The American Spectator

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(Page 6 of 16)

And the Eighth Amendment makes it clear that capital punishment (which was just endorsed in the adjacent Amendment V) is not cruel and unusual punishment:

"Amendment VIII: Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."

What is frustrating here is that our right to have a decent, orderly society, one with "domestic tranquility," is denied us by our leaders. In the same way that Mr. Bush and the INS deprive us of intact borders and orderly immigration, the judiciary denies us peace and security by ignoring parts of the Constitution, and the laws that come from them. "Anarcho-tyranny," is the phrase R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. introduced in an essay in TAS years ago, if memory serves: The elected tyrants exert their tyranny by merely letting the criminals and illegals work out on us, the unsuspecting public. It's elegant and ingenious on their part, actually, if you think about it. It ties up the troublesome public's attention and resources in a perpetual battle against the common criminal, one that should have been won long ago, had only the laws been enforced.

Let's face it: Our whole society, over the past four decades, has been turned inside-out to accommodate and molly-coddle such criminals. None of us can let our children play unsupervised outdoors in our neighborhoods the way all of us did even up until the 1970s. Elaborate monitors and computers have to be devoted to track myriad perverts and child molesters. Innocent children can't walk to school, to the drugstore, or to the playground anymore. Public parks, libraries, sidewalks, shopping malls, are now places parents are afraid to let their children near. We fear letting them out of our sight, even for a few minutes. We fear for our lives, sometimes in our homes, because of all the criminals at large, carrying on with their evil works with impunity. Cringe about that, Mr. Henry.

p>Or don't. The United States became great by adhering to its own laws. We can decay, even faster than we became great, into an anarchical sewer, by failing to enforce the laws. This includes those harsh ones prescribing capital punishment for "infamous crimes." Why can't we stand up and demand an orderly society, instead of cringing in a dark, feculent cell of our own creation? br> -- Francis Dillon br> Indianapolis, Indiana /p>

I was a kid of about 15 when Castro's executions happened. I remember it well and vividly from the newsreels. I was dumbstruck. I remember one of these condemned men, however, that Castro killed, walked rather jauntily out to the trench, faced them without any kind of blindfold or constraints and said shoot. I could ask -- PLAINTIVELY-- now why Castro was given a pass on this. But why bother? The Maximum Leader wore his "revolutionary" military duds and blustered out schoolboy Marxist claptrap. That made him, in Thomas Sowell's words, a "mascot" of the left. For the media lefty elite, he could have then and still can do anything he wants.

p>Great idea to resurrect this horror. br> -- Clint Albano br> Muscat, Oman /p>

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