I was recently invited to an event discussing the death penalty, with the same title as this post. There would be a screening of a film, a panel discussion, and some free form discussion on the topic. I was urged strongly to come by my friend Jeff, who was moderating the event.
This isn't a topic I've thought much about until recently. As you may have read, my recent post entitled A New Command I Give You discussed the implications of the death penalty and revenge against criminals as a whole. I also recounted my experience as a juror in this post, which is my still my most influencing experience with the justice system.
Going into the event, I considered myself quite clearly against the death penalty for no other reason than I thought it wrong. I vaguely recognized that the death penalty put blood on our hands ('our' being the jurors, the judge and attorneys, the legislature, and the citizens of the state whom these people all represent), and I didn't like this. I knew that I supported forgiveness over retribution (in principal, at least, if not in practice). But these ideas were unformed and generic.
I was intrigued to hear these ideas fleshed out, as well as new ideas that hadn't come to me before this event.
1. The death penalty is expensive
The standard statistic is that a death row inmate costs 3 times what a life prisoner does. The statistics are slightly more significant in Texas, although each state varies.
Does this convict me to oppose the death penalty? Not really, but it's an important issue to discuss when considering a change in law.
2. The death penalty doesn't work
To punish a killer by killing is irrational. To teach the community that killing is wrong by killing the killer is backwards. There may be an argument that the death penalty keeps the killer from killing again, but life in prison accomplishes the same goal without the destruction.
This is a little more convincing. I believe punishment should have a heart of discipline, which produces change instead of resentment. We can't help a person overcome their shortcomings to reach a better life if we just kill them off. I would much rather see them learn, grow, be healed, and mature during the course of their life.
3. Family of victims who are avenged by the death penalty rarely move on
This is a soft statistic, but it's demonstrated in the film screened at the event. Victims (or families of victims) deserve to move on from their tragedy. If they don't move on, they become trapped in a life of resentment and bitterness, tainting the entire world around them through the lense of their tragedy. Those who forgive the criminal to the point where they don't seek revenge seem to move on to a more productive, happy life much easier than those who seek revenge through the death penalty.
Now we're getting somewhere. I know most people don't care much about the criminal, since "he made his choice," but now we're talking about the benefit of the victims. There's still some trouble with this argument, though, since many people don't put much stock in intangible ideas like forgiving and "moving on." But I think common sense supports the far and wide benefit of a joyful life over a resentful one.
4. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind
A point was raised by a panelist about the original "eye-for-an-eye" laws found in the early chapters of the Bible. He said that this principal isn't in line with our gut instincts. That our gut instincts would say "he took my eye, so I'll take both of his eyes, steal his wife, and burn his house down." So to tell an early culture that you should just take what they took from you was revolutionary! It demonstrated control and consideration, rather than raw vengeance. Today, we even consider "eye-for-an-eye" to be barbaric because of how we've learned the principal of control and consideration in our culture.
This blows me away, partly because I learned something new about one of the oldest 'rules' in the world. But mostly, it starts to put a voice to what I believe. We may think we've moved miles past the olden days of "eye-for-an-eye," but the death penalty shows that our animalistic tendencies still push us toward flagrant revenge. Once we recognize this, we can see the death penalty for what it is: murder by the state. Whether just or unjust, it is, most basically, revenge for what they did to us.
5. We are all human, and we are all broken
This sums up the entire issue for me. It also cuts to the heart of racism, homophobia, nationalism, and many other major issues in our world. When we see people as people, it becomes much harder to mistreat them.
But that's just it. We don't see all people as people. Black people have been identified as sub-human, undeserving of the rights white people claim. Foreigners have been dubbed barbarians, their lifestyle fit to be destroyed. Gay people have been called mentally unbalanced, making it ok to treat their identity like a disease that should be eradicated through drugs. And people who have made mistakes different from our own have been called criminals, allowing us to treat them as scum rather than trying to help them work through their wounds that took them so far off track in the first place.
I'll leave your conclusions to you, but my decision is to oppose the death penalty. I would be interested to hear any opposing arguments if you would like to share them.
Always moving forward,
Tyler
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label politics. Show all posts
Thursday, May 2, 2013
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Conspiracy Theories
I've found myself coming across various conspiracy theories in the last month. One in particular involves the Sandy Hook School shooting, but a couple others involve old crimes or injustices that have dropped out of mind and into the history books. Reading these accounts, these claims of government's crimes against their people, I have to wonder: why do these theories exist?
My answer in short is that people don't always agree. When trying to place blame, someone always ends up with the majority vote. Once that majority is established, the minority opinions start to get snuffed out. The most outspoken of this minority community ends up labelled the conspiracy theorist, because the majority doesn't believe their opinion is valid.
But I think it goes deeper than this.
Have you ever noticed that "conspiracy theories" always involve a government, political group, or some otherwise infallibly good group of people? Conspiracy theories seem to "reveal the true colors" of these groups. They turn the system on its head.
There's just something dramatic about the stories that we call conspiracy theories. There's a villain and a victim, and the storyteller becomes the hero by bringing the villain to light. We write books about this, make movies about it, support a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry by taking interest in it.
This makes me think the conspiracy theorists, or at least the ones who set up blogs and youtube channels to advertise their theories, are basking in the heroic glow of outing a villain. They probably believe the stories, at least to an extent, but their efforts become more about getting the word out than making sure the word is correct to begin with.
I don't want to bring too much attention to the conspiracy theorists in this story, but I was drawn into the theories about the Sandy Hook shooting a few weeks ago and need set out what I experienced.
There's a 30 minute video somewhere on Youtube with few million views detailing all the suspect conditions of the shooting, eventually setting it out as a government conspiracy to (1) fake the death of 1 or more children, and (2) develop a scapegoat for the gun rights battle. Evidence to support their claims include a FEMA training on dealing with children in crisis held some 20 miles away from the school, misinformation from the forensic pathologist, nonsensical stories from a nearby resident, and details of the scene that just didn't look right.
Honestly, for almost 30 minutes I was riveted, waiting for the final nail in the coffin that the video promised. A lot of things didn't make good sense, although I questioned how relevant those details were. There was some clear misinformation in the original stories that was later corrected, but this can happen with any report that is released too soon, before facts are verified.
Some of the harder obstacles to overcome appeared as accurate facts, but they are easily explained. The biggest was that some Facebook groups and posts were timestamped before the incident. True, incidents blatantly out of order bring question to the entire sequence of events. But the storyteller forgot that we're talking about a website. Not just any website, but one of the biggest websites in the world that has been known to have glitches. We're also talking about timestamps that are seen differently in different time zones, so the captured images could have easily come from a different time zone that showed the timestamp a dozen hours or more prior to the actual posting. The group that was shown as being created the night before the shooting received so much criticism that the creator had to close and re-form the group. While the storyteller presented this as the correction of an error, I finally saw this as an unfortunate story of a grieving family member who had to take action to stop an overwhelming number of false accusations about his painful situation.
It took watching the entire 30 minute video, stewing on it for an hour or so, and talking through some details to fully convince myself that the evidence didn't support any kind of government conspiracy. This bugs me, because I'm so critical of facts in a story and can usually separate relevant information from propaganda pretty easily. The fact that it took 2 hours for me to notice the gaping holes in the story tells me this conspiracy theorist is too persuasive for his own good.
But, after 2 hours of getting over this exaggerated mess, I did find the real story. As with any good lie, this story represented a partial truth. The media immediately swept this into the primary news spot and looked for any other story to piggy back off of it. Soon enough, the battle for gun rights started. The headline policies revolved around assault rifles and large-capacity clips, and always pointed back to Sandy Hook for justification. Our storyteller (correctly) pointed out that while 4 handguns were found to be used in the shooting, the assault rifle found in the shooter's trunk never even entered the school. The inflation of the assault rifle and large-capacity clip issue was purely the result of media misinformation and political agendas.
I'm not saying these weapons aren't used in major crimes, but the media and political propaganda about these weapons was a bastardization of the Sandy Hook shooting. They hold these children up on pedestals for something they don't represent. They charge the country with protecting kids "just like them" from weapons that never darkened their doorstep in the first place.
Let me be clear. The shooting was pure tragedy. The families deserve all the sympathy this country can muster. The innocent blood that was spilled was unjustified and terrible. But by using their memory to twist into your own agenda is wrong. You're not honoring the children or their families, you're insulting them.
What I learned from this, and other, conspiracy theories is that even though a story might not hold water, every good story starts with a grain of truth. If we look hard enough, we can find this grain of truth in everything.
Always moving forward,
Tyler
My answer in short is that people don't always agree. When trying to place blame, someone always ends up with the majority vote. Once that majority is established, the minority opinions start to get snuffed out. The most outspoken of this minority community ends up labelled the conspiracy theorist, because the majority doesn't believe their opinion is valid.
But I think it goes deeper than this.
Have you ever noticed that "conspiracy theories" always involve a government, political group, or some otherwise infallibly good group of people? Conspiracy theories seem to "reveal the true colors" of these groups. They turn the system on its head.
There's just something dramatic about the stories that we call conspiracy theories. There's a villain and a victim, and the storyteller becomes the hero by bringing the villain to light. We write books about this, make movies about it, support a multi-billion dollar entertainment industry by taking interest in it.
This makes me think the conspiracy theorists, or at least the ones who set up blogs and youtube channels to advertise their theories, are basking in the heroic glow of outing a villain. They probably believe the stories, at least to an extent, but their efforts become more about getting the word out than making sure the word is correct to begin with.
I don't want to bring too much attention to the conspiracy theorists in this story, but I was drawn into the theories about the Sandy Hook shooting a few weeks ago and need set out what I experienced.
There's a 30 minute video somewhere on Youtube with few million views detailing all the suspect conditions of the shooting, eventually setting it out as a government conspiracy to (1) fake the death of 1 or more children, and (2) develop a scapegoat for the gun rights battle. Evidence to support their claims include a FEMA training on dealing with children in crisis held some 20 miles away from the school, misinformation from the forensic pathologist, nonsensical stories from a nearby resident, and details of the scene that just didn't look right.
Honestly, for almost 30 minutes I was riveted, waiting for the final nail in the coffin that the video promised. A lot of things didn't make good sense, although I questioned how relevant those details were. There was some clear misinformation in the original stories that was later corrected, but this can happen with any report that is released too soon, before facts are verified.
Some of the harder obstacles to overcome appeared as accurate facts, but they are easily explained. The biggest was that some Facebook groups and posts were timestamped before the incident. True, incidents blatantly out of order bring question to the entire sequence of events. But the storyteller forgot that we're talking about a website. Not just any website, but one of the biggest websites in the world that has been known to have glitches. We're also talking about timestamps that are seen differently in different time zones, so the captured images could have easily come from a different time zone that showed the timestamp a dozen hours or more prior to the actual posting. The group that was shown as being created the night before the shooting received so much criticism that the creator had to close and re-form the group. While the storyteller presented this as the correction of an error, I finally saw this as an unfortunate story of a grieving family member who had to take action to stop an overwhelming number of false accusations about his painful situation.
It took watching the entire 30 minute video, stewing on it for an hour or so, and talking through some details to fully convince myself that the evidence didn't support any kind of government conspiracy. This bugs me, because I'm so critical of facts in a story and can usually separate relevant information from propaganda pretty easily. The fact that it took 2 hours for me to notice the gaping holes in the story tells me this conspiracy theorist is too persuasive for his own good.
But, after 2 hours of getting over this exaggerated mess, I did find the real story. As with any good lie, this story represented a partial truth. The media immediately swept this into the primary news spot and looked for any other story to piggy back off of it. Soon enough, the battle for gun rights started. The headline policies revolved around assault rifles and large-capacity clips, and always pointed back to Sandy Hook for justification. Our storyteller (correctly) pointed out that while 4 handguns were found to be used in the shooting, the assault rifle found in the shooter's trunk never even entered the school. The inflation of the assault rifle and large-capacity clip issue was purely the result of media misinformation and political agendas.
I'm not saying these weapons aren't used in major crimes, but the media and political propaganda about these weapons was a bastardization of the Sandy Hook shooting. They hold these children up on pedestals for something they don't represent. They charge the country with protecting kids "just like them" from weapons that never darkened their doorstep in the first place.
Let me be clear. The shooting was pure tragedy. The families deserve all the sympathy this country can muster. The innocent blood that was spilled was unjustified and terrible. But by using their memory to twist into your own agenda is wrong. You're not honoring the children or their families, you're insulting them.
What I learned from this, and other, conspiracy theories is that even though a story might not hold water, every good story starts with a grain of truth. If we look hard enough, we can find this grain of truth in everything.
Always moving forward,
Tyler
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Give Me Your Tired...
I've never taken a huge interest in politics. Around election time, when debates are in full swing, I'll take part in discussions about issues I feel are relevant, but I honestly don't care much about who is in charge for 2 main reasons.
First, by the time we get down to 2 leading candidates, I typically don't like either of them. The leading candidates get to where they are because they follow party lines, not because they have particularly good ideas (which leads me to my second reason).
Second, I don't like party lines. It seems that more and more the 2 major parties (and the candidates who best represent them) try to artificially differentiate themselves from one another. Once you read between the lines, they agree on 90% of the issues, yet they focus on the other 10% by trying to downgrade the competitor's position and separate themselves from it as much as possible. The result gives us the option to choose between 2 extremes, and personally, I think there are great solutions right down the middle of the road.
Today, I just want to focus on one political topic, which was inspired by this blog post:
Announcing Our New American Citizen
There's always talk about our borders, especially here in Texas. The typical response is complaints about all the "illegals" who work under the table, so that they don't pay taxes yet still reap the benefits of living under our government. Honestly, it's a real problem. Especially when you look at the budget dollars spent to build our roads, police our streets, and defend our country, and compare it to the near-zero tax dollars paid by those with cash-only income and no social security number.
However, and I want to be very clear here, this is the ONLY problem with illegal immigration today.
When people get into rant mode over issues like this, they tend to get into all kinds of things that seem to rationalize their opinion. But these are not problems on their own. In fact, any one of us could find the holes in these theories that debunk the statements completely, we just get sucked in by the original argument and let ourselves assume that the additional points are true enough.
Rather than arguing over the problem, though, let's talk about the solutions. The most often heard solution is closing our borders more tightly to new immigrants, usually coupled with deporting illegal immigrants. This would clear out the "problem people" at a pretty high cost to the government, and we would get to pay the taxes to support their efforts until it finally paid off.
The other solution is one people don't seem to talk about: granting them citizenship (or at least the right to earn a paycheck). Now I'm not saying we should ask the government to approach every illegal immigrant and hand them a free pass, but the system right now is more akin to defending yourself in court. Think about it, it's easier to get your driver's license, a document that allows you to operate the type of vehicle that contributes to tens of thousands of deaths every year, than to move across the border! All this does is deter people from pursuing legal immigration.
So, what if we make the path to citizenship a little easier?
First, if immigrants had the legal right to work, they would start paying taxes! (honestly it wouldn't be 100%, but the percentage would increase drastically from the current 0%) Suddenly, tax revenue would increase, spending would increase (with all the new jobs available to the newly-legal immigrants), and because legal immigration is easier, the government would have to put fewer resources to guard borders against illegal immigration. Since the number of people earning unreported income would decline, it would even be easier for law enforcement to address the issue of wages paid under the table.
Second, we just have to look at our roots. Very few of us are truly "native" Americans. The ones who are native were mistreated for centuries before we tried to bring them into equality. So, do you know what that makes the rest of us? Immigrants! Your ancestors earned the rights to citizenship by traveling here from somewhere else and asking for it. There's even a big plaque under a huge statue in New York that reads "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," a longstanding call to people of oppressed nations to come find better life here.
If you haven't yet, I encourage you to read the post linked above, because this is the fuel for my fire today. Here's the Cliff's Notes version.
The woman who writes this blog has 2 children who were adopted. One of them is 6 years old and was adopted 3 years ago from another country (not sure which). With his adoption finalized, their son Kembe has all the rights of their biological children, which includes US citizenship, since both parents are US citizens themselves. However, with the adoption long-finalized, Kembe was only just granted citizenship.
This is a problem. If someone like this easily and clearly meets the qualifications of citizenship, yet it takes 2-3 years to push the proper authorities to grant him this right, how much harder is it for someone to legally immigrate to the US to escape a life of poverty or oppression?
What I find is that the Land of Opportunity is severely lacking in opportunity. We've gone from inviting people into our home to constructing barbed-wire fences around it. We've stopped offering to help people find a better place, and instead we taunt them with our wealth and refuse to share, like a spoiled kid on the playground. Honestly, when did we get the right to be such jerks??
Those of you with more insight into international law may have reasons not to pursue this path, but as a person who wants to follow the words of Jesus in Matthew 22:39, I think it's time we started loving our international neighbors as we love ourselves.
Always moving forward,
Tyler
PS: Don't expect politically-inspired posts regularly. Sorry about the rant, we'll be back to your regularly-scheduled broadcast shortly.
First, by the time we get down to 2 leading candidates, I typically don't like either of them. The leading candidates get to where they are because they follow party lines, not because they have particularly good ideas (which leads me to my second reason).
Second, I don't like party lines. It seems that more and more the 2 major parties (and the candidates who best represent them) try to artificially differentiate themselves from one another. Once you read between the lines, they agree on 90% of the issues, yet they focus on the other 10% by trying to downgrade the competitor's position and separate themselves from it as much as possible. The result gives us the option to choose between 2 extremes, and personally, I think there are great solutions right down the middle of the road.
Today, I just want to focus on one political topic, which was inspired by this blog post:
Announcing Our New American Citizen
There's always talk about our borders, especially here in Texas. The typical response is complaints about all the "illegals" who work under the table, so that they don't pay taxes yet still reap the benefits of living under our government. Honestly, it's a real problem. Especially when you look at the budget dollars spent to build our roads, police our streets, and defend our country, and compare it to the near-zero tax dollars paid by those with cash-only income and no social security number.
However, and I want to be very clear here, this is the ONLY problem with illegal immigration today.
When people get into rant mode over issues like this, they tend to get into all kinds of things that seem to rationalize their opinion. But these are not problems on their own. In fact, any one of us could find the holes in these theories that debunk the statements completely, we just get sucked in by the original argument and let ourselves assume that the additional points are true enough.
Rather than arguing over the problem, though, let's talk about the solutions. The most often heard solution is closing our borders more tightly to new immigrants, usually coupled with deporting illegal immigrants. This would clear out the "problem people" at a pretty high cost to the government, and we would get to pay the taxes to support their efforts until it finally paid off.
The other solution is one people don't seem to talk about: granting them citizenship (or at least the right to earn a paycheck). Now I'm not saying we should ask the government to approach every illegal immigrant and hand them a free pass, but the system right now is more akin to defending yourself in court. Think about it, it's easier to get your driver's license, a document that allows you to operate the type of vehicle that contributes to tens of thousands of deaths every year, than to move across the border! All this does is deter people from pursuing legal immigration.
So, what if we make the path to citizenship a little easier?
First, if immigrants had the legal right to work, they would start paying taxes! (honestly it wouldn't be 100%, but the percentage would increase drastically from the current 0%) Suddenly, tax revenue would increase, spending would increase (with all the new jobs available to the newly-legal immigrants), and because legal immigration is easier, the government would have to put fewer resources to guard borders against illegal immigration. Since the number of people earning unreported income would decline, it would even be easier for law enforcement to address the issue of wages paid under the table.
Second, we just have to look at our roots. Very few of us are truly "native" Americans. The ones who are native were mistreated for centuries before we tried to bring them into equality. So, do you know what that makes the rest of us? Immigrants! Your ancestors earned the rights to citizenship by traveling here from somewhere else and asking for it. There's even a big plaque under a huge statue in New York that reads "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free," a longstanding call to people of oppressed nations to come find better life here.
If you haven't yet, I encourage you to read the post linked above, because this is the fuel for my fire today. Here's the Cliff's Notes version.
The woman who writes this blog has 2 children who were adopted. One of them is 6 years old and was adopted 3 years ago from another country (not sure which). With his adoption finalized, their son Kembe has all the rights of their biological children, which includes US citizenship, since both parents are US citizens themselves. However, with the adoption long-finalized, Kembe was only just granted citizenship.
This is a problem. If someone like this easily and clearly meets the qualifications of citizenship, yet it takes 2-3 years to push the proper authorities to grant him this right, how much harder is it for someone to legally immigrate to the US to escape a life of poverty or oppression?
What I find is that the Land of Opportunity is severely lacking in opportunity. We've gone from inviting people into our home to constructing barbed-wire fences around it. We've stopped offering to help people find a better place, and instead we taunt them with our wealth and refuse to share, like a spoiled kid on the playground. Honestly, when did we get the right to be such jerks??
Those of you with more insight into international law may have reasons not to pursue this path, but as a person who wants to follow the words of Jesus in Matthew 22:39, I think it's time we started loving our international neighbors as we love ourselves.
Always moving forward,
Tyler
PS: Don't expect politically-inspired posts regularly. Sorry about the rant, we'll be back to your regularly-scheduled broadcast shortly.
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