Standing Up for Life

We are being encouraged to take a stand... here is my stand: Life imprisonment might diminish human dignity, but it is the lesser of two evils in the capital punishment debate. I have issues with the death penalty... abruptly ending a person’s life, even if they are a criminal is wrong and unfair. Personally, I think the death penalty is more against Kantian principles than life sentences. (The DeBaco article about life sentences and human dignity says that life imprisonment uses people as a means to an end). The Categorical Imperative basically states that you should treat people as ends in themselves and that all people, everywhere should be treated that way, and finally, you shouldn’t hold others up to a standard that you would not hold yourself up to. I don’t think it’s fair to take someone’s life as punishment. We are all going to die anyway...who are we to take a life before it's been lived out, no matter how that person chooses to live it?

The DeBaco article asks which is more contrary to human dignity: execution or being excluded from society forever?  Both of them are contrary to human dignity, as both of them are about excluding someone from society forever. But in one case, that person is excluded and isn’t coming back, while in the other case, that person still has their right to live and a right to rehabilitation (also discussed in the article). Sure, there is no guarantee that a person will reform. I believe that there are evil people in the world who will never change, but even they have dignity. I don’t think it’s anyone’s place to knock those people off the planet when they know that they wouldn’t want to be knocked off the planet themselves.

Yes. I still hold this stance for people like Sadaam Hussein. I don’t think it was right to take his life. For the reasons I mentioned above, and because I believe he actually wanted to die and it would have been a greater punishment to let him live. Giving him the Doritos he asked for was unnecessary, but you get my point.

I like what DeBaco had to say about the right to rehabilitation. Even though it’s not a guarantee, allowing a person the right to regain some status as a viable member of society is better than snuffing their candle. I know, we can’t force people to reform, but maybe we need to tweak our system so that there is some kind of voluntary offering for prisoners with long or life sentences. After a certain amount of time, they should be given the opportunity to re-enter society, but one that they could refuse. It’s not fair to force reform, either.

What I am really trying to get at is this: I don’t believe that ANYONE is really OK with the concept of dying. I don’t care what your major is, your profession, anything... Act as macho about it as you want. Somewhere, deep down, there is fear. It is NOT OK to take that fear out on criminals by executing them. Of course, it was NOT OK for those criminals to take the lives that they took, so why does it make us better to kill them back?