In the midst of the week's events it is easy to fall prey to feelings of revenge. An eye for an eye.
On Facebook, that bastion of social discourse, the calls for summary execution are there along with various calls for torture, suspension of rights, et cetera.
What separates this part of the world from the rest is the rule of law.
A foreign national, arrested on our soil has the rights that we have. The exact same rights. There are no distinctions for where they were born or what their race or religion.
The exceptions is for enemy combatants in a time of declared war.
When something we find repulsive occurs, our worst, basest instincts come to the fore.
Fear, I think, being the prevalent emotion.
We recoil when a thief in Saudi Arabia is punished by having his hands lopped off. Refer to them as "barbarians" when they use beheading as their form of capital punishment.
So what makes us better? Stronger? Morally superior?
Not very much at the moment.
We are humans; ruled by emotions. Lately we have been trying to meld our emotions and our ability to reason. To improve the species.
And then a couple of these fallible, frightened humans does something so twisted that we cannot comprehend. We try very hard to pigeonhole them. Provide easily digestible reasons for what they have done.
How can you explain a mind so different than our own sensibilities? You don't. You dismiss them as, "twisted," "mad," "insane," and on & on.
It is now, more than ever that we need to adhere to our principals of the nations founding. That the law applies to all, equally.
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