Are We Descending into Barbarity?

Are We Descending into Barbarity?

We Americans like to think of ourselves as among the most developed and civilized countries in the world (if not at the top of the list!). But much of the rest of the world thinks otherwise. We don’t help our case when we continue to engage in acts that can only be called barbaric.

According to published news reports, during the last year various states have carried out what can only be called botched executions described as “preventable horrors.” Most recently, Arizona executed a man named Joseph Rudolph Wood by torture. It took his executioners one hour and fifty-seven minutes to kill him—from insertion of the needle to his death. During that time, according to witnesses, he gasped and snorted. If that isn’t cruel and unusual punishment, I don’t know what would be.
Defenders of the death penalty are blaming drug manufacturers and resellers and opponents of the death penalty for these botched executions. That’s a red herring if ever there was one. It’s like blaming America and Great Britain for the Holocaust because they didn’t accept all of Germany’s Jews when Hitler offered them before WW2. If states (and the federal government) are going to kill people, it’s up to them to obtain the best means. It’s certainly not businesspersons’ fault or the fault of opponents of capital punishment if they fail.
My guess is that the very people who will point the finger at companies and critics of capital punishment are the ones who argue that businesses should be exempt for reasons of conscience from providing health insurance that pays for certain methods of birth control. But they are then being inconsistent. If Hobby Lobby and other Christian-owned companies have that right, so should chemical companies have the right to refuse to supply poisons to government entities that plan to use it to kill people.
Clearly it is governments that have failed. They are experimenting on human subjects. And it won’t do to say these subjects, the convicts, deserve death by torture. That’s blatant barbarism and anyone who says it is either not in their right mind or is simply a barbarian not worthy to participate in civilized discussion of these matters.
In my opinion, the only way this barbarism will stop is if the Supreme Court intervenes to declare all capital punishment cruel and unusual and at least place a moratorium on it until there is no doubt or question that it can be carried out humanely. (But I doubt that can ever be done.) But a faster way would be for state and federal governments to prosecute persons who carry out such barbaric botched executions. Does the law permit execution by torture? I certainly hope not.

Note: If you choose to respond, keep your comment or question on topic; do not misuse my blog to preach your own opinion without explanation and reason. Respond to what I wrote, not something else. Keep your rhetoric civil. Please be concise. The purpose of permitting responses is dialogue, not providing a space for people to rant or flame.