A rant for my birthday

The murder in FL of the couple who have adopted the special needs kids. http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/07/12/florida.couple.slain/index.html
John at Balloon Juice has an interesting post http://www.balloon-juice.com/?p=23991 about the death penalty and it's possible application in this case. I'm not disagreeing with him that this kind of crime makes one think of the death penalty, I'm just tired of being that kind of person.

The death penalty is not about justice, it's about retribution. And it's not that we don't all have it in all of us to want retribution, it should be about all of us being better humans. Or at least trying. I think we need to question why do some countries have many, many fewer murders per capita, and no death penalty? What is it about americans which makes at least some of us think that this works?
I like my country but we have some fucked up customs and practices that really screw up a lot of lives. The death penalty, crappy health care, the rich get richer and the rest screwed (that one probably is universal, just not as well practiced), great ideals for our government and laws, many of which are ignored in the execution, wars on everything (brute force sometimes works on pickle jars, not as well on most everything else), our general public political discourse seems to consist of lying long and hard enough to make people believe the lies. Is it like this everywhere or just some of our quaint traits?