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The European Union bans capital punishment and considers the practice
barbaric and unfit for the civilized nations of Europe.
Though perhaps unimportant on the surface,
In the list of countries employing capital punishment, there is a
strong Eastern and especially Middle Eastern representation.
The latter should be of no surprise to anyone who has studied
the Bible, Talmud, or Koran. Throughout those texts are references to
vengeance, killing, destruction, retaliation, and other grand declarations
of incivility. Portending a great uprising, they decry their inferiority,
helplessness, and hatred for good society while promising lasting revenge,
masked in a benevolent, defensive presentation that serves as subterfuge
for their stated intentions.
The Psychology of Revenge
The thirst for revenge and the joy received in observing the suffering
of others is cultivated through the mentality of Middle Eastern religions.
Consider what is expressed in this statement:
You will find similar thoughts by skimming through almost any section in the Middle Eastern holy texts and observing the infectious psychology of their authors. As an example from the Bible:
The Koran writes in the same vein about retribution against unbelievers who do not bow to its message:
The Talmud expresses similar sentiments, though more subtle with its heavy drape of morality, pity, and shame. These same psychological characteristics are found in Christianity as well, as it is only a liberal form of Judaism, i.e. Judaism for the masses so that even gentiles are permitted to serve the god of the Hebrews. Knowing the foundation of Christianity enlightens one about the reasons for its invention, but also makes it terribly embarrassing to observe Christian anti-Semites who take ignorance and contradiction to amazing extremes. Gentle Manipulation
Moral psychology manifests itself with dishonest cleverness, deliberate
misrepresentations, disregard for context, and general mendacity.
In the case of McVeigh's execution,
Despite marketing itself as the land of the (once) free, the United States consistently maintains one of the highest rates of incarceration in the world.
While jokes abound about prisoners doing work such as making license
The Foundation of Spirituality Throughout history, all healthy and nature-based civilizations have invented gods that are a people's companions, not their bullies, fathers, or jailers. Nature alone punishes those who do not heed the way of reality, while the moralistic notion of punishment is based on breaking a person's spirit and instigating feelings of helplessness. As such, it is a transparently coercive threat, never a noble way of living or a path to a meaningful future. The promise of punishment, whether put in the mouth of their gods or the pages of their holy texts, is only an overt admission that ideas are lacking and have been replaced by words that inspire fear and doubt.
-Jesus |
Americans consider themselves good citizens when they posture at the
world with moralistic but irrational and unnatural justifications.
This was recently demonstrated with the controversy over Timothy McVeigh's
execution and the spotlight it cast on the capital punishment policies of
the United States. European countries, all of which have ceased killing
prisoners, were unanimous in condemning the killing of McVeigh despite
acknowledging the severity of his actions. In a powerful and utterly
clear statement of Europe's position, the president of the Council of
Europe Parliamentary Assembly described Monday's execution as
this judgment designates the U.S. as a country that lacks European thinking.
This is further revealed by viewing the company that the U.S. keeps in their
choice to execute prisoners. Along with the United States, the other
countries most active in executions are China, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia,
North Korea, and Cuba. That's noteworthy companionship considering that
the U.S. prides itself on the claim that it is a world leader
in the areas of human rights and freedom, an illusion that even
frequently repeated propaganda cannot sustain.
President George W. Bush stated that the execution was "the will of the
American people." Since will implies an action, the lack
of all action and the inability for the American people to enforce their
will shows this claim to be false. Just as external deference is
commonly used to evade responsibility in democratic systems, Middle
Eastern religions use a similar tactic for evading real life and
believing in an imaginary world ruled by supernatural forces. This
type of thinking lays the groundwork for popular phrases such as
"everything happens for a reason" which is a linguistic assertion that
an external god condemns people to predestination, while at the same time
making a psychological confession of fatalism and futility.
plates for the wage of only several dollars a day, the comparisons with
the Russian gulag and the need to create a prison population should not
go unnoticed. Nor should we overlook the coercive aspect of "justice"
that conveniently either claims democratic consensus to avoid
responsibility or revokes rights and kills prisoners to demonstrate its
absolute power. That courts can say with a straight face that killing
someone does not constitute cruel and unusual punishment will be seen
as a failing of justified justice just as the past prescription of
bloodletting is an embarrassment to modern medicine.
Though the