Thoughts and the Devolving Monologue on Chemical Castration

Given that Jindal apparently did sign the bill referred to in the post below, I decided to do a little research on the matter. And by a little, I mean "Wikipedia."

So Wiki says a couple of things that leave me wondering as to the point here.

The first is that this penalty already exists in five other states, including California and Florida. The second is that people that are treated with high doses of the relevant chemical still experience sexual arousal and fantasies. This means that they need to be dosed with hella lot of the stuff, and there are potentially severe side effects.

Ok. Bad. Very bad and uncomfortably so.

On the theoretical level, it seems a pretty just punishment for the commission of sex offenses against minors (which, I think, is all that the Jindal measure targets). For me, the question is how badly and irreversibly you screw someone up when you've made a mistake. It's the same issue that presents itself with capital punishment. Life for a life seems to make sense, but only if the system works perfectly. Which our current justice system most certainly does not. If you want to learn just how flawed it is, go to law school and be amazed.

All that said, the same argument could be used when speaking about incarceration and it's not as if there are tons of advocates for scrapping the penitentiary system. It's just that someone at some point decided that inflicting jail - the deprivation of liberty, freedom, and time - was less objectionable than any physical punitive measure. I can't say that I disagree with this, personally. But the entire concept does seem to reflect a general societal queasiness rather than any inherent consensus about what is just. No one regains the time lost in jail, or necessarily rids themselves of the lasting physical and mental effects resulting from the experience. What's done is done and the consequences are relatively acceptable. I think it might have to with the directness of the damage. One is straight up - you kill, you are killed. The other is - you killed, we will put you in a place where we're safe and things may happen to you but it's not our responsibility.

This is the first time I've thought seriously about the issue, so please forgive the sophomoric rambling. It will coalesce into a point within several days.

Anyway: many of us were raised to admire Patrick Henry's declaration of "Give me liberty or give me death!"

Of course, it was said in an entirely different context and - viewed in the light of American history- certainly a much more positive one. But the current interpretation implicates freedom of decision and freedom from both physical and mental restraint (usually). The right to life, liberty and happiness calculus changes when someone violates societal norms, sure. But leave that aside for a second.

Ancestors of this nation equated liberty with life and the loss of that liberty to a fate equal to or worse than death.

Interesting how things have changed and what caused them to do so....

Late now. G'night.

-A