| Subject: Re: The Death Penalty – the most controversial of subjects |
Author:
kat
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Date Posted: 06:31:37 06/11/01 Mon
In reply to:
Wyldchilde
's message, "Re: The Death Penalty – the most controversial of subjects" on 04:34:24 06/11/01 Mon
>That discards the idea of individual responsibility.
>That allows blame to be placed on everyone but the
>person who commited the act.
No, that was not my point. What I am saying is, so long as society refuses to accept collective responsibility for the iniquities of social injustice, disenfranchisement and alienation of any member of the community, these things will happen. As a direct result of that. Better prevention - through a co-operative, caring community, than this twisted 'cure' that allows society to think that every criminal put to death makes it safer.
Since none of the social conditions which created the act have been addressed nothing is solved and the same thing will happen again.
>You are right, the death
>pentalty is a bad solution, but but turning the
>victimizer into the victim is no better.
Or you could say the abused becomes the abuser. The mentally unstable, if not picked up on by a society which refuses to care in the right way, in time, will go on to committ atrocious acts, because society has already failed them. We need to stop the culture of abuse.
>Since this started with McVeigh I will use him and his mentality as an example. He says that his bombing was an act of war against an oppressive government.
My understanding is that Mcveigh was responding to the events at Waco, where women and children died as a result of government action. Is anyone currently on death row for their deaths? Is anyone in prison? Or is this another example of 'acceptable' state sanctioned violence?
>That same
>government that is putting him to death. So now WERE
>those people in the building responbile?
Of course not. Although some of the agencies responsible for Waco were based in that building. Interestingly, very few of them turned up to work on the day of the bombing. Nor did they warn their fellow office workers that a very real threat to the building existed.
>Were they
>just as guilty of opressing the American people as he
>was guilty of blowing them up? Or was there a
>difference in intent? Were they just average workaday
>citizens trying to live out there lives and he a angry
>individual who took out that anger on a target of
>opportunity?
Well, as I have said, his target was quite specific, by design and of course what he did was dreadful, unacceptable, awful. However, in McVeigh's mind, he was reacting to what he percieved as an act of state sanctioned murder - mirroring it back with his own horrific act. So the government will put him to death and tomorrow some alienated tortured soul will feel the need to avenge McVeigh's death.
Something has to break the cycle of violence and violence will not do it. Civilisation should not be judged by how quickly, how effectively it silences its opponents and surgically culls it's problems, but by how well it deals with the most vulnerable members of the community - we turn our backs on them at our own peril. When we allow the state to murder on our behalf, we are all dehumanized.
kat.
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