The Case for Firing Squads

Short: because it makes the medical people who violated their oath feel better.

From Daisaku Ikeda: The Courage of Nonviolence [0]

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Violence vs. Nonviolence: The Struggle of the Twenty-first Century

I am also reminded of a moving episode that Leo Tolstoy related in a letter written two months before his death. The letter, dated September 7, 1910, was addressed to Mahatma Gandhi.

The episode went something like this. There was a test on the subject of religion in a certain girls' school in Moscow. A bishop had come to the school and was quizzing the girls one by one about the Ten Commandments. When he came to the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," the bishop asked: "Does God forbid us to kill under all circumstances?"

The girls each answered as they had been taught. "No," they said, "not under all circumstances. We may kill in war or as legal punishment."

"Yes, that's right! You've answered correctly!" said the bishop.

Then one of the girls, her face flushed with indignation, spoke up: "Killing is wrong under all circumstances!"

The bishop was flustered and marshaled all his rhetorical skills to convince the girl that there were exceptions to the commandment against killing, but to no avail.

"No," she declared. "Killing is a sin under all circumstances. It says so in the Old Testament. Moreover, Jesus not only forbade killing but taught that we must do no harm to our neighbors."

In the face of truth in the girl's assertion, the bishop's authority and verbal skills were of no use whatsoever. In the end, he could only fall silent. The young girl, Tolstoy wrote with evident satisfaction, had proven victorious.

Let us amplify the words of that young girl--"It is wrong to kill, even in war!" And let us broadcast them to the world!

The twentieth century was a century of war, a century in which hundreds of millions of people died violent deaths. Have we learned anything from those horrific tragedies? In the new era of the twenty-first century, humanity must be guided by the overriding principle that killing is never acceptable or justified--under any circumstance. Unless we realize this, unless we widely promote and deeply implant the understanding that violence can never be used to advocate one's beliefs, we will have learned nothing from the bitter lessons of the twentieth century.

The real struggle of the twenty-first century will not be between civilizations, nor between religions. It will be between violence and nonviolence. It will be between barbarity and civilization in the truest sense of the word.

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[0]https://www.daisakuikeda.org/sub/resources/works/essays/peac...