Barbarians In Oklahoma

From Esquire courtesy of BuzzFlash:

I am saying this quite deliberately. The state of Oklahoma committed an act of fucking barbarism last night. It did so under the color of law, which makes every citizen of that benighted state complicit in the act of fucking barbarism. The governor of that state, a pink balloon named Mary Fallin, is a fucking barbarian. A state legislator named Mike Christian is a fucking barbarian, for reasons we will get to in a moment. Every politician in that benighted state belongs in a fucking cage this morning.

"Clayton Lockett, 38, was declared unconscious 10 minutes after the first of three drugs in the state's new lethal injection combination was administered Tuesday evening. Three minutes later, he began breathing heavily, writhing, clenching his teeth and straining to lift his head off the pillow. Officials later blamed a ruptured vein for the problems with the execution, which are likely to fuel more debate about the ability of states to administer lethal injections that meet the U.S. Constitution's requirement they be neither cruel nor unusual punishment."

More here.

Putting this horrific event carried out by the government of Oklahoma aside for the moment, and it is horrific, to be sure, it is clearly an exception proving the rule: capital punishment is irredeemably evil, and we must end it right now.  

I mean, really.  Once we have a murderer behind bars, it is highly unlikely that he will commit murder again, especially when juries have been allowed to sentence convicts to life without parole.  So capital punishment doesn't protect society.  And it doesn't deter murderers, either.  So capital punishment doesn't prevent murders.  What's left, then?  Vengeance.  Blood lust.  Political points and expediency.  Stuff that doesn't really justify murder.  Because that's what capital punishment is.  It's murder.  You can dress it up with the law.  You can put bereaved widows and orphans on television crying.  You can watch Nancy Grace freaking out on television all day long.  But none of that changes the fact that capital punishment is murder.  Murder in my and your name.  Murder we think is righteous because we're murdering murderers.

How on earth does a heinous crime justify another heinous crime?  And, for that matter, how many exonerations do we need in order to show that a significant percentage of people sentenced to death were never guilty in the first place?  And why the hell do we grant the government the power to take away citizens' lives?  Talk about Big Government excesses.  Capital punishment is a vile filthy business.  It is a stain on our civilization. 

The only moral course of action is to end the death penalty immediately.

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