Could Stephen Harper Bring Back the Death Penalty?

I've always thought that capital punishment was one of the things that prevented the United States from being a truly great country. Along with racism, religious bigotry, and the culture of guns and violence.

And this only prove my point. 

Because no nation that executes people, in that manner or any other, can truly call itself civilized. Or claim that its moral values are superior to those of other countries, where the state murders its citizens, like Iran or North Korea. 

And this is only too clear when you examine where this diseased desire to execute people in the U.S. comes from. And understand that it's a question of history and geography.

Like much of America’s cultural debates, this one has a regional background. Texas executes the most people, about one a month now. Virginia and Oklahoma kill the most per capita. The southern states, the Civil War slave states, are responsible for 85 percent of recent executions.

It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that slavery and the War Between the States has a lot to do with their acceptance of the death penalty. Look at West Virginia. It separated from Virginia to join the North during the war, and it has had no recent executions. It abolished the death penalty in 1965. Maryland, another slave state that stuck with the Union, just abolished the death penalty last year. 

There’s also a strong correlation between lynching and executions: Ten of the top 15 lynching states in our history are the top execution states today.

Where racism, violence, and the bloodthirsty commandments of the Old Testament came together in these abominable places of execution, mob violence and murder.



As for me, I could never support the death penalty, no matter how cruel the crime, or how painless the method of execution. For I firmly believe it makes us no better than murderers.

I'm aggressive about wanting a kinder, gentler, more civilized world. 

And how are you supposed to teach children to respect life, and that killing is evil, when the state can kill people legally?

So I'm proud that we don't execute people here. Because it's not a deterrent, it's just revenge and barbarism.

And I thought we had learned something from our own botched execution of Arthur Lucas, one of the two last prisoners hanged in Canada.



Who had his head practically torn off, when the executioner misjudged his weight. 


Bramwell Everitt knew something went wrong when his father came home from the Don Jail with his blue Salvation Army chaplain’s uniform splattered with blood.

“Lucas’ head was torn right off. It was hanging just by the sinews of the neck. There was blood all over the floor,” said Everitt in an interview with the Salvation Army’s internal newsletter.

But when I read the comments in Canadian newspapers about that botched execution in the U.S., I see that the beasts are still with us. Still howling for blood.

And in the darkness of Harperland, with a cruel and vengeful leader who caters to the lowest instincts of the mob, this is deeply disturbing.

Many people in Canada continue to voice support for the return of capital punishment, a new Angus Reid Public Opinion poll has found. 

In the online survey of a representative sample of 1,514 Canadian adults, three-in-five respondents (63%) support reinstating the death penalty for murder, which was eliminated in July 1976. Three-in-ten Canadians (30%) are opposed to this course of action.

Because what I see there is a wedge issue made to measure for a morally corrupt demagogue like Stephen Harper.



One that could give him a chance to divide the population, pleasure his rabid base, siphon voters away from opposition parties, especially the NDP. Pose as the victim-friendly crime buster who is tough on criminals, especially those who the mob FEELS should be killed. 

And all he needs is a sensational case, that gets massive media attention, and whips the mob into a frenzy.

Like for example, the horrifying case of Luka Magnotta ...



Whose trial is supposed to begin next fall.

And whose outcome could give Harper a chance to continue his reactionary crusade against "liberal judges" and the "elite media," and force a referendum on the issue and/or an early election. And of course, distract voters from his many crimes against Canada.

Could he do that? Ask yourself how desperate is he? And what does he have left besides his sagging reputation as a "real" economist, and his ghastly quasi-fascist crime agenda?

And to those who still don't think it could happen here, like just about all of my friends, I would just say this:

I've heard that one before eh? But I'm living in Harperland. So bad things CAN happen here.

If you don't understand how Americanised, how polarized, and how brutish many Canadians have become after eight years of Stephen Harper and his ghastly Con regime, you can't recognize the danger.

And you STILL don't know the monster...



So you can't imagine to what dark place he might take us. 

And the moral of this scary story? 

If we want to save the very soul of this country, and avoid becoming just another version of ugly America.

We can't work hard enough to defeat him.

And make Canada safe again...

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