Read this story on CNN, and it brought about a surge of emotion for me. Specifically, these two paragraphs:
"Five anonymous marksmen will use matching .30-caliber rifles, standing behind a wall cut with five gunports. One of the rifles will be an "ineffective" round, similar to a blank, which delivers the same recoil as a live round. That ensures none of the riflemen will know who delivered the fatal shot.
The marksmen fire from a distance of 25 feet. The inmate is blindfolded, strapped to a chair and a target pinned to his chest"
Barring the multitude of Biblical translations of the Hebrew text, one of the most sacred commandments is "Thou shalt not kill."
I realize this man murdered two people, and he should pay for his crimes, but what gives man the right to kill him in return?
Ideally, there are only two things in our lives that are not in our control, when we are are born and when we die. Everything else is within our power to change, control, etc. So why should man control when this person dies? Isn't birth and death divine? Aren't we heralded into this world as a miracle and then called to Heaven when we die? To me, man has no right to take the life of another man, or any other being, save for sustenance.
Now here is the paradoxical dichotomy...
From a broad viewpoint (read stereotype):
Democrats, Liberals, progressives etc. believe in pro-choice and anti-death penalty.
Republicans, Conservatives, etc. believe in pro-life and pro-death penalty.
In either instance, both viewpoints are paradoxes. How can one believe in preventing a birth and saving a life, while the other believes in saving a life and ending a life?
3 comments:
i never understood that either. sorta like being a vegetarian but eating fake meat.
thingsm. pretty good word verification for this post!
I'm not a paradox. I am pro-choice and pro-death penalty.
Incidentally, it's the "choice" part I'm pro about.
saw in another article, nathaniel, this:
Murdering the murderer doesn't create justice or settle any score." thought that was well said.
"I think at that moment, he will feel that fear that his victims felt" - interesting but not really since he KNOWS he is gonna get shot. i would guess for a normally sane person that knowing for the past however many years that you were gonna die by gunshot on such and such date would be torture! and then having to sit there and wait for it - UUGH! his victims didn't know. they were all surprised. their families, now they may know how he felt... and still know since they have to deal with the loss forever, but - so interesting the things people say for an interview! :)
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100618/ap_on_re_us/us_utah_firing_squad
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