Well, young Alex, for once you have started a thread, admittedly one in which you express the predictable desire to see people killed, in which all members so far have agreed. In the US, 64% of the population favor capital punishment, 5% are "undecided", which means that they don't oppose the status quo, and only 31%, less than 1/3 of the population opposed it, so you are right there with vox populi. Rebecca is one of the concensus and notes, quite correctly, that "some countries know how to take care of criminals." Indeed they do! The following, cut and pasted from a website (everything else is from memory and you may want to check it out!) are the countries that believe, with us, that killing citizens, in some cases, is The Way to Go:
Afghanistan, Antigua and Barbuda, Bahamas, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Botswana, Chad, China, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Cuba, Dominica, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Guinea, Guyana, India, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Lesotho, Libya, Malaysia, Mongolia, Nigeria, North Korea, Oman, Pakistan, Palestinian Authority, Qatar, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Saudi Arabia, Sierra Leone, Singapore, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Taiwan, Thailand, Trinidad And Tobago, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, United States Of America, Viet Nam, Yemen, Zimbabwe.
So perhaps we should think about reordering our alliances. Muslim countries, except for a few contaminated by politics, like Turkey, vote solidly for the death penalty -- stoning is a popular form of execution, especially for women. The Communist countries, China, Vietnam, North Korea, etc, are also firmly, on our side in this, as are those leaders of African democracy such as Zimbabwe, The "Democratic" Republic of Congo and Nigeria. I was actually obliged to watch, to my loudly voiced anger, a public execution in Thailand. An old (i.e. over forty) man and two shapeless youngish women with placards around their necks, declaring them to be dangers to the kingdom, were shot, in this case by the military (at least they weren't stoned) and their bodies were lying there when we left.
Alas, though, the lily livered European Union has outlawed executions among its member countries and the U.S., sadly is the only "English speaking" country, to my knowledge where the sacred right to kill legally is still upheld. Christians, with a few exceptions, like the "polygamous" Mormons, either embrace capital punishment, like several protestant sects, or blink at it, like those of your faith: "We'd rather you didn't, unless you feel that you really , really have to," according to one famous Vatican Council (can you name it?). One of the delightful things about the Bible is that you can find texts to support opposing views. The lillly livered opposers of our American Way of life, quote "turn the other cheek" and "he who is without sin cast the first stone," while those who defend it use "an eye for an eye" and strangely, I always think, Romans 13:4 (and you can look that up for yourself).
Rick also makes a cogent argument. Kill those subject to execution, and save the taxpayers' money. The government, whether Republican or Democrat, though., does not appear to agree with this sensible view. We have the largest percentage of our population in jail of any country in the world, including China. 1 in every 18 American males (and this does not count the thousands of IIs) is either in jail or wearing an anklet. Let me put this another way. National incarceration rates are usually given in persons per 100,000. For Australia, founded by convicts, the number is 126, for Great Britain, home of the Football Hooligans, 148, for the US, Land of the Free, the number is 1,000. But they are well cared for. Less than 40% contract hepatitis C in prison, and in a massive interview of prisoners in the Midwest, a few years back, only 7% claimed to have been raped during incarceration, and remember, these are criminals, so they were probably lying. Officially, the California State Prison Authority, although they have about 170,000 prisoners in facilities designed for 100,000 (a substantial saving of state taxes right there) are proud to announce that that throughout their system, they only experience one "unplanned" death a week! Not bad, huh?
But I have more good news for you, little Alex. As I said earlier, most of this comes from memory and I have not studied the figures from the last census, but in 2000, Caucasians accounted for 69+% of the population and Blacks about 12%. Of executions since 1976 and excluding the rash of executions in Texas and Ohio, two each, I think, so far) 56% were White and 35%,Black. If this suggests that Blacks tend to be more prone to murderous violence than Whites (though there are also "liberal" excuses on record), the suggestion should be supported by the fact that, since 1976, in interracial (blak/white) murders, 15 whites have been found guilty of killing blacks and 252 blacks found guilty of murdering whites. So either blacks are, indeed, more murederously inclined, or judges and juries are racially bigoted, an obvious slander in the Land of Equal Opportunity. In any event, little Alex, thank your parents that you were born a little white boy and not the Other Kind.
Finally, not so good news. Sometimes, very rarely, I'm sure, our Justice System lets a bad'un get away.. Between 1973 and 2009, 139 convicted murderers were freed on the basis of new, often DNA, evidence (and note that U.S. prosecutors bitterly oppose retrials on the basis of DNA evidence). You and I can argue, young Alex, that if they had been executed in a timely fashion, all of this unnecessary exculpatory silliness could have been avoided. They had been found guilty under the fairest and most just legal system in the world. Surely that should be enough. I get the impression that you have already decided that the two accused, in the murder case you mentioned, are guilty. It is up to your generation to help overburdened taxpayers even more by saving the expense of the two years in jail that these two men have already served (who said,"Justice delayed is justice denied?" Some damned liberal, probably), and move for the summary execution of those whom you know in your heart to be guilty. America has thousands of precedents in this honorable tradition. What were they called, lynch mobs? kangaroo courts? They both sound good to me.
