This question came up in another thread, but since it wasn't really the main question in the other thread, i decided to open its own thread.
Anyone who reads history will see right away that every human society in history punished serious crimes with death. No one ever thought there was anything wrong with this. Millennium after millennium, people who committed serious crimes -- and not just murder, but also treason, grand theft, rape, witchcraft, etc. -- were executed. This is not just something that was practiced in the Roman Empire, or here or there, but it was practiced in African tribes, in the Himalayas, in South America, on islands in the Pacific, etc., for all of known human history. Until a couple of centuries ago, it was as natural to mankind as eating and drinking.
Then, in the last couple of centuries, people began to believe there was something wrong with putting criminals to death, and this movement rapidly gained momentum until now capital punishment is only practiced in maybe a couple of countries in the world anymore. The United States is the only civilized country that practices it at all, but even here it is extremely rare in comparison with the number of people who commit crimes who would have been executed in every human society in history before 300 years ago. The number of people who commit what every human culture considered a capital offense in the past, who actually receive capital punishment, is probably less than .001% of such people in the United States.
Now, I understand that socialist governments impose laws that the population in general don't approve of, such as open borders, but in the case of capital punishment it does appear to me that most of the population is very much against it.
This is something that really puzzles me, because the desire for justice is something so ingrained in human nature that people always want the bad guy to suffer. And the crimes that every human society punishes with death, such as murder, treason, armed robbery, kidnapping, rape, child m0lestation, and so on, are still things that fill the normal person with outrage.
Now, human nature doesn't change, and people still have the same outrage at these crimes that they have always had, and always will have. So I don't understand why people can believe that people who commit these crimes should not be put to death. This really puzzles me. In fact, when someone expresses outrage at some terrible crime, and you say that such a person should be put to death, most people in this country will usually respond with outrage at the person who says this, and shift their outrage at the person who wants justice and suddenly argue in favor of the monster who committed the terrible crime.
This is something so contrary to human nature that I struggle to grasp it. I would have a hard enough time understanding one or two cranks who could think like this, but now the great majority of society thinks this way, which is very strange to me.
I have thought about this conundrum a lot, and I don't know what cause such a fundamental shift, apparently, in one of the most basic instincts in human nature. I have thought of several factors -- feminism and the female vote, for one thing. Women lack the moral fortitude to put people to death, so they are against doing so, and the female vote likely accounts for a lot of the reductions in death penalty crimes and executions in general. This is probably a major factor, but it doesn't explain why men also are against capital punishment, and I think a lot of them are.
My theory in general is that it is a symptom of moral weakness in society. People can't do anything hard anymore. And putting someone to death is hard, even someone who really deserves it. I think people in society have hypocritically covered their moral weakness at failing to put people to death with the cloak of a false sense of "mercy" and every possible excuse, such as "We can't be 100% sure anyone ever actually committed any crime, so therefore we can't put anyone to death," and all the other liberal excuses we have all heard.
I think that's maybe the biggest factor, but I think also another factor is that human justice is an analog of divine justice. When people see someone receiving the punishment their deserve for their crimes, it reminds them that they will likewise receive the proper punishment for their own sins. But if people can pervert the notion of justice into one of "rehabilitation" instead of vengeance, as it truly is, then they can say to themselves, "Well, God is just, but justice doesn't mean vengeance, it means rehabilitation, so therefore I won't go to hell when I die, but I'll be "rehabilitated" somehow by God and eventually go to heaven." That's a bit simplistic, but I definitely think people don't want to think about the idea of justice and vengeance for wrongdoing on the part of the civil authority, and that's part of so many people's opposition to capital punishment.
Along similar lines, people are increasingly against locking criminals in prison forever, as well. There is an increasingly strong notion in society that criminals should be released to commit more crimes against innocent people.
Does anyone have any thoughts on this?
Topic: Why are people against the death penalty? (Read 1499 times)