As the world's finest democracy, we do not do guillotines. But there are other less bloody rituals of humiliation, designed to reassure the populace that order is restored, the Republic cleansed.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
Aesthetes have it all over intellectuals in one very important respect: You'll rarely catch us hustling anyone off to the nearest guillotine. We're too busy trying to make the world more beautiful. Our hands are stained with ink and paint, not blood.
I do say that I am in favor of the return of the guillotine and that is for the worst of the worst of the guilty.
I would like to see capital punishment suppressed in all democracies.
Everybody knows a guillotine choke, and most know how to get to one. But if you can create a different way to get to that choke, then you're going to surprise people. However, that will only happen one time, because once it gets used that one time, everyone will see that and start to train for it.
Patriotism has served, at different times, as widely different ends as a razor, which ought to be used in keeping your face clean and yet may be used to cut your own throat or that of an innocent person.
Execution as punishment is barbaric and unnecessary.
The pillory and stocks, the gibbet, and even the whipping-post, have seen many a noble victim, many a martyr. But I cannot think any save the most ignoble criminals ever sat in a ducking-stool.
There is a barbarism in the American soul, and we must protect some of it by law. To root it out is to endanger our lives on the one hand, and our liberty on the other.
With the first act of cruelty committed in the name of revolution, with the first murder, with the first purge and execution, we have lost the revolution.
Every successful revolution puts on in time the robes of the tyrant it has deposed.
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