On the Bright Side

Greetings Everyone,

I was listening to National Public Radio the other day on my way home. A sure sign of my age, I know. There was a story that really caught my attention about the controversy surrounding people convicted of heinous crimes and sentenced to death. The story wasn’t about whether there should be a death penalty or not, it was about whether or not it was cruel to execute someone through means of lethal injection or not.

For those of us who didn’t have a clear understanding of the process there was a detailed technical description of the three drugs that were injected. The first one was an anesthesia, designed to render the person unconscious. The second is to paralyze the prisoner to eliminate the twitching and jerking that the prisoner’s body goes through when the last drug is injected. This last drug is the one that actually kills the prisoner by attacking their nervous system.

Of course this immediately sounded ridiculous to me. Why would any one care if someone who had killed others felt anything when they were being executed. After all, wasn’t the point of Capital Punishment that it would deter people from committing the crime? Shouldn’t we hope that they feel the pain that they have inflicted on others?

On the Brighter Side

This is what makes a civilization. The fact that the citizens hold themselves to the image of what they would like others to see them as, not lower their behavior to that they are trying to change, says a lot about our society.

Just the mere fact that there was a controversy brought to mind this quote about our civilization and its progression.

The true civilization is where every man gives to every other every right that he claims for himself.
Robert Ingersoll (1833 - 1899)
This question will not be resolved easily, not many questions posed to a civilization are. The number of citizens often equals the number of opinions on any given subject. Thanks to our constitution we can all speak our thoughts and join in any controversy we see value in resolving for ourselves, our neighbors, and our children, in the promise of a civilization that caters to the rights of the individual, and the betterment of the people as a whole.

There are a lot of lower issues that society has to answer, but isn’t it wonderful that there are people that stand-up for the noble causes? Isn’t it wonderful that we can all look to the future as a place of hope for a better society? A place where we can all be able to…….always look on the bright side of life.

Robert