Troll - You ask me what's wrong with vengeance? Everything. But I understand how you feel about it. I have a friend called "Johnny Death" (nickname) who is into vengeance, I think more than he is into anything else at all except music. His solution to every social problem involves massive retaliation and vengeance against someone. He's considerably to the right of George Wallace and/or Jesse Helms. This has not prevented me from having a truly great friendship with him for many years, as we have a mutual respect, common interests, and we genuinely like each other. We just totally disagree about vengeance, that's all...and about politics usually...I'm a lefty/socialist and he can't find a right wing party extreme enough for his views anywhere.

I regard vengeance as a natural human reaction, based on fear. When one realizes that all of humanity is of one spirit, then vengeance becomes self-defeating. It only perpetuates the cycle of hatred and begets further vengeance (Ireland, the Middle East, etc.).

To quote Gandhi, "an eye for an eye, and the whole world goes blind".

I believe in protecting the public against violent and out-of-control people, by putting them where they cannot harm others...not by putting them cheek-by-jowl with other dangerous offenders in horrific prisons, however, where they soon learn to rape, murder, terrorize, and brutalize each other (if they expect to survive in that peer group), and make the whole situation even worse. I do not believe in punishing them in any way...just in placing them where they cannot harm...or be harmed...and rehabilitating them if possible. If not, keep them apart from society, and treat them with the mercy any human deserves.

If you disapprove of violence or cruelty, then how can you justify practicing it?

These are just rhetorical questions...I do not mean to put anyone down for their views, but simply to raise these questions, as they are worth considering.

At the end of the day, we all try do what we think is right, and that's just my version of what I think would be best.