Capital Punishment

Here is perhaps one of the most interesting chloropleth maps you will see.  First, a brief comment concerning the subtle use of color to disparage certain sentiments featured on a map; that is, red is typically associated with negative profiles or portfolios, but back to the task at hand.  No, the map is not graphically representing various levels of cultural diversity that can be encountered in certain nation-states.  Rather, it is depicting where and to what degree the death penalty is employed.  This is not some fit of nationalistic American pride, however, typically on various maps with varying degrees of demographics, be it economic factors, infrastructure, military spending, or consumption of fast food items, one typically expects the U.S.A. to be on one end of the spectrum, perhaps with Great Britain, Japan, Germany, Australia, and a few other developed countries, while seeing the opposite color, and by virtue opposite end of the spectrum, highlighted in places like Sub-Saharan Africa, Southeast Asia and other developing nations.  Not so on this one.  Just as if one were in Iran, North Korea, China, Thailand, Sudan and a number of other nations, one can also face the death penalty in the good ole’ U.S.A..  Some of the nations that retain the right to execute its convicted citizens do so from a fascist, dictatorial foundation to maintain control of the current political situation.  Others do so on the basis of a theocracy and trying to operate on the basis of a revealed text (see the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Quran for details), and yet still others (who, rather than having public beheadings or massacres allow men’s myocardium to be subjected to the heart-stopping effects of potassium chloride) do so because their foundation, or founding fathers, valued and dignified human life so highly and did not presume that they had a higher standard of governmental law than God himself than many of their self-proclaimed enlightened counterparts across the big pond (see U.S.A.).  Vigilante renegades and (pardon the Star Wars non-canon reference) rogue squadrons taking the law into their hands and enforcing the death penalty would in fact fall rightly condemned by Gandhi’s criticism that “an eye for an eye would leave the whole world blind.”  However, when a state enacts justice in the best interest of the common good under the authority of the divine, the chain is broken and the criticism falls vastly short.