The Ukrainian invasion-- and what is likely to await surviving defenders if they lose-- got me thinking of another governmental crime besides war: executions or "capital punishment".
Capital punishment is industrialized, sanitized, clinical premeditated murder.
The person being killed is not currently violating anyone. They are no longer a threat. So it's not a defensive killing, but a revenge killing. It's not ethical and makes the killers just as bad as the one they kill-- possibly even worse.
It's not much different than chasing down and shooting someone who tried to attack you but who ran away when resisted. "The law" forbids this kind of killing for everyone but legislation enforcers. At least such a killing happens in the heat of the moment, immediately after the threat has passed. I make allowances for emotional turmoil resulting in the death of the attacker during and immediately after an attack. It's a risk the attacker chose.
Murder in the name of "justice" is a cleansing ritual. It's human sacrifice, but rather than to "ensure" a good harvest, it's intended to purge evil from society-- by committing evil. It's really no better than the human sacrifices of the Aztecs or ancient Mesopotamians. Equally ignorant, primitive, and useless.
The ONLY ethical death penalty is carried out at the time and place of the attack, by the intended victim or a rescuer. I never grieve for a bad guy killed in this way.
A murder carried out later, by government employees paid to kill, is a murder-for-hire. I still may not grieve for the person being killed (if I'm convinced they did it and it wasn't an ethical act), but I certainly don't support the murderers who are murdering a bound, outgunned, and outnumbered person in a clinical setting. Or up against a brick wall.
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In addition to your points, there is also The Innocence Project, which has repeated proven the incompetence, corruption, and/or total lack of interest in actually pursuing justice in our police and court systems. You can't even trust them to get the right person in the first place.
ReplyDeleteExactly.
DeleteI was always a strong supporter of capital punishment. You know the stories of the horrible man who rapes and murders young children, etc. But then came this thing called DNA and they were finally able to actually string it together and prove exactly who had left their actual bodily imprint in certain places.
ReplyDeleteAnd low and behold, what do you know, but that some 7% of all people sitting on death row were actually innocent of the charges that put them there.
Now, if we watch someone murder a person, and then as a society put that person to death, then morally, perhaps, I could go along with it. However, you can't make laws based upon that. And I feel that if we send one innocent person to the gas chamber, or whatever means of death is used, then we as a society are finished. Since the 7% number is so great, and seems to be fairly consistent, it stands to reason that we cannot impose the death penalty.
Now, when it comes to prisons, we have a long way to go there, as well. First, as a country, we imprison way too many of our citizens. That tells me, that we have too many laws. Like the 5 man electrical band song, Signs, do this, don't do that, can't you read the sign.
There certainly are some people who are simply too dangerous to be around society. And prison is the only answer for them. But we cannot make prisons places where they go and turn it into a free for all, with gangs and the like. But if we take the profit out of prison, it would go a long way toward making things better.
We also need to decide what is our goal with lawbreakers. Punishment or rehabilitation. Not that we can't do both, but the sentence for them could be quite different. As things stand right now, our prisons and jails are full of people who have been arrested for what I call victimless crimes. Taking drugs, while illegal, doesn't hurt anyone except maybe yourself. But when they make drugs illegal, the cost goes up, and drug users are often forced into stealing to support their habit, thus making for victims.
I am not smart enough to say I have the answers to all of our problems, but i sure could do better than what they are doing now.
"There certainly are some people who are simply too dangerous to be around society. And prison is the only answer for them."
DeleteI used to believe that. I don't now.
If someone is that dangerous, their next intended victim needs to kill them. Anti-defense legislation makes it too safe to be a bad guy, and prison is part of the problem because it is used as the (fake) solution to avoid any real solution (which government can't be a part of).
I am now more anti-prison than I used to be because my dad worked in prisons for a few years. I watched as his attitude toward people changed and saw the things he was willing to endorse. I became aware that there's really no ethical gap between those on one side of the bars and those on the other side. It's a system that harms everyone involved.