Round Two...FIGHT!
Hey guys, I'm impressed with the turn out. I've added some more comments to the past free-thinkers post/religion post, so check it out and feel free to continue that thread on. I'd like to continue this civilized debate in a new subject area: capitol punishment
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Is it right to rehabilitate those who want to contribute back to society? Absolutely. The problem lies in determining exactly who wants to honestly change their ways, and who just wants a free ride out of jail.
Is it O.K. to let a killer go free? Let me give a solidly indefinite answer. I do not know. On the surface it would seem not to be, however, there are those who will and want to change, and they should be given a second chance, because, I believe, people can change.
As i iv v eloquently put it, to whom should really fall the task of meting out justice? In issues like this, I am always thankful that the task does not fall to me to decide. However, were it to do so, I would say that the worst I could dispense would be life sentences. The awesome responsibility that anyone in that position has - one that I think people often forget - is that responsibility for an action which has no reprisal. Once a life is taken, it cannot be given back. There is offered no chance for recompense or remorse on the part of the guilty, and no matter how much one may feel sated by the exchange in blood, that is, the victim for that of the accused, there will never be satisfaction, in the most Victorian sense of the term, unless there is forgiveness and repentance on the sides of the victim and the victimizer, respectively.
That was my roundabout way of saying that I believe death as a punishment is not only a punishment beyond our ken, but also one unhealthy for society.
As for fear as an alternative to punishment, or at least a deterrent to the necessity for punishment, I ask only this - how far do the ends justify the means? Are we (as a society) willing to lose our high ground, and perhaps ourselves, to stop crime? And implementing that fear, to use a cliched warning from a number of movies, what if we become worse than that we seek to rid ourselves of?
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