To charge them or Jack Kevorkian with first-degree murder, a crime ironically punishable by the death penalty, is the equivalent of charging the individual responsible for flicking the switch of an electric chair with murder. Or the individual responsible for actually dropping the sodium cyanide pellets into the sulfuric acid to produce the hydrogen cyanide gas for our gas chambers. A westernized approach to death is inextricably associated with religion, and our desperate need to believe in an afterlife. Our religions place an unattainably high price on pious virtue, almost impossible sacrifice and unnatural humility. Despite the fundamental goodness of well-meaning people, few of us actually believe we are good enough or worthy enough to make it in an afterlife, and as such, deny looking at death in any meaningful way.
Denial is at the very root of our dysfunction.
From rest and sleep, which yet thy pictures be, Much pleasure, then from thee much more, must low And soonest our best men with thee do go, Rest of their bones and soul's delivery. We are struggling with the conflict in our culture, our legislation and our prayers. We are willing to vote for, sanction and implement execution procedures, but don't have the guts to watch our actions at work. We cannot even look at what we are responsible for creating - or in this case destroying. Surely if we as a nation are willing to put people to death, we should witness the consequences of our actions, and be bold enough and confident enough of our convictions to show and tell our children what we are capable of, and indeed carrying out.