Capital punishment is a brutal, antiquated concept that must be abolished in the name of civilized society. A humane culture cannot abide the organized extermination of human beings in the name of justice. In the United States, dozens of people are put to death every year like stray animals, only perhaps in less humane ways. The methods of capital punishment vary greatly, but none are publicly accepted as humane. Society's support for the death penalty is waning, but there is still enough support in the United States to keep it legal in many states. The death penalty exercises only the most primal instincts to kill and extract revenge in an organized fashion. This is why the death penalty must be abolished entirely: to allow society to function in a civilized manner in which every person has the right to live. Capital punishment is hypocritical, selection is arbitrary and biased, and the practice itself is cruel and inhumane. By allowing the organized extermination of living human beings the government is telling the public that they have the right to extinguish anyone they think is a murderer. The very idea of killing another for killing is inherently hypocritical. By enforcing capital punishment, the government is telling the public that it is okay to kill as long as you have more power than the person you are killing. This is of course a very cut-and-dried interpretation, but it is what the message boils down to. The problem with such a hypocritical notion as an eye for eye, is its fundamental inconsistency. In order to practice; what they preach, the courts would have to find a way to steal from thieves, betray traitors, and rape rapists. This is obviously ludicrous. Besides the central hypocrisies and inconsistencies of the punishment itself, the selection of those subjected to it is also unfair and prejudiced. Race, social status, economic status, level of education, and location of crime are key in the selection of those to be ...
