail with a known homophobic psychopath -- is there really any question that Dahmer's captives intended for him to be killed?), the state in essence put him to death without getting its hands dirty; and is there really anyone who regards this as a tragedy? I realize it's an extreme example, but I just don't think we need to waste tears on a person who drugged, raped, zombified, killed and ate his victims. I'm relatively certain we're all much better off without him. To be sure, Dahmer would have suffered horribly at the hands of other inmates for however it took him to die of natural causes (had he not just been outright killed by his fellow inmates), and it's probable that such a fate would have been worse than death...but on the other hand, it's hard to suggest that decades of slow torture represent a somehow more humane punishment than execution. It's also fairly ludricrous to suggest that such a person could ever be reformed. At best, he could be defanged.
Like I said, I know this is an extreme example; but the death penalty is about as extreme a form of punishment as can be applied, and I personally feel it should only be used in the most vile cases. America obviously is far too eager to put people to death. Yet I just am not comfortable suggesting that it should never be used...to me, the more perfect world I'd like to think we're all at least trying to evolve toward would preclude the initiation of violence in the first place, rather than inspire a societal agreement to place ourselves on such a higher moral plane than our lowest citizens that we cannot adequately punish them. I don't think withholding execution from people most of us would be perfectly okay to see, say, develop tertiary syphilis and die an agonizing death, means that we're better than they are; it just means that we are uncomfortable with the dirty work and karmic feedback of being ourselves responsible for ending even a person who has clearly disqualified himself from the human race. Frankly, I know *I* am, but I also know that when the average serial killer/rapist bites it, I'm not very torn up. So where do I stand? If it's an either/or question, and I guess it is, then I must be for it.
End threadrot. |
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