CelticBear’s Musings

The Supreme Court has handed down a couple of very important decisions recently regarding crime and punishment:

• High court strikes down sweeping gun ban.

This one’s easy for me to comment on: _Liberal delusion of gun control._

The other ruling is just as heated of an issue (I suppose if it weren’t it wouldn’t have reached the Supreme Court,)

• Law makers vow to execute child rapists.

…despite the Supreme Court ruling that:

“the death penalty is not a proportional punishment for the rape of a child,” despite the horrendous nature of the crime

Whooboy, what a charged, emotional subject–and that’s the crux of the problem regarding why we have the death penalty: emotion.

Based on emotion alone I would advocate the inhuman Clive Barker-esque torture of a child rapist and I’d sleep well at night. But can we run a civil, democratic, progressive society on emotional appeal?

Imagine what society would be like if we all acted based on emotion. The most positive among us would like to believe we’d all get along a lot better, love and flowers for all. But what about those days when you are in your worst moods. What about your co-workers? What if they all acted upon their emotions? Imagine the most incompetent and vile politician in office right now: would you want them to be able to make and enforce policies based on emotion only? What if the police arrested and treated the accused emotionally?

Well, we do know how that goes. YouTube and those captured video shows on TV have countless examples of police who abuse and mistreat and beat people in fits of emotion. Our administration is using torture we condemn and try other countries for, because we have an emotional desire to cause pain to our enemies. Because we’re human we have an awesome capacity for a huge gamut of emotion from one extreme to another–but to create legal policy and have the state act to appeals of emotion makes for an unbalanced, non-impartial, schizoid society.

What legalized and mandated acts of emotion you think are justified on others can be turned right around and have enacted upon you, in ways you think might be irrational or unfair but is justified by someone. The law has to be unemotional to be fair and objective and impartial.

It’s an established fact that the death penalty does not dissuade crime one bit. But is can dissuade people from turning in alleged criminals! As implied by the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, “a nonprofit victim advocacy group representing 80 rape crisis centers,” where they made the statement:

“Most child sexual abuse victims are abused by a family member or close family friend,” the group said in a statement. “The reality is that child victims and their families don’t want to be responsible for sending a grandparent, cousin or long time family friend to death row.”

Such a situation could make people related to or close to a perpetrator hesitant about turning them in, knowing they may be get the death penalty.

Take a look at these lists of nations which have abolished the death penalty, stopped performing them, and still do perform them:

• The death penalty world wide.

With the exception of two other modern nations, Japan and South Korea, the United States is in the company of some of the most abusive, primitive, religiously fundamental nations like Syria, Afghanistan, Qatar, Pakistan, Singapore, in our continued use of the death penalty. All other modern, civilized, progressive nations have outlawed its use–some as much as a century ago. Even Russia stopped executing people. We think about how modern we are, with our cell phones and air conditioning and we automatically equate everything else that we do as an extension of that modernity, including the practice of execution. We forget that it’s a barbaric and primitive form of state vengeance that has no place in a society that is supposed to promote human rights and dignity and is supposed to be a bright shining example for the world of humanity and compassion.

Emotional is wonderful and vital for being human, making and appreciating art, relationships, exploring being alive. But emotion, including hate and vengence, has no place in a democratic republic that is supposed to serve and protect all of its citizens fairly.