Flibbertigibbet

Excused from Responsibility

I'm an Old Testament kind of God. I think, if you do something wrong, then you get smote. Smite! Smite! Smite!

Today's divine retribution is SO slack! People do dumbass things and instead of being smote with the stone of brim, people just get sent to rehab.

REHAB.

It's ridiculous that starlets can just prance into a dayspa and call it rehab. Unless they teach you how to wear panties, rehab just doesn't satisfy anything I hope to get out of these things.

And I am doubly offended by the notion that someone can go to rehab to cure his homophobia, anti-semitism, or simple idiocy. Smite! Smite! Smite!

Today, it struck me (not unlike being smote but only lightly) that this rash of people running to "rehabilitation" programs to excuse themselves from being the responsibility of their actions is the social manifestation of the liberal notion that prison is for rehabilitating criminals.

Rehabilitating criminals in prison is an absurd idea and undermines the point of them being smote in the first place. It is an injustice to even attempt it because you can't punish people while at the same time trying to teach them to integrate rational ideas about the rights of other human beings. They're passed the point of learning that and they should be punished. Smite! Smite! Smite!

You have to have a pretty low opinion of humanity, I think, to suggest rehabilitation for criminals. I mean, you'd have to start off with the notion that there's no real fundamental difference between law-abiding citizens and the ones who do the raping, murdering, and pillaging.

Let's get this straight: there is a world of difference between the person who goes about trying to make their way in the world as a CRIMINAL and a person who actually earns their living through work and rational thought. I, for one, won't entertain suggestions to the contrary. This idea of rehabilitating criminals and excusing them from being punished is predicated on this idiotic and savage view of human beings -- as if it's too much to ask that a person behave themselves.

So, first we have this effort to make prison a nice place to be to set these otherwise kind, gentle souls back on the path to righteousness.

THEN, we get people who do a crime and then the run right into a rehab program or they promise to go into a rehab program and in exchange the court makes their sentence lighter. The punishment aspect is all but removed! It's just rehab!

And in the social scene, we have someone being impolite or saying things that other people find offensive and they run into rehab so that people won't think they're a bad person.

Here's my proposed solution: SMITE! SMITE! SMITE!

For social problems, don't talk to rude, offensive people. Don't be their friend. Don't date them. Don't buy things from them. Just shun them completely.

For criminal problems, punish them as appropriate to their crime. What is appropriate is a question for another post and the entire career of legal philosophers.

I'm bringing this up because I just clicked over to CNN and saw this:

CNN: Spokesman: Gore's son getting treatment

LOS ANGELES, California (CNN) -- Former Vice President Al Gore's son is getting treatment after his arrest on suspicion of drug possession, according to a Gore spokesman.

Al Gore III, 24, was arrested early Wednesday in Los Angeles after being stopped for speeding, according to a sheriff's department spokesman.

Police found four types of prescription drugs in the car, but Gore did not have a prescription for any of them, according to Orange County Sheriff's Department spokesman Jim Amormino. He also said a small amount of marijuana was found in the car.

Gore faces three felony drug possession charges and one misdemeanor possession charge, a sheriff's spokesman said.

Obviously, he still faces the criminal charges, but you can bet that his immediate move to rehab is partially motivated by a desire to alleviate his sentence some.

"In a 2004 plea deal, Gore was sentenced to a substance abuse program."

I mean, it worked before, why not try it again?

From a philosophical perspective, this blurring the line between criminal and non-criminal behavior has the very distinct odor of subjectivism, the idea that there's no such thing as good or bad, really, it's all just a matter of perspective.

I have a solution for those people: SMITE! SMITE! SMITE!

P.S. I do actually know how to conjugate the verb "to smite" but "smitten" isn't as fun and doesn't communicate the collateral devastation that I think should be involved.