Support for Death Penalty

I am against capital punishment. It does not deter crime. It is a desperate act of revenge. If we really care about the crime and violence around us, why do we continue it by calling for another man’s blood?

The rising sentiment in favor of capital punishment is an expedient approach to a complicated human and societal problem. We breed indifference and isolation in this fast-paced world and then cry out for retribution and revenge. We are tired and discouraged so we seek the quickest and easiest way out.

To depersonalize a human into an object we can eliminate returns us to barbarism. Do we think that by holding up before others the slaughter of another person (on TV too) that we are setting a fine example or object lesson? Ugh, how debased we’ve become! As Will Durant said, it is “time we came to the aid of civilization” and cherish and nurture life, love, and faith in the goodness of man.

While we have a duty to remove from our midst those who are a danger or would inflict us with harm, we need not brutalize ourselves in the doing. Let these people “work by the sweat of their brow” and work out their own retribution.

Dismay and despair over killing must not lead to more killing, else we participate in the very thing we say we deplore.

LILLIAN LASKIN

Los Angeles