It is not just We the People here in America in this age that tend to stick our head in the sand or walk straight ahead, eyes cast down with blinders on. This is just the way humans have always been and always will be. We like being comfortable, and once we get into a groove, most of us dont want it disturbed.
We are creatures of tradition and habit who respect precedent, and thus are disinclined to question the customs we have inherited from our ancestors, or imagine that these customs may have a shelf life.
Again, we dont want our boat rocked.
But while human nature does not change, circumstances do, which means that customs or traditions do in fact have a shelf life. We can ignore these changes in our circumstances and press on with the old comfortable traditions, but only until said circumstances force us to face them, and abandon or renovate those old customs and perhaps establish new ones altogether, which will then be taken for granted by subsequent generations.
Take education for example. Our ancestors developed and implemented ideas of universal and compulsory education, which generations ago became of the custom of the land, and which we today take for granted.
Yet clearly something is wrong in our educational establishment.
One such assumption about education that I think has produced truly dreadful fruit over the generations is that all 14 to 18 year olds are best served by going to high school. This is manifestly not true and the proof has been in the pudding for a long time now. Indeed American high school is a soul crushing experience and colossal waste of youth for all too many young people.
What about how we deter and punish criminal behaviour? The tradition that has come down to us is we levy fines, imprison, or execute.
But what about the tried and true methods of corporal punishment, exile, and penal colonies? These ideals will elicit a chuckle or gasp today but that they are not our custom is not an argument to not consider them. Neither is the constitutional argument that prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Laws can be changed as well as attitudes, and sometimes they need to be.
As to cruelty, I would argue that having ones finger nails pulled out, or being flayed alive with a pressure washer will always be considered cruel. I am not however certain being locked in a cage for twenty years is not.
A caning followed by being released might be less cruel than being locked up for a year. Likewise freedom and a fresh start in an accepting foreign land in exile might be much preferred to years in prison.
And maybe the semi-freedom in a penal colony for some offenders that must be removed from the general population might be much preferred and more economical to long term confinement in human chicken barns.
In all three cases the tax payer is saved a great deal of money and the Prison Industrial Complex is taken down a notch.
M.C. Atkins
Look Away... 