Therefore, “an eye for an eye” means proportionate justice. On a smaller scale, a robber would get fined or a year in prison to compensate for the violation against the person robbed. The criminal has lost the maximum amount of rights as possible, just like the victim. ) “An eye for an eye” or the “tit-for-tat” system is necessary in a just and equal society.įor example, a criminal who kills could either get the death penalty or life in jail without parole. “Whoever strikes a man a mortal blow must be put to death.
Justice means to treat people how they deserve, in as much as the people have the authority to do so. This saying assumes all humans are guilty and justice is harmful. Gandhi’s essence of his argument is morally correct however, this expression questions the ability for a person to obtain justice.
In the Christian Bible, it says An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but Buddha disagrees with that and stated An eye for an eye just makes the whole world blind I might be Roman Catholic, but I strongly agree with the words of Buddha. , another successful rights activist that permanently changed the way the world viewed segregation, who stated, “Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time. is a Christian nation, and Japan practices Buddhism. Although Gandhi may not have influenced everyone, he did accomplish spreading his theory of nonviolence to Martin Luther King, Jr. The terrorists who followed Bin Laden, blinded by hatred and misleading beliefs from Bin Laden, went as far as self-sacrifice as an attempt to make change instead of trying to reason with words and nonviolent actions something Gandhi wanted to accomplish. S foreign policy which concluded in thousands of deaths in the 9-11 attacks which included his own followers and his death in 2011. For instance, Osama Bin Laden and his followers, known as terrorists, have used violence to solve his belief of oppression on Muslims by the U. Judges and juries are also too quick to sentence innocent people to death as the recent clutter of DNA exonerations has shown.” (Luke 6:36-38) Using punishment as a way of dealing with things is seen as the opposite of the solution. Juries are also “death qualified” which means that jurors with moral objections to the death penalty are removed from the panel. A policy of revenge will lead to counterretaliations rather than peaceful resolutions. Many of the defendants are also denied adequate legal epresentation at their trials, race sometimes plays a major role in deciding who is sentenced to death and for what crimes. an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. It is true that keeping these committers of crime in jail can cost taxpayers millions of dollars it is also true that each capital punishment case costs at least $2 million. Wanting freedom when it is unattainable is the worst punishment that can be put on a person. It can drive people to fight inspiring and epic battles but it could also cause them to go insane.
EYE FOR AN EYE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND FREE
Life without parole means life without ever being able to walk outside the jail and live amongst free people. Much worse than dying is sitting in a jail cell and contemplating what was done. In his essay “The Penalty of Death”, Mencken states “All of us long for a swift and unexpected end” (Mencken 472). After death there is no lesson to be learned. If a crime is so heinous that death is even considered as a punishment, it would only make sense that the offender should not be allowed to take the easier punishment. “The need for revenge, for vengeance, is being curbed, the appetite is no longer there,” argues Robert Hirschorn, a nationally known Texas attorney and jury consultant. Revenge is a never-ending circle, it is train that never stops running, it is a screaming infant that can never be quieted, and it is a bloodthirsty tiger that can never be sated. While it is not wrong to want justice, it is wrong to seek revenge. This type of death sentence is one that is executed in order to make the families of those wronged feel better. The death penalty has nothing to do with justice, morals, what is right, nor what is wrong. Revenge is what is behind the death penalty. Revenge means: “to seek or take vengeance for oneself or another person” (). With this statement, it can be said that the people sentenced to the capital punishment (being that they are in fact people) should be spared on the grounds of morality. Is it ever moral? The plain, black-and-white truth is that: no, it is never moral to kill a person. An Eye for An Eye Leaves the Whole World Blind Is it right to kill a person? Is it sensible to teach a person not to kill by killing? What makes the prison guard who fires the shot or the doctor who inserts the lethal injection less of a murderer than the person whose life they just ended? What makes the judge and jury who just sentenced that person to death row any better than the man who convinced someone else to kill his wife? What constitutes killing a person? When is it moral?