School is now in session, and I am surprised how much I am still learning about how our country began. One of my courses this summer is a political science course called American Government, which takes us back to the beginning of government as we know it in this country. Today's reading assignment uncovered an expression I haven't heard for years and NEVER knew the true meaning of. The punishment for treason in the days when the Declaration of Independence was being written was "drawn and quartered". Now I'm sure each and every one of you know what this means!! Just in case you don't:
1st....the victim was hanged until HALF dead from strangulation...
2nd...he was disemboweled....
and finally....his body was cut into 4 pieces....while still alive!!!
Anybody for lunch now?? Punishment for crimes today is so laid back compared to what our forefathers went through. Perhaps if sex offenders or habitual drunk driving offenders were "drawn and quartered" there would be less repeat offenders and fewer people living in prisons at taxpayers expense. Even putting criminals out on our main roadways in stockades between arrests and court appearances might make people think twice about disobeying the law. Hey...even building a guillotine in the town square or "tarring and feathering" were great crime deterrents in early America. Why not today?
Something to think about!!!
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7 comments:
I wonder if the reading came to close to your "bad day" post. Actually King Solomon has an interesting perspective on crime prevention, “When the sentence for a crime is not quickly carried out, the hearts of the people are filled with schemes to do wrong,” (Ecclesiastes 8:11).
Wow - I'm not even sure how to comment on this!! Way too intense and disturbing a subject for a 74-year-old grandmother to even be talking about. The reason it is called history is because it is just that, and therefore, should be left in the past where it belongs. I'm sure that was just as controversial back then as capital punishment is today. If we could somehow find a way to get guns out of our society, perhaps that would be a good start to the overwhelming violence in this country. Too many innocent people are being murdered every day for the sake of the right to own a gun. But I think the right to live is much more important than the right to own a weapon that is used to kill animals and to kill people, and not much more.
It's part of my American Government class and things our current government is based on. As Richard pointed out, crime and punishment are not new things our society is dealing with. One of the freedoms our Constitution gives us all is the right to bear arms. The problem is....people don't understand what that freedom originally meant, so they use it as an excuse to buy and use every imaginable type of weapon to take innocent lives. People need to read the exact words of the 2nd amendment to our Constitution, as it was meant for "a well-regulated militia" to secure the safety of our state....not an excuse to blow someones brains out for revenge either here or across the oceans. This amendment has caused a hornet's nest between gun-control advocates and gun-use advocates.
As far as leaving history in the past...our country and it's laws were built on history. Wars and rumors of wars have been going on since God created the world...and is a sign of the end times,also.
Any comments on why the US incarcerates more people per capita than any other country? This tncludes China, which does not grant basic human rights.
More than 1 in 100 adults - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States. One in 31 is in prison, on parole or probation. The average cost of incarceration is $24,000/yr per person. Think of the other was you could use at least half of the $60B/yr.
The government only want you to take the drugs which line the pockets of their supporters.. however, I don't know that covers it all. It's not guns, because Canada has more guns per capita than the US, at least according to "Bowling for Columbine".
PS: If you read Freakonomics, the nobel prize winning author attributes the decline in violent crimes to Roe v. Wade.
VERY interesting book, and I'm no book worm :)
http://www.amazon.com/Freakonomics-Revised-Expanded-Economist-Everything/dp/0061234001/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1244496242&sr=8-1
American children are more at risk than children of any other industrialized nation. In one year, firearms killed 0 children in Japan; 19 in Great Britain; 57 in Germany; 109 in France; 153 in Canada; and 5,285 in the United States (Center for Disease Control).
I'd like to understand why that is. Engineers need root cause!
Are the firearms inherently less safe?
Do those other countries provide government issued gun safes or training?
Are American parents lazy or too busy to monitoring their child's activities?
Does the statistic actually measure the same thing? (For example, why does the CDC report this statistic for the US? That seems odd.)
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