Reply #59: More Ritual Murder in America

[Clara T]

Blood Feast: The Celebration of Ritual Murder in America
by Mike Whitney

A society that is willing to intentionally kill one of its own people is a society that is willing to accept barbarism as it guiding principle. There’s no middle ground on capital punishment. When one offers their moral support to the practice, they are participating directly in the ritual murder of another human being.

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This model exposes the true origins of the state and suggests the parameters under which it may legitimately operate. And, although the state may be an expression of the public will, it is never more than a crude invention to assure one’s safety in a potentially threatening environment. Such a device has no authority beyond its limited powers to protect and provide for its people.

To allow the state the absolute power over life and death is to elevate its significance above those it is created to serve. Capital punishment is a form state worship; elevating the authority of government above the principles that legitimize its existence. It is the “cart before the horse”.

Whenever men are murdered by the state in the name of capital punishment, it is the state that is glorified; it is the state that is deified; it is the state that is victorious. And, it is the freedom of every individual that is sacrificed.

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Dec05/Whitney1203.htm

So Tookie Williams gets gassed, and he will, what then? Who next? More poverty. More disparity. More cruise missiles. More obese children. More smackdowns of children all in a row. More ignorance. More authoritarianism and punitive, dogmatic schooling. More fast food. More lead paint for the poor. Who's next in America's blood ritual? Who will score the next touchdown? Who will be fed to the lions of industrial commerce? Who will the next child of Falluja be to be blown to bits by the thirsty war machine? Tookie Williams must die, he must be sacrificed along with the uninsured. Along with the elderly and infirmed. As well as the inefficient. As well as those who cannot fill in the dots with their #2 pencils.
Tookie Williams must be sacrificed at the alter of corporal punishment machine which demands unthinking allegiance to its madness and incessant exploitation. Tookie Williams is a nobody. And so am I.