I arranged the time this evening to talk with you about the recent murders in various parts of our country. What I want to address is our reaction to these murders.

It is true these crimes are horrible. It is also true that those who committed the murders should be arrested, tried and convicted.

What disturbs me more than the murders is our assumption of guilt until innocence is proven and our lust to give the death penalty to the convicted individuals.

I have often wondered why Americans lust for revenge. It is true that we have usually imposed the death penalty. It is also true our domestic barbarism was balanced by a sense of justice in foreign policy. Following World War II we helped to rebuild Germany and Japan, not gloat on their ruin.

However in recent years America lost its balance. In the seventies we gave up on jail and prison as places to rehabilitate offenders. We have built more prisons. We refuse to give up the death penalty.

When the Twin Towers were destroyed we sought revenge on two countries. We were not content to even the score, but wanted to wreck havoc in those countries that do not have the money and knowledge we have to recover from attacks.

With the aid of Global Positioning Systems and a deceitful concern for children, we sought to socially destroy sex offenders after they served their sentences. Our eagerness for revenge does us no good. What it does is reveal our lack of confidence, good will and faith in the future.

What has traditionally set America apart from China, India, the Middle East and Europe was our faith in the future, our good will, our confidence. It was our Yankee Ingenuity combined with the exuberance of a new nation that made us separate from the old worlds and their ancient fears, hatreds and rivalries.

Unfortunately, we have aged more than our 250 years. We are filled with our own fears, hatreds, rivalries. We are a nation of 250 going on 1000.

Rather than rehabilitate our criminals, punish our enemies only to even the score and roll up our sleeves to find out why we have so many perverts, we have taken the easy road. Like bitter elderly who missed out on their youth, we as a nation wish the worst for others whenever things go badly.

This must end.

In the media there has been a lot of talk about healing. But the healing process, as important as it is to those who are lonely, isolated, betrayed and grieving, has not carried over to the nation’s politics.

We as a nation do not grieve for children without fathers. We are not grieving for all the young men in jail. We have not sought to heal ourselves from our betrayal by the federal government beginning in September of 2001. We have not recognized our lust to punish as an evil that needs to be remedied.

We need to be healed, though we do not want to make the effort to heal ourselves. Fortunately, those few committed to prohibiting the death penalty and ending revenge are some ot the most committed people in America.

With their help, I am trying to persuade Congress to pass a law forbidding the death penalty. It is important to outlaw the death penalty because most of the people who receive it are poor. They could not afford the representation they needed to protect themselves from so serious a sentence.

Another reason to eradicate the death penalty is because too many people who receive it are not guilty.

Without the death penalty, a lot of steam will be taken out of our eagerness for revenge. But that does not heal our ill will and it does not solve the problem of what to do with rapists and murderers.

Justice must be served. We must protect ourselves from the most dangerous and unapologetic criminals. We must also save ourselves from revenge and the feelings of powerlessness that make us seek revenge.

We must seek a just punishment. A just punishment is given in confidence with as much good will as possible. A just punishment is a punishment that seeks to punish and rehabilitate at the same time.

America needs to regain its confidence, to punish and rehabilitate at the same time. America needs to believe in justice once again, to believe in the future once again.

I am pushing for a new punishment to replace the death penalty. I expect my proposal to be laughed at. However, my proposal challenges America to see how seriously it wants real justice.

The proposal is life imprisonment in solitary confinement. That seems punishment enough, however life imprisonment in a traditional setting does not rehabilitate a criminal.

My proposal calls for a setting that will allow a criminal to have a new perspective on the world and himself. Each cell of the lifetime prisoner in solitary confinement will have a view of nature.

Sunshine will stream into the cell. The windows will be openable in order for the prisoner to hear birds and crickets, to smell scents from the garden. He will be allowed to be alone outside for three hours a day.

Psychologists claim that under such conditions a violent man will have the opportunity to come to terms with himself. He has no opportunity in a standard prison.

It is my hope that as these prisoners live out their life in a beautiful setting, they become filled with peace and beauty that they never had or that they squandered. I hope they ask God, the victim and the family of the victim to forgive them, for now the criminal knows all the peace and beauty he deprived the victim and family of the victim of.

He knows something else too. He knows how much he longs for people. He has this beautiful garden and peaceful cell to sit in, but nobody to talk with. He hears the music of the birds and crickets, but has nobody to dance with. He smell luxurious scents from the garden, but does not smell the scent of perfume and never will.

He might be tortured by his beautiful punishment and go mad. He might be content to live out his days listening to birds. He might not benefit at all from a punishment given in good will, but wish he was dead.

Some men receiving this sentence will eventually be found not guilty then released. Their pain will be immense because they know how much they have missed.

Fortunately they will be healthy. There will be no nightmares from prison. They will be able to start their life again, attempting to bring out and experience the beauty they’ve been overwhelmed by every day.

At the very least, they will realize they received as just a punishment as is possible with an unjust conviction.

There is a possibility to be healed with punishments like this. Such punishments indicate a faith in justice. They show that American ingenuity is returning, that we are recovering the maturity we had for such a short time after World War II.

I ask you my fellow Americans to become strong again. Purge yourself of your weakness and revenge. Show the world we are a nation of great women and great men.

Copyright © 2025 by David Vaszko