peripathetic

Capital Punishment - right or wrong?
I'm asking here about the use of language in that question. Capital Punishment as a phrase is a paradox, because it is a method of killing. Punishment means making people realise their wrongs through privation of some kind, so that in their future lives they will feel genuinely disinclined to do whatever it was they were punished for. Therefore death can't be punishment.

A death sentence, with a wait of years before death, isn't even punishment because those condemned to death are imprisoned and don't have freedom in its widest sense. The experience might make them feel afraid, knowing they're going to die unnaturally, but that's infliction of suffering with no aim. It's an eye for an eye rather than rehabilitative punishment.

And to those people who say "If you imprisoned people for the rest of their natural lives, they'd rightly have no freedom anyway, and they'd have to be paid for, so why not just kill them?" I say: state-sponsored killing is still killing, and we all think no human being has the right to violently kill another. Ergo, capital punishment is a big mistake.

Turning to more pleasant things, Matchstick Men (trailers here) is something I'm looking forward to. Also looking forward to seeing The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (trailer here).