Punishment

Obama supports death penalty for child rapists. This is going a little too far.

He describes child rapists and mass muderers as being deserving of the "ultimate punishment". This phrase bothers me. I dont think the purpose of jails and prisons is to dole out "punishment". Human beings don't have the right to judge, condemn, and punish. I've always thought that the only reason we have the right to construct jails and put people in them is to remove criminals from our society to protect people. Of course going to jail does suck and it has been conflated with and used for punishment, but the whole underlying justification for sending criminals to jail is more as a protective mechanism for society. We certainly have the right to defend ourselves, but we don't have the right to actively punish. At least thats how i see it.

Thats what the argument about the death penalty rests on. Just because someone commits a heinous act does not thereby give us the right to murder them. Eye for an eye was abandoned in the new testament, hellooo people.

Anyway. Just one disappointing statement by Barack Obama. I still love him.