one walls, iron bars, conditioning and drugs
that take the reason prisoner, none of these have kept men in ... that
they would always try to escape as long as there was hope, hope of
something better on the outside._

* * * * *

As Mosby stepped aside, Bennington considered the reverse of that last
thought.

_Was there an answer here, to ask his fellow-countrymen to face the
immediately, perhaps the forever, impossible, that the only way to
keep a man from hoping and trying to get out, was to build a society
where they never got in?_

Then Bennington remembered Clarens.

_No, let's face facts, that till man is superman, there will always be
people like Clarens, people who will never be redeemed. People, who no
matter how carefully caged or watched, will ever be a potential
threat, if only to their keepers. By what weird accident they came to
life, well, list that among other facts as yet unknown, and consider
only the end result, that there were people whose only pleasure lay in
perpetual destruction._

_Automatically, such people themselves must be destroyed._

He was only vaguely aware of the flash-bulbs popping as he walked to
the chair behind Chief Scott's desk.

_That could be an answer, a new addition to the Decalogue, a new
Commandment specific to the judge giving sentence to a man like
Clarens, an injunction not to jail but to destroy. Simply phrased for
the judge, thou shalt not commit!_

He seated himself and blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the
glare.

_But, beginning with Thornberry, there would be many people who
wouldn't agree, who would never accept such an amendment to the Sacred
Ten, people who never seemed to see that phrase in their newspapers
every time a child was assaulted, "Police are questioning all known
sex offenders."_

Bennington looked thoughtfully around at the men ready to question
him.

He, too, was ready, ready to tell them....

_... Some people are a damn sight better off dead._

* * * * *

End of Project Gutenberg's Take the Reason Prisoner, by John Joseph McGuire

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