I was reading a newspaper on Friday and was shocked to learn that 26 people have been executed this year through use of the death penalty — not in one country, but in one state.
Can you guess which state that is? Yee-up…Texas — Death Penalty Central, USA. Good ole’ proud-as-a-whip Texas. They don’t kid around down there in Texas, ya know. They just kill ya.
26 people, folks. That’s well more than half the total executed in the entire United States (42) in 2007 so far.

The story I am referring to ran on Friday in USAToday, and it talked of how officials in that state dragged their feet and made it just difficult enough to get a stay of execution for a man who had been on death row for 20 years that the chance for a stay was missed, and the man was put to death by lethal injection — even though the U.S. Supreme Court had announced that afternoon that it was going to review the question of whether such executions amounted to cruel and unusual punishment and might thus be unconstitutional. Several other states immediately postponed scheduled executions, awaiting the Supreme Court’s ruling. Texas went ahead with its execution that evening, and would hear nothing of waiting.
I just become so frustrated when I read things like this.
The death penalty is a prime example of insanity. It is the use of force to end the use of force. It is the use of intentional killing to demonstrate that killing is wrong, and punish a person for it.
Einstein once said (and I am going to paraphrase him here, because I do not have the exact quote) that no problem can be solved with the same energy that created it. You can’t end hatred with hatred. You can’t stop anger with anger. You can’t bring a halt to the hurting of others with the hurting of others. There is a certain immutable logic to this that cannot be denied.
Unless it can.
Unless you live in Texas.
In Texas they believe in “justice.” To heck with deterrent effectiveness. It’s about revenge, plain and simple. It’s about “an eye for an eye” and “a tooth for a tooth.” It’s about Justice/Texas Style.
That’s how it feels to me. I could be wrong about all this, but that’s how it feels to me. It makes me sad. It makes me sad to think that the people of Texas, the majority of the people there, don’t just rise up in anguish and anger and say, “Enough! Enough of this killing conscienced by the State. Enough of this barbarian behavior. We–have–had–e–nough.”
I am just wondering….is it only Limp-Livered Liberals who feel that the death penalty is antiquated, out-worn, and never made sense at all? And where does one’s spirituality fit into all of this? Does God really want us to kill each other to stop each other from killing each other? Is this what God wants? And, can the same people who oppose abortion–even early first-term end-of-pregnancy procedures to save the life of the mother–actually support the intentional killing of people by the State?
What am I missing here? Does anybody see the contradiction?