(urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires

[Marc Aramini]

--- On Fri, 4/13/12, Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com> wrote:

> From: Lee Berman <severiansola at hotmail.com>
> Subject: (urth) This Week in Google Alerts: Home Fires
> To: urth at lists.urth.net
> Date: Friday, April 13, 2012, 8:08 AM
> 
> >Marc Aramini: An emasculated justice system can never
> truly cope 
> >with those who are still feral at heart, and nothing on
> earth can 
> >change them if they do not want to change.  It is
> only fear that 
> >will keep them behaving, and swift pain that they cannot
> endure.
>  
>  
> Where I disagree is that what you describe is a
> person-to-person
> conflict. Should our justice system try to duplicate this
> sort of
> conflict with its own citizens? Is government a "person"?
>  
> I suppose it is the crux of the difference between liberal
> and 
> conservative thinking about government, at least in the
> USA,
> that liberals think of government as taking a parental role
> while this
> is generally abhorrent to conservatives.
>  
> Perhaps it can be understood that there is a difference
> between
> a person making efforts to fend off a bully and a parent who
> is trying
> to help their own child, who is a bully. Is it an effective
> strategy
> for a loving parent to correct their own child's behavior
> with the
> threat or use of violence?
> 
> The evidence strongly suggests that parents who use violence
> to control
> their children gain short term results. But at the expense
> of complete
> failure over time. Beat your child and they will fear you.
> But they will
> run wild and rampant as soon as they lose their fear and are
> old enough 
> to do so.
>  
> If the government uses torture to put fear in the hearts of
> criminals, it
> may last for a while. But not for long. They will soon lose
> their fear
> after being released. If we go the route of creating torture
> chamber prisons
> we might as well, as you suggest, go the China/Iran route
> and just start
> executing criminals with impunity. Punishment and fear
> barely work with children
> and they certainly don't work with adults. Without attempts
> to rehabilitate 
> prisoners via creating a pro-social environment in
> prison,  we might as well 
> just kill them all.
>  

Good points Lee.  I am going to stop posting in this thread and get back to Wolfe short stories!  I do acknowledge the different perceptions between parental vs. "equal" treatment between adults who must take immediate responsibility for their own behavior.

If all inmates followed the golden rule, love one another, treat others as you want to be treated, then jail would not be a bad place at all - like the picture of hell where a sumptuous feast is laid out and the utensils are too long to reach the peoples' mouths, so everyone is miserable. Heaven was exactly the same, except the people there were feeding each other across the table with their long utensils.  But we know jail is misery because of the types of people that are incarcerated there.  Okay back to Wolfe!!