Like arsenic and cyanide, it is poison to a person, or to a society for that matter.
Look at the Middle East for a perfect example. The Palestinians attack the Israelis in revenge for the death of someone in the last Israeli vengeance attack. Israel attacks the Palestinians in revenge for the casualties of the Palestinian vengeance attack. The cycle goes on and on and never ends. Nobody ever feels satisfied by the punishments meted out. Nobody ever stops to think, “maybe this isn’t good for me, maybe this isn’t good for my nation.” They just go after it, year after year, generation after generation, revenge after revenge.
Which brings us to Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s sentence, and the death penalty in general...
Seems to me that once we say that taking a life other than for self-defense (or defense of the nation) is a-ok, we’ve stepped across a line that leads down a way slippery slope. It’s the same line that abortion opponents use to justify murdering abortion doctors… “they’re bad people who do bad things so it’s okay to kill them!”. Really?
But, you say, “it’s about taking a murderer off the streets.” Putting Tsarnaev into prison for the rest of his natural life would do that too.
But, you say, “it’s about the deterrent effect.” Except there’s plenty of research on this topic that shows that the death penalty has no (zero) additional deterrent effect compared to life in prison.
But, you say, “it’s about revenge.” See my first two paragraphs. Because now we have stepped across the line into “they’re bad people who do bad things so it’s okay to kill them!”. It’s the same thing that motivates terrorists to kill Americans, they justify their actions with “Americans are bad people.” It’s a ride down the express elevator to hell.
It’s a ride that a whole lot of Americans have no problem with. Alas.
– Badtux the “Highway to Hell” Penguin