TWO FELLOWS were doing a job down by me while arguing about this and that. “I like funerals,” said the first. “You hear all about the person’s life.” “Not me,” said the other. “Give me weddings. I believe in the death penalty!”
Today I wanted to talk about marriage and congratulate my idol, Maurice, on reaching 75 well-lived years. He worked hard, retired early, now does pretty much what he pleases. The perfect life.
His secret: he never married. Every few weeks he passes by me with yet another young lady he’s “showing around”. Yeah, right!
However, a lie oft told and unchallenged comes to be accepted as truth. Eternal vigilance must be our watchword. So, much as I would love to dwell on marriage, a recent outpouring of misinformation about capital punishment forces me in that direction, which in any case is deemed to be a closely related experience.
Some repeated the usual nonsense that “it isn’t a deterrent”. First off, as a letter writer pointed out, it’s the death “penalty”, capital “punishment”. It isn’t the death or capital “deterrent”.
Its main purpose is to punish the evildoer, bringing some modicum of closure to the family who have suffered. Never again will they lay eyes on the perpetrator who robbed them of a loved one. The big lie about “imprisonment without parole” almost never happens as is shown by the numbers of murderers being released.
But let’s deal with the deterrent aspect. What do we mean when we say the death penalty isn’t a deterrent? On March 22, 1989, 15-year-old Ann Harrison was waiting for the school bus outside her home. Roderick Nunley and Michael Taylor drove by in a stolen car, abducted her, raped her, sodomized her, stabbed her and left her body in the trunk of the car. Doctors say she took over half-hour to die.
Taylor was executed last year. Nunley a few days ago, 26 years after the crime…
Imagine you did something bad when you were ten. And 26 years later, your mother flogged you for it. Would that serve as a deterrent to you or anybody else?
That is the foolishness being done with capital punishment. And then they say it isn’t a deterrent.
To be effective, a deterrent must follow the crime like night follows day, speedily and with certainty. After the Dole Chadee gang was executed in Trinidad, the comment was made that murders didn’t stop. Of course, they didn’t. You can’t deter with a one-off punishment.
By the way, someone claimed hanging is “cruel”. Actually it’s about as close as you can get to instantaneous euthanasia, painless death. The guillotine is better but only by about half a second.
Adriel and Freundel can pontificate about getting tough with gun criminals. Until they reinstate the gallows and get back to effective punishments, things will only get worse.
We need to delink from the Inter American Human “Rights” Commission, ask the hypocritical Europeans how come they suck up to the Americans who execute as they please but want to crucify us, and recognise that the law was made for man, not man for the law. We can’t continue to let lawyers frustrate justice.
And how about some new deterrents? One recalls that a major prison break occurred while a prime minister was addressing the nation. Some think the fellows just couldn’t take it.
Why not get really harsh? Broadcast House debates to all cells. Get English women to cook for the inmates. Make them line up at a BRA branch for food. Real punishments.
One sure thing works: the deaf penalty. When governments turn a deaf ear to the pleas of the people, they get dealt with.
Finally, we have to get our children back to believing in God. Atheists were recently extolling how they don’t need the fear of divine punishment to keep them doing good.
They have an even bigger advantage – they define “good” and “evil” as they go along. If I dig adult entertainment (young girls stripping), I can deem it “good”; seducing a youth to homosexual him, no evil in that; mocking Christianity, good. No wonder youths are figuring, if a man has money and I don’t, why not take it from him?
Throw away the Rule Book – it’s a whole new ball game.
Eternal vigilance, people!
Richard Hoad is a farmer and social commentator. Email porkhoad@gmail.com.
