🚀 go-pugleaf

Mike Quigley writes:

> many of those gathered outside the prison
> to SUPPORT THE HANGING where [sic] CHRISTIAN FUNDAMENTALISTS and RIGHT TO
> LIFERS!

Many of those lighting little candles against the death penalty were also
Christian extremists.  Their headquarters was a local church.

So what is Quigley trying to prove?  It seems absurd to me as an Atheist to
see one Christian group arguing that another Christian group's beliefs and
value systems are absurd.  That's like the pot calling the kettle black;
they're both equally absurd.  If anything, the ``moderates'' are worse than
the ``fundamentalists'' -- at least the fundies have some perception that
they're in a minority and off the deep end.  The ``moderates'' are intolerant
both of the fundies and of the non-religious.

There's been a tremendous propaganda effort by the death penalty antis that
last night was proven to be bullshit.  Dodd's death was not the gruesome
horror that the antis portrayed.  No surprise; it's long been known that death
by hanging is instantaneous when done properly, but science is always ignored
when it interferes with ideology.

Here's another part of the propaganda to debunk: the wierd notion that ``no
other civilized country has the death penalty'' and that by having a death
penalty we are in the company of ``such nations as Iraq, South Africa, the
Soviet Union [never mind that there is no longer such a country] and China.''

This bit of propaganda presupposes that ``civilized country'' is defined as
``country in North America and Western Europe.''  This seems to be a bit
racist to me.  Then again, lefties have never flinched from racism when it has
been useful.  It is racist to label Korea and Japan ``not civilized'', yet
they both have a death penalty.  By hanging in both countries, if I'm not
mistaken.  Isn't it also racist to call Malaysia ``not civilized'', simply
because it takes its drug problem seriously enough to hang drug smugglers?

I'm also not too sure about the use of ``civilized'' to describe Europe.  Now
that the 45 years of enforced good behavior has come to an end, Europeans are
gleefully turning back to ``ethnic cleansing'', neo-Nazism, and religious
warfare throughout the continent.