Killer Compassion

Love and Truth.

Compassion and Justice.

Forgiveness and Vengeance.

It doth appear from where I stand (or more often sit) that our society is schizophrenic. We are caught in a dichotomy of our own making. I just wish I knew what dichotomy means.

Paradigm Shift anyone?

On one hand we celebrate love, compassion and forgiveness as hallmarks of our greatness as a nation. As long as its cheap, convenient and doesn’t affect us personally.

That’s when we call for brutal honest truth, a justice of the peace (or a lawyer) and bloody, exacting, and total vengeance.

On an aside: I’ve been struck by the number of people that champion causes (be it the prevention of some disease, affliction or crime) AFTER they or someone close to them is affected. And this is noble, don’t get me wrong, but what are the rest of us waiting for? Are we waiting until we get cancer? Our children have autism? Some drunk kills our family? Why are we addicted to reactions and not actions?

So on this note I will proactively state my solutions before they affect me personally.

1. I believe drunk drivers who cause the loss of a single life should be executed. Unless it is there own, then they should be let off with a warning and some rehab.

2. I believe those who molest, rape, kidnap or assault a child should be executed. I won’t even try to rationalize or explain what is instinct in every mother and father around the world. You hurt my child, you die.

3. I believe all naturally occurring drugs should be made legal. I don’t and probably would never take Marijuana or Cocaine but it seems absurd that we prohibit naturally occurring drugs that God made, while we synthetically recreate these same drugs in the lab and pay out the wazoo for them, all the while destroying whole countries fighting a war that will not be won. If there is a war that we should be “cut and running” from it’s the war on drugs. Besides once we legalize it we can control it, tax it and educate people about it (see cigarettes and beer). If, however, we insist on this war on drugs then we should be honest and add cigarettes and beer to the other life destroying drugs. All or nothing, anything else is hypocritical.

4. I believe that children are a blessing and should be treated like a national treasure. I have a lot of thoughts on this and will write about it elsewhere, but for now suffice to say children are a blessing. However, a blessing can become a curse if we don’t lead by example and invest love and time teaching truth and character at an early age.

5. I believe training requires carrots and sticks, rewards and consequences. Along this line, children need to be spanked from time to time. A good paddling by loving parents is the best medicine for selfish immaturity. Again, I’ll write about this later. Too often our more “humane” punishments are so removed from the actual offense that the poor child never makes the connection. At many schools students are punished with “timeout” (alternate class or in school suspension) for an offense days or weeks after the event and never make the connection. I stole from my teacher’s desk, was caught and got swatted by the principal when I was in 5th grade. It was the best thing that ever happened to me and the last time I ever stole. Sometimes truth must pass through the butt to properly register. I think if we did this more with children we wouldn’t have so many messed up adults.

6. I believe that we need some good ole fashion exorcisms. Jesus went about doing good, healing the sick, casting out demons and raising the dead. If only Jesus had known how to properly diagnos everyone he wouldn’t have had to spend a quarter of his time casting out demons.

7. I believe that we should take away the video games, TVs, computers, music, etc… of every kid with ADD or ADHD and give them only books and then reevaluate them in one month. I’m not against these things in moderation, but I think it is silly to medicate kids for over stimulation before we first remove the hyper-stimulants from their environment.

So what about the killer compassion? I think our supposed compassion is deadly, and while many of my proposals might seem harsh would actually be more compassionate in the long run.

What is more compassionate? Option #1: Rehabilitating one drunk and burying a family of five. Or Option #2: Executing drunk drivers and saving 10,000 to 15,000 innocent lives a year? Believe me, if we got serious and started executing drunk drivers there wouldn’t be much drunk driving any more.

Final thought: I believe that the truth is full of love and will save the lives of those it may initially offend. I believe that when justice is systematically and uncompromisingly enforced that the safety that would follow is compassionate. I believe that we need to forgive those who have hurt us, but that the state is equipped, empowered and has to administer vengeance on evil doers. The catch to all of this is that if these seven steps were followed I don’t think we’d have to execute very many people before most would catch on and start behaving.

God forbid, but if something happened to anyone in my family, I would forgive the guilty party, pray for their salvation and wish them God speed as I watch them pass from this world to the next.

Harsh? Probably. The way you’ll feel when injustice comes knocking at your door. Absolutely.