All crime has ceased to exist...

...because we reached the glorious milestone of 1000 people executed. What a proud day in our luminous history! It goes right on up there with those other awesome feats of ours like torture and white phosphorous. Culture of life! America is God! God is America! America can choose who lives and who dies! Screw morality!

What is Justice? The American Heritage Dictionary defines Justice as:

1. The quality of being just; fairness.
2. a. The principle of moral rightness; equity. b. Conformity to moral rightness in action or attitude; righteousness.
3. a. The upholding of what is just, especially fair treatment and due reward in accordance with honor, standards, or law. b. Law. The administration and procedure of law.
4. Conformity to truth, fact, or sound reason: The overcharged customer was angry, and with justice.
5. Abbr. J. Law. a. A judge. b. A justice of the peace.

The great philosopher Plato gives prominence to Justice in society. He was highly dissatisfied with the prevailing degenerating conditions in Athens and viewed the Athenian democracy as on the verge of ruin. [He was right. Athens had become a strong military state whose interest in empire (called the Delian League to make it sound democratic) led to the Peloponnesian War and the ultimate downfall of Athenian democracy.] Plato was disgusted by societal meddling and excessive individualism of Athenian society, and Justice was the means to correct these wrongs. According to Plato, Justice is a human virtue that makes a person self-consistent and good; socially, Justice is a social consciousness that makes a society internally harmonious and good.

The division in our society shows there is no internal harmony in our country, and how could there be, when we have some people who advocate killing others? What is Justice NOT? Vengeance. Revenge is not Justice. Killing someone to show that killing is wrong is ridiculous.

If America wants to claim to be a morally superior country, or even a country with morals, for that matter, it would make taking a human life illegal, regardless of how heinous a person's crimes. It never ceases to amaze me how so many of the loudest proponents of the death penalty also claim to be Christian. If those advocates of the death penalty truly believed in God, they would leave it up to Him to pass Final Judgment rather than playing God here on Earth. But, as I saw on someone's blog, they aren't Christians, they just play them on television.

By the way, the photo is from an Iranian execution. The United States is in great company when it comes to states where capital punishment is legal, isn't it?

At least some Americans are starting to get it.

Update: "Redemption is tailor-made for the wretched." - Stanley Tookie Williams

Another update: Only China, Iran and Vietnam held more executions in 2004 than the US, according to rights group Amnesty International.