Jose Tapia, along with a friend, carried out "the largest mass murder in Rhode Island history," according to Providence prosecutors in 1996. Tapia and his buddy intentionally set fire to the home of a family of Guatemalan immigrants. Six people (including four children) died in the flames. (Typically, the criminals were both evil and stupid: Tapia and his friend were trying to torch someone else's home but got confused.) Tapia received a sentence that will make him eligible for parole in 21 years. By contrast, Kyle Lindquist, a 36-year-old excavating contractor and father of three, was busted in 1992 on conspiracy charges of intent to possess and distribute 1000 kilos or more of marijuana. Lindquist got a sentence of 23 years with no possibility of parole. Apparently, conspiring to hustle some weed is worse than burning down a house full of children.Most, but not all, parents would choose not to have their children killed, whatever the alternative presented.
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Soldiers who object to taking part in a military occupation of a foreign country will face life in prison under measures due to be rubber-stamped in the House of Commons on Monday. The little-noticed Armed Forces Bill will have its third reading in the Commons on Monday and left-leaning MPs are alarmed that it will legitimise pre-emptive military strikes.
It will change the definition of desertion to include soldiers who go absent without leave and intend to refuse to take part in a "military occupation of a foreign country or territory".
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While debates on the capital child rape statutes have often been brief and without significant record, the accounts that do exist show a strong belief in the notion that rape is worse than death. In support of Georgia's attempt to apply the death penalty for child rape, State Representative Warren Massey said, "When a child is raped or sodomized, then their life is basically destroyed.... The punishment fits the crime."
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American public morality is now founded on the principle that nothing - loss of freedom, loss of privacy, loss of the future, etc, - is worse than death. Nothing is worth sacrificing your life to gain. The precise opposite of the New Hampshire state motto, "Live Free or Die".
The national motto now, unspoken but clearly present, is "Do whatever you have to to survive" - no matter how degrading or dehumanizing.
The single greatest killer of children in America is car wrecks. A trivial fact, only important when Britney doesn't strap her son into his car-seat as she flees the predatory lenses of the paparazzi. Strapping your child into a federally-approved car-seat is all you can do about that statistic, and morally it's enough.
The single greatest killer of children in America is car wrecks, and this is acceptable.
American soldiers are killing children in Iraq - with bombs from thousands of feet in the air, and with bullets to the back of the head at close range. This is also acceptable.
