a gift for those who oppose the DP

[G_j]

take heart, you are in good company.

(compiled from yesterday)

"We are a nation that worships the frontier tradition, and our heroes are those who champion justice through violent retaliation against injustice. It is not simple to adopt a credo that moral force has as much strength and virtue as the capacity to return a physical blow; or that to refrain from hitting back requires more will and bravery than the automatic reflexes of defense."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"It is not possible to be in favor of justice for some people and not be in favor of justice for all people."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Have we not come to such an impasse in the modern world that we must love our enemies - or else? The chain reaction of evil - hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars - must be broken, or else we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

If you succumb to the temptation of using violence in the struggle, unborn generations will be the recipients of a long and desolute night of bitterness, and your chief legacy to the future will be an endless reign of meaningless chaos.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"The greatest purveyor of violence on earth is my own government."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice . . . when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress."
Martin Luther King, Jr.

http://www.cuadp.org/news/LVSUN-20031212.htm

December 09, 2003

Martin Luther King III calls death penalty unjust in Vegas speech
By CHRISTINA ALMEIDA
ASSOCIATED PRESS

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Martin Luther King III called Tuesday for the end of the death penalty, describing it as archaic and unjust especially when applied to children.

In a speech to about 100 people gathered for a juvenile justice conference, King recalled how his father, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and grandmother were murdered.

"I should be on the front line for those advocating the death penalty," King said.

But the values instilled by his parents prevent him from believing the death penalty is just.

"We have always been consistently against the death penalty," he said.

..more..

[Viva_La_Revolution]

1. Thank you G_j

I knew I was in good company. :)

[FreedomAngel82]

2. Me too

:)

[H2O Man]

3. Gandhi:

"Democracy can only be saved through nonviolence, because democracy, so long as it is sustained by violence, cannot provide for or protect the weak. My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest. This can never happen, except through nonviolence. ...Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted nazism or fascism."

[Selatius]

12. Quite an apt description with the greed plaguing our federal government

That's been a problem with our Republic for quite some time now. In the last 50 years no one has really been able to put forth a solution that has managed to exorcise the corporate money out of politics. Untold millions, perhaps billions by now, have flowed into both Democratic and Republican coffers for those decades, and both parties have simply failed up until now to address the problem. Unless it is addressed soon, this Republic will collapse under the collective weight of its own greed...and it's own guilt. It won't be a quick death like Nazi Germany but, rather, a slow one like the Roman Empire.

[G_j]

15. that is one of the finest

critiques on Western democracy I have read.
right on!

[NewJeffCT]

4. thanks

excellent post.

[MuseRider]

5. Thank you.

I found a lot of very good company here but it is always good to know who the others are.

It has been a very sad day.

[dweller]

6. ...

:kick:


dp ( sadly, my initials btw ... as i stand staunchly against the DP)

[BrklynLiberal]

7. There are even families of murder victims who oppose the death penalty and

and fight it very vociferously and have websites that proclaim their opposition to it.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=5591814&mesg_id=5591814

[lady raven]

19. I am one of them

Sometimes I feel fortunate that the murderer of my loved one committed suicide because it relieved us, in a way, of the moral dilemma of wishing someone dead, yet knowing it wasn't right to kill him.

There were times in the immediate aftermath that I wish he'd lived so I could kill him myself, but once that wave of grief and rage subsided, I realized that I couldn't have supported the DP for even him.

I would have rather had him rot in prison for the rest of his life- After all, he blew his own head off because he couldn't bear the thought of going back there.

The vengeance factor of rotting in prison aside, my opposition to the death penalty is part of my personal morality, and even grief doesn't change that. Had he been tried, convicted, and condemned, I would have actively campaigned to have his sentence commuted to LWOP.

[BrklynLiberal]

22. I admire the courage of your convictions....

[lady raven]

23. Thank you

*blushing*

I've become so set in my beliefs as time has passed that it would be very difficult for me to suddenly depart from the values I've embraced.

It doesn't hurt that I was practically raised by my grandparents, two depression- era yellow dog Democrats who taught me that compassion was the first rule of morality.

[EFerrari]

8. Thanks, G_j

:thumbsup:

[Clara T]

9. Come Together People Time is Running Out

"I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a 'thing-oriented' society to a 'person-oriented' society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism are incapable of being conquered. ....

"A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. (MLK, April 4, 1967)

"It really boils down to this: that all life is interrelated. We are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied into a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. We are made to live together because of the interrelated structure of reality. Did you ever stop to think that you can't leave for your job in the morning without being dependent on most of the world? You get up in the morning and go to the bathroom and reach over for the sponge, and that's handed to you by a Pacific islander. You reach for a bar of soap, and that's given to you at the hands of a Frenchman. And then you go into the kitchen to drink your coffee for the morning, and that's poured into your cup by a South American. And maybe you want tea: that's poured into your cup by a Chinese. Or maybe you're desirous of having cocoa for breakfast, and that's poured into your cup by a West African. And then you reach over for your toast, and that's given to you at the hands of an English-speaking farmer, not to mention the baker. And before you finish eating breakfast in the morning, you've depended on more than half the world. This is the way our universe is structured, this is its interrelated quality. We aren't going to have peace on Earth until we recognize this basic fact of the interrelated structure of all reality."

http://www.oilempire.us/mlk.html

[G_j]

13. the giant triplets of racism, materialism and militarism !

bigger and badder than ever
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We can no longer afford to worship the god of hate or bow before the altar of retaliation. The oceans of history are made turbulent by the ever-rising tides of hate. History is cluttered with the wreckage of nations and individuals that pursued this self-defeating path of hate. As Arnold Toynbee says: "Love is the ultimate force that makes for the saving choice of life and good against the damning choice of death and evil. Therefore the first hope in our inventory must be the hope that love is going to have the last word."


We are now faced with the fact, my friends, that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there is such a thing as being too late. Procrastination is still the thief of time. Life often leaves us standing bare, naked, and dejected with a lost opportunity. The tide in the affairs of men does not remain at flood-it ebbs. We may cry out desperately for time to pause in her passage, but time is adamant to every plea and rushes on. Over the bleached bones and jumbled residues of numerous civilizations are written the pathetic words, "Too late." There is an invisible book of life that faithfully records our vigilance or our neglect. Omar Khayyam is right: "The moving finger writes, and having writ moves on."

MLK Jr. "Beyond Vietnam"

[IndyOp]

10. Solzhenitsyn...

Alexander Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago (1973)
It was granted to me to carry away from my prison years on my bent back, which nearly broke beneath its load, this essential experience: how a human being becomes evil and how good. In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments. It was only when I lay there on rotting prison straw that I sensed within myself the first stirrings of good. Gradually it was disclosed to me that the line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart, and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.

Where is the murderer in this quote? "In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments."

Where is the person who commits capital punishment? "In the intoxication of youthful successes I had felt myself to be infallible, and I was therefore cruel. In the surfeit of power I was a murderer and an oppressor. In my most evil moments I was convinced that I was doing good, and I was well supplied with systematic arguments."

My hunch is that those who commit capital punishment believe that their hears are the 'best' with only a small corner of evil and the murderer's heart is 'overwhelmed by evil' without even 'one small bridgehead of good'.

Me: I think the fact that the line between good an evil oscillates is the most important fact.

The line separating good and evil passes right through every human heart, it passes through all human hearts - and this is why evil is a chain reaction. We dampen the reaction in ourselves to dampen it in others, we fuel the reaction in ourselves and it is fueled in others.

[G_j]

14. redemption

is the birthright of the human heart, don't ya think?
:toast:

[WLKjr]

11. Thanks for those words

I have taken heat for a "silly" statement I made.


"Why do we kill people to show people killing people is wrong?"

[sleipnir]

16. What angers me even more is this "lethal injection" crap.

If you are going to kill someone, do it quickly and don't fuck around with a "painless" expensive medical procedure.

If we are going to have the death penalty in this country, I want to have all executions carried out by a single bullet to the head from the executioner. I guarantee you that after witnessing this execution, even the family members and the media will be shocked into ending the practice.

What we do is violent and evil, but we try to disguise it in the veil of medical science. It is disguising, truthless and cowardly. Americans are cowards when it comes to witnessing death and if they ever saw the true brutal nature of death, many would think twice about this punishment.

[ClayZ]

17. Thank You!

[nicknameless]

18. .

Thank you, G_j.

[sojourner]

20. thank-you fo rthis gift...this am i was feeling too down-hearted to

appreciate such a gift...but tonight i am feeling revived. thanks again!!

[Stockholm]

21. Amen n/t