Stream of thought in a moment of lucidity.

I wrote this in a reply on a forum a few minutes ago. I am pasting it here because I think it might be worthwhile to think about. Tonight I watched as one more seemingly unrelated nightmare played out across the advertising forum we call "the News". I watched as our criminal rehabilitation system was effectively remarketed and sold to all of us as a punitive retribution program. Living proof that a person can change and be redeemed was rendered a trophy for vengeance. Narrow the arguments and ideologies to the core choices made today. What benefit to our society was achieved by taking the life of a man today? was it significantly more valuable than what we could have gained from keeping him in prison for the natural remainder of his life? What effects can we expect from this event. good or bad? How did we as a society benefit from this? How has this event damaged us? I may be missing something here, but I don't see positive return here. This event is a microcosm of the cultural rot we are experiencing. To quote an interviewee on national primetrime television, "I hope they execute him because Jesus said thou shalt not kill." WTF? Do you see the insanity that is not only accepted, but promoted with this blurb? let me attempt to paraphrase... here is that statement in reality- we should kill, because someone told us our God is against killing. This crap was immediately followed up with "expert" validation. A man, purported to know hebrew law, referenced the bible, a non hebrew text, to show why this was a proper sentiment. Analogy: a professor of French impressionism teaching quantum physics with a car manual. Yet no one questioned his lesson. Sorry if I seem to be rambling, but there is a point in here somewhere. Everything is not relative. (i.e. damaging a defenseless person for the purpose of extracting information is torture. That is precisely what the word means.) Obfuscation is only a perversion of truth. To spin with language is lying. We have all forgotten this somehow. We all know right from wrong. What we do with that information is important. Ask yourself right now are you promoting the greater good or supporting the lesser evil. It really is that simple. We just forgot that. I forgot that. Now I have to remember to do that, all the time.