A few days ago the media covered the purportedly botched public execution of a convicted killer in Arizona. It seems Arizona administered an untested drug to a convicted killer who showed not one iota of compassion for the victims he killed. Liberals across the world protested that the death sentence be abolished immediately. All the furor came about because it took the killer two hours to die and the witnesses sickened by the process. It is my opinion that we are missing the opportunity to take advantage of a disaster here. Why not, I ask, don’t we make the death penalty inhumane instead of humane? If the penalty was something like being buried up to your neck in sand and the executioner pours honey over your head just before he releases a colony of fire ants under your chin. The horror of such a scene might just prevent a potential killer from pulling the trigger or slashing your neck with the machete.
Even though I have come up with this concept, I don’t believe it would prevent anyone from murdering anyone. When a person decides to kill, he isn’t playing scenes of Disneyland in his mind. Penalties do not prevent crimes. When you are hungry you do not think about going to jail for stealing a loaf of bread. His main goal is to overcome hunger. The only law that I believe will cause one to think twice is Sharia Law. Muslims seem to react to a public stoning, or a public hand amputation, yet even they fall into sin. If Sharia acted as a deterrent then we would never hear of anyone being stoned.
How many ways has civilization used for execution? Hanging, stoning, starvation, Lion feeding, firing squads, walk the plank, electric chairs, beheading, lethal injection, what have I left out? We consider all of them inhumane. Why? Most likely because killing is wrong no matter who does it. We the people then have to live with the guilt of having killed (executed) someone, and we can’t handle it?
Life sentences don’t do it either. People do the crime and live peacefully in prison with really great benefits for the rest of their lives at a huge cost to the rest of us. I just finished reading the book Moloka’i. The story depicts how the Hawaiian government dumped lepers on an island to live by themselves. Should we use that model to dump convicted killers on an island in the middle of an ocean, or maybe we can shoot them to the moon? Wasn’t that what Great Britain did with criminals, i.e. send them to the Colonies or to Australia? It would be a utopian world of like-minded people living together providing their own food by farming. Didn’t the French try something like that? I seem to recall a movie called Pappilon with Steve McQueen and Dustin Hoffman about a great escape from Devil’s Island.
Perhaps the idea of punishing crimes is totally wrong. Why don’t we just forgive those who ask forgiveness and allow the Devil to handle those who don’t?
Filed under: Book Review, Conservative, family, Government, religion, Society | Tagged: beheading, Death Penalty, electrocution, firingsquad, hanging, Inhumane, Life imprisonment, Morality, sin |
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