Friday, September 18, 2009

Social networking troublemakers...


So... we're now on day three of an ongoing Facebook debate regarding capital punishment. Predictably, we've got a couple lefties against and a couple righties for.

As I was falling asleep last night I think I realized what the misunderstanding is... although I might be wrong... I usually am.

Nevertheless, the issue was originally tweeted, by a friend of mine, as a civic issue: "I love how people that don't trust government can somehow support capital punishment."

To me, this takes the morality-side, which we can all agree exists and is rightfully contentious, out of the issue. But, we can probably also agree that it is an incendiary way to broach the topic...

Still, the righties can't see the civic quagmire of it all. It's like their wearing some sort of lens that filters out the meaning of the argument. They get all, "what if some dude raped your puppy" and "we should just fill a pit with broken glass and acid and toss minorities in cuz lethal injection is too expensive."

Well... they didn't say those things, but you get the point.

At any rate, while I agree that capital punishment poses a moral dilemma, there exists a civic issue as well. We live in a society that has chosen to put the meaning of life above all other values, yet the government reserves the right to terminate it. This gives the government a god-like power... and I agree with my tweeting friend... it's one that doesn't jive with the whole right-wing "I don't trust the government unless it's giving money to my church" thing.

Anyway, there's a poll to the right. Click stuff.

5 comments:

Randal Graves said...

I'm torn on this because, in theory, I'm against the death penalty, but I have schadenfreude-fueled daydreams about serious misery happening to these faux culture of lifers.

puddy said...

fret not, my fantasy baseball deficient friend. this just means you have to do it yourself... :)

Comrade Kevin said...

It's all about them and their own tunnel vision. Inflexibility is not a character strength, it is a serious flaw.

Kelly W. Patterson said...

The biggest problem with the death penalty is that it's a bit permanent and the risk of an innocent person being murdered by the state is too high. At this point, we haven't figured out how to bring back the dead or to do that mind-meld thing Spock used to do. Until we get one or the other of those worked out, I can't support it.

puddy said...

ahhhh... the wrath of kahn/search for spock argument. yes, yes... well done indeed sir.