Matthew in his blog brings up one
of the most controversial topics of the past few decades, capital punishment.
Within sharing his thoughts and what sparked the idea for the post was the actions
of Jordan in response to ISIS. As someone who pays very little attention to the
news, I was shocked to learn about Jordan’s reactions. I personally feel that
is too strong of a reaction from a country that is responsible for the safety of
all its citizens. Are we not past the eye for an eye concept? I can understand that
they were on death row and their time was short but public executions don’t solve
anything.
Returning
back to the main focus of the post. I do believe that life the right to life
should be inalienable and the government shouldn’t have the power to take it
away. Matthew did a wonderful job presenting statistics showing that it isn’t the
correct way to solve this. The fact that the murder rates are less in states
that don’t condone capital punishment should be able to speak for itself and state
that murders aren’t afraid to die. Every state should outlaw it immediately.
Coincidently
enough, two weeks ago in my philosophy class we watched a movie surrounding
capital punishment. The movie, The Life of David Gale staring Kevin
Spacey, addresses some of its flaws. I won’t give away what happens but the main
character is fighting to eliminate the death penalty and presents, in my opinion,
a valid argument. Why are we killing people rather than giving them a chance? Part
of the movie attacks taking innocent lives and with the amount of people that
are executed, how many were falsely accused? We all can agree that it is
inhumane to burn someone alive and put it on the Internet but does it make it
right to kill a prisoner in response? To me no, but everyone is entitled to his
or her own views. I’m going to be interested to see what happens in the
upcoming weeks and I pray that all out war doesn’t ensue.
First of all, I am so happy to hear that I am not the only one who has been inattentive to the news lately.
ReplyDeleteOn a more related note, you put all of my rambled thoughts about the situation into one question: "Are we not past the eye for an eye concept?" If this is how countries are handling their problems, something needs to change. This is such an immature concept that should not be extended to an international level.
I think your line about how the government should not have the power to take lives frames the question in an interesting, libertarian light. It seems that it is most often conservatives who express concern about the power of government, but that also it is conservatives who seem most supportive of the death penalty. Now this is by no mean universal of course, there are plenty of exceptions, and maybe this is changing. It will be interesting to see if the libertarian streak in conservatism in the wake of the Tea Party results in shifts on the question of the death penalty on the right.
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