Goodness and Greatness

All men are different, if only in their DNA which is apt to the circumstance as it reinforces the concept hugely. 

No two or other number of men are the same.

There are all kinds of men. Some are short, some tall, some thin, some fat, but these are physiological aspects.

Many feeble men are mental giants. Go and talk to the genius in the wheelchair.

The impact that some men make is not related to their physiology, but more so to their outlook and their mentality. 

How many fat men do you know that you like? It seems to me that most fat men are likeable because it's not for how they look, it's for what they are.

"The difference between men is energy. A strong will, a settled purpose, an invincible determination, can accomplish almost anything and in that lies the distinction between great men and little men".  

I quote something I read somewhere, yet something so true that we all look towards that energy, that something, which makes the difference between good and great, some thing so sadly lacking in our society, it seems, that we have few great men in T&T

Where do we find a great man in T&T today? Where is the next Anthony Pantin?

It seems that all the great men have disappeared  so we now have to settle for the mediocre men, which does not make for a safe society. Today's leaders in politics and in sociology have failed and continue to fail us miserably. The mediocre men.

The inescapable conclusion is that it is the duty of those of us who are good to aspire to greatness, yet most of us have so far failed miserably to do so.

Death As Punishment

The moral melee over the death penalty is well justified as the issue remains controversial well into 2008.

Many want it implemented while others consider it an aberration and want to have it abandoned.

The "death penalty as a deterrent" advocates posit that the threat of death as a consequence of the deed will reduce the incidence of murder by changing perpetrator's minds: kill and you will die. Simple. No problem. 

The revenge-driven feel that if one has the temerity to kill somebody who they care about or outright love, the now hateful person must die for that act. Revenge, plain and simple, and believe it or not, from what I have read and heard, it actually makes them feel good. They get "closure", whatever that means. As if they could forget the horrible or otherwise facts of the deed by eliminating the perpetrator. Kill him (or her) and it's gone.

The abolitionists, with their more civilized approach view the death penalty as rooted in more primitive times, tribe times, when there was little alternative but to kill those who killed.

"An eye for an eye" is quoted in the Bible as law in the Old Testament, and that surely translates into a life for a life. In the Muslim faith, the thief has his hand chopped off as a guarantee that he will not become a repeat offender, and in the more extreme interpretations the death sentence is liberally applied. Ask Salman Rushdie.

It seems that the death penalty is rooted more in religion than in law. Yet the revised Christian philosophy advocates forgiveness and reconciliation in the New Testament, while Islamic extremists today increasingly push death as a penalty for wrongs perceived or otherwise. They quote the Qur'an as justification.

Who, if anyone, is right?

The US, that great disbeliever in the extremist Muslim philosophy, executes people, and thus has common ground with it's enemy. It is a country that is increasingly in the minority of those who do. Just next door in Mexico, , there is no death penalty. 137 countries have abolished it, yet there are 24 countries which enforce it, quite a few of those in the Caribbean, including Trinidad & Tobago.

Albert Schweitzer was reputed to have proposed the philosophy of the sanctity of all life.

Tolkein, a veteran of the most brutal war man has ever witnessed had this to say on the subject through his mouthpiece Gandalf: "Many that live deserve death. And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement".

Man with his modern technology can create and destroy many things; yet he cannot create life, and so should not destroy it.