CAPITAL PUNISHMENT - LEGALIZED REVENGE

Capital Punishment

History:

1.       Stoning                                          100% efficient

2.       Burning at the stake                   100% efficient

3.       Beheading

a.       Axe, etc                       100% efficient

b.      Guillotine                     100% efficient

4.       Hanging                                        100% efficient

5.       Firing Squad + Coup de Grâce      100% efficient

6.       Electric chair                                    +/- efficient…some complications

7.       Lethal injection                                 +/- efficient…some complications

Bible – God spared Cain.  Mosaic Law and developments = Pro

Catholic Church – Evolving from Pro to Con, with some allowance for Pro

Present countries - 56 countries, including the United States = Pro

States within the United States that have abolished capital punishment = 18

Humane?

The greatest single OXYMORON you’ll ever hear: “Humane capital punishment.”

I ask you: “Is capital punishment beneficent, benevolent, benignant, compassionate, good-hearted, kind, kindhearted, kindly, softhearted, sympathetic, tender, tenderhearted, warmhearted?

It is related to attentive, considerate, solicitous, thoughtful; affable, amicable, benign, companionable, comradely, cordial, friendly, genial, gentle, good, good-natured, good-tempered, gracious, mild, neighborly, nice, pleasant, sweet, warm; clement, forbearing, forgiving, lenient, merciful, soft; patient, pitying, tolerant, understanding; altruistic, brotherly, charitable, freehanded, generous, greathearted, humanitarian, liberal, magnanimous, munificent, noble, openhearted, selfless, unselfish, unsparing; anticruelty, cruelty-free?

Clayton Lockett? 

May this name never disappear from the American consciousness.  This could be the name that brings some sanity into the collective soul of this country.  I pray that it will.

This is a man who was cruelly victimized by incompetent government officials of the state of Oklahoma, USA.  They planned to kill him with a cocktail of three drugs and they failed.  They stopped the procedure and the ill-fated human being in their “care” died from a massive heart attack, no doubt caused by their bumbling ignorance.  Remorse?  Of course not.  He deserved to die anyway since he himself had killed and tortured his victim too, 15 years before. [Paraphrase of statements made by two state officials and other opiners]

That’s the “pro” side of the story.  The “con” side says that the executioners should have remorse since they did not treat the victim “humanely.”  WhAaat??  It’s OK to kill people provided you do it humanely?  They don’t make insane asylums big enough, high enough nor wide enough to hold that many deranged humans at one time. Kill someone humanely?  Now ain’t that a concept?

Actually, the more humane you get at this exercise in human malevolence, the less efficient you become.  Can any of you imagine how irreversibly and invincibly ignorant a population can be that in the 21^st century it has a difficulty in killing a human being?  I’ll be that it didn’t take Cain 45 minutes to kill Abel.  I’ll bet that it didn’t take 45 minutes for adulteresses to die from stoning in Old Testament days.  We know for sure that the guillotine and the firing squad are a lot more efficient and less painless than suffering from intravenous torture for 45 minutes before dying. 

One of the reasons that we still are one of the few first world countries with the death penalty is that we are still trying to figure how to kill a fellow human humanely.  At this rate, who knows how long it will take us.  Given our ferocious alligator jaw grip on our “American Exceptionalism Arrogance” it will be a long time before we are willing to accept that we are so retrograde that we don’t even know how to kill a person quickly.  Our European counterparts have given up trying to civilize us into abolishing the use of deadly force as a punishment.  They refuse to sell us the drugs of our choice required, we think, to kill people humanely.  We therefore have graduated to an even more barbaric level of human behavior by experimenting with other methods of slaughtering our fellow human beings by using human beings for the experimentation.  Isn't this a great country to live in?  Doesn't this just make you shirt button bustin’ proud to be an American? 

It is just simply frustrating to me to have to be counted as belonging to a civilization of such a low level of human development.  Imagine having to admit that I am among people who won’t abolish the death penalty and yet refuse to use methods of killing people that really, infallibly, with 100% zero failure rate certainty, work?  It’s embarrassing, you know.

I have a proposition for you primates out there.  It is an either / or suggestion.

If you insist on punishing people by killing them, use one of these three methods:

1.      1. Guillotine (There are many of them in museums.  You can rent one as needed)

2.      2. Firing squad with coup-de-grace (Wayne LaPierre can help you here)

3.     3.  Hanging (If you can find someone to sell you the rope)

Or, you can hoist yourselves up by the 21^st century boot straps, civilize yourselves and stop killing people out of revenge.  Yep, I said revenge.  It sure as shooting (oops, sorry, Wayne) ain’t justice.  Killing the killer doesn't fix anything.  It diminishes the “punish-er” and frees the killer.  The same rage that it took the original killer is what drives the punishing killer.  The punishing killer who acts in representation of the community damages the community by lowering it to the animal level of the original killer.  Killing the killer isn't really punishment.  Actually, it is release.  It is freedom gained.  It is more a reward than a punishment, you know.  The real punishment is the lack of freedom.  The permanent Lockup that assures the killer that there will never be any freedom available is real punishment.  The permanence of the cage is more punishing than the release of death. 

Furthermore, the killing of a human being in the name of the community imprisons the direct perpetrators of the deed, the surviving members of the families of the two people who have died, and it imprisons the entire population with memories that can never be shaken loose. 

In closing, I will just say this.  I am a very religious person.  In fact I am a very dedicated Catholic.  I am saying this because I want you to know that Capital Punishment is not a purely religious issue.  It is a basic human issue.  I say with neither fear of error nor compunction, The practice of Capital Punishment makes us all less human.  Yes, I said ALL.

OBL -- 2 REACTIONS -- [1] POLITICAL [2] MORAL

[1] All hat. No cattle.  
I suspect that ol' George had good intentions.  After all, he did describe himself as the "decision maker." He did intend to "smoke him out" and to "bring him back, dead or alive."  You wouldn't suppose that his close relationships to the Imperial Wahabi Muslims in Saudi Arabia would have made him just a little gun shy when it came to bringing their kin back on a slab, do you?  
I know that this is a more complex reality than my question indicates.   Therefore, I am moving on to 
[2] the moral considerations that formed the second part of my reaction to the news about the slaying of Osama bin Laden.
Is there anyone among you who would like to stand on a street corner and interview pro-lifers about their moral reaction to the taking of bin Laden's life?
Is there a "pro-lifer" among you who would be willing to admit that sparing bin Laden's life would have been the morally better thing to do?
I am on record as being "pro-choice" and having the opinion that "pro-lifers" are single issue activists who do not appreciate the profound meaning of "choice."  The kernel of my thesis is that if we take "choice" away from ourselves, we deviate from the Will of God who created us with the freedom of choice.  In so doing, we make ourselves less than human.  Therefore, I have always said, and still do, that I am "anti-abortion."  Furthermore, I have, over the years, become "anti-capital punishment."  Yes, even for bin Laden.  Why?  In very few words, here's why.
It makes the world poorer by his absence.  The evil that he represented is after all, not absolute evil.  That means that he did have something good to offer to the rest of humanity, not matter how little.  I am of the opinion that someone, somewhere and at some time could have gotten something valuable from his continued existence in life, even behind bars.  I am so sure of that that I dare say, that it is undeniable that that is true
It diminishes our ability to feel secure in our own virtue.  We now have given ourselves a taste of what it feels like to take the life of another human, for whatever reason.   By participating in that corporate action, from the safety of our comfortable abode, we have participated in a act of revenge, not an act of justice.  An act of justice would be a virtuous act.  True virtue would dictate otherwise. True virtue would make us grow in the Spirit.  Revenge makes us more comfortable in our humanity standing alone, not in relationship with the God that we love and to Whom Jesus introduced us by His Passion, Death and Resurrection.
Finally, it does nothing to diminish the power of evil in the world.  By taking bin Laden's life, we did nothing to cleanse the world of evil.  In fact, we participated in the evil ways of the world by answering cruelty with cruelty.  We all know that there will be more evil engendered by our act of so-called "virtue."  In our post Jesus Christ life, the lex talionis (law of equal retaliation) has been replaced by the law of forgiveness and restitution.  True that bin Laden owes us restitution, but we do not practice virtue by exacting our form of "restitution" on him by violently taking his life.  Besides, his is but one against 3,000.  On top of all this, let's not forget that there are lieutenants of his who will visit us and others with evil acts in return for our vengeful behavior.
I end this altogether too short essay by reminding you once again that you now know why there is to be No Crying at my Funeral.