The death penalty
What would you think of the following conversation?
Dad: “Timmy, murder is absolutely wrong.”
Timmy: “Yes, Dad.”
Dad: “Timmy, get my shotgun. Mommy shouldn’t live after sleeping with the milkman.”
Timmy: “Understood, Dad. Do as you say, not as you do.”
Implementing the death penalty is just not congruent with civilized society. How could it be? Civilized society proclaims and implements protection of life and liberty. The death penalty takes away both. No life and no chance of redemption. The death penalty in a civilized society is like glasnost in a Communist system; it’s fundamentally incompatible. Only in this case, it is not an evil system that will be brought down, but an enlightened one that will be diminished. Kill a lawbreaker and you have just made society a little bit less civil. Less civility correlates with increased barbarity. In the final analysis, pumping poison into a lawbreaker is pumping poison in the very soul of civil society.