Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Far Flung Philosophies

The ancient Romans were not totally off base in their practice of crucifixion. People are reasonably prejudiced against the practice, since popular perceptions place it in the 'misdeeds' category, but that stems from a complex case of crucifixion.  In it's essence, it was a practical deterant to vandalism.

The self evident relationship between misconduct and consequences is one thing lacking in modern American capital punishment.  Our adversarial justice system, grown by greed and misguided hope, allows a enough time from murder conviction to execution to raise a family and buy a brand new trailer.  If we're to go that long, we might as well try forgiving the son of a bitch.  Half the time, these creeps drop dead from substance abuse faster than they could reach the electric chair at Sing Sing.  Why not skip incarceration altogether, and hope the old fella' will decide on his own to be nice?  Or, we could could speed up the process of execution.

Am I really this much of grim reaper?  Hecks no.   The point is that capital punishment should either do its job, or face corporate down-sizing.  The whole criminal justice system needs a good corporate down sizing.  If capital punishment was the best way to eliminate the most dangerous people, this writer might quietly continue discussing the matter among responsible, law abiding mini-philosophers.  Not unlike the practice of crucifixion, a quickie death by firing squad works wonders.  Ask Norway.   They killed the traitorous Vidkun Quisling by firing squad, quicker than snot in February, and you don't hear too much any more about quislings in Norway.

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