Expand the Death Penalty - Part 1: The Premise

It’s not a question of whether the death penalty is going to be expanded. It’s a matter of who is going to expand it. Many of the states here in the U.S. have eliminated or severely limited the application of the death penalty over the years. The reasons given were that it was uncivilized, barbaric, we might convict an innocent person, and it brought “us” down to the level of the criminals. In short, it made us feel good to be merciful. We were stupid. We chose to be stupid because we were afraid of getting our hands dirty and bloody. Guess what. Our hands are dirty and bloody anyway.

Every day we turn on the news (some of us do, anyway) only to hear that yet another released criminal has murdered yet another innocent. Every day we turn on the news to hear that another cowardly, suicidal, terrorist has killed more innocents. We all lament about how awful it is and how something should be done after having, ourselves, been the enablers for these criminals and terrorists.

Every so often, we are faced with the prospect of building new prisons. Everyone (except me, apparently) agrees that we ought to build those prisons, but none of us really wants to pay for them. We do pay for them, but we’re pissed about it. We treat these criminals very well and we’re pissed about that. And by very well, I mean much better than any of them treated their victims, whatever their individual crime was (with very few exceptions).

We, as a society, don’t like the idea of playing God, making decisions of life and death. What we choose to remain ignorant about is that we do it anyway, whether we like it and are aware of it or not. When we choose life for a violent criminal, we are choosing death for that criminal’s next victim. I believe it is time to take our heads out of the sand and take responsibility for the shape of our society.

In case you are wondering, yes, the fact that this is part one does mean that there will be at least a part two. This will deal with terrorism at the appropriate point.