Devolving of America

FTLComm - Tisdale - Tuesday, June 12, 2001

ultimate
penalty

You have said it and heard it said that "What goes around , comes around." The United States, China and about twenty-nine other countries in the world eliminate members of their society who have been found guilty of crimes that they as nation states consider worthy of the ultimate penalty. Perhaps this latest and most high profile death of the self confessed terrorist Timothy McVeigh, who claimed to have carried out his horrifying act of mass murder in the name of patriotism and democracy, brings to light the problem facing the world's most advanced economic and military power on the planet.

 

 

begets
more
violence

Just as a good question rarely produces answers, but instead more good questions, violence either by an individual, or by a country begets more violence. There can be little doubt of the young man's guilt and his resolute and stalwart belief that he acted from the highest moral grounds, surely this tells us that something is seriously wrong here. The television, the talk shows, the newspapers and magazines of the United States have chewed this issue over to the point that outsiders like ourselves are confused at how these people, all legal minds, all religious leaders, all moral upstanding citizens fail to see the real message that is being sent with the execution of this heinous criminal.

 

 

buy and
sell
human
beings

United States of America came into being as a massive and ridiculous hypocritical society. Revolting against the Crown, and declaring all people equal before the law and guaranteed the right to pursue freedom and happiness and at the same time it took almost a century to make it illegal to buy and sell human beings. America is a place of amazing piety and massive depravity, it is the clearest example on earth of evolution going in reverse. The condemnation of the country, and what it stands for is brought about by its own deliberate action as one can almost see the brows furrowing and the arms getting longer as the cultural devolution goes backward faster than the industrial progress this country achieved in the first part of the last century.

 

 

Killing
a killer

When Canada ended capital punishment it did so not by an act of parliament or some governmental decree, it did so because the prime minister of the day, John G. Diefenbaker was a defense lawyer who knew that mistakes would happen and that capital punishment by its very nature was uncivilised. After many years of simply not doing it, our country enacted legislation banning the practice, just like most other civilised places. Killing a killer does not bring back the dead, it instead advertises to the society that killing is a human thing to do, it may be our past, but it should definitely not be our present and future. We can do better.

 

 

infection
of
violence

The wearing of side arms by our police, bullet proof vests and the continued emphasis on violence as a solution to problems is creeping over the border and engulfing us as Canadians. Each year an equal number of people are killed by police as police are killed in their roles as law enforcement officers. Consider this, if police stopped killing suspected offenders would the number of police killed on the job go down? While we have abolished the death penalty in Canada both Saskatoon and perhaps other cities as well are suspected of having police death squads. So while I am condemning our American neighbours, the infection of violence is spreading and we must resist.

 

 

caveman
mania

As with bad behaviour in children, we must accept that we can affect change by praising good behaviour, even rewarding it and do our best to ignore the bad hoping that most societies just like most people will do their best to act in a manner that will make them look good. America looks bad and my condemnation of it will only make them defensive, as a people we must accept the American propensity to gravitate toward "caveman-mania" and we must show them how much we admire their qualities. Who knows, it might just work, for our own sake we need to try.