Knowledge Helps Fight Ignorance

I assumed that, aside from a few glitches, this was going to be just an ordinary year, making my job as columnist pretty easy.

Boy, was I wrong. The year has been anything but ordinary.

And for me, Sept. 11 was perhaps the most challenging event of the year.

As I've said many times before, Sept. 11 changed our nation.

As a country, we understand that we can no longer display a facade of being indestructible.

We realize that the pride and confidence that built this nation into one of the most powerful in the world is now perhaps our greatest flaw.

Now we must figure out how to restore security in our nation without dissuading others from wanting to call the United States home.

And who can talk about politics without mentioning George W. Bush?

After winning one of the more bitterly contested elections in our nation's history, Bush has in my opinion risen above any skepticism concerning his legitimacy as president.

Sure, we can argue that backing away from the Kyoto protocol probably was not the best thing to do. And to this day, I still do not understand the whole pretzel-fainting fiasco.

But despite the criticisms, after the September attacks our nation needed a strong leader to unify and inspire us and Bush stepped up to the plate.

On the home front, N.C. politicians are still grappling with digging our economy out of a billion-dollar deficit.

Unfortunately, I don't see how that can happen without touching crucial services, including education. All we can do is make the necessary cuts now and hope that more will not have to follow.

So with the year winding down, I am not ashamed to admit that I was wrong. This year was eventful if perhaps not always in positive ways.

I have little regrets over the topics I tackled this year through my column.

Well except one. Before I go, I just have one more issue to clear up.

I am not 100 percent anti-death penalty. I'm just skeptical of how it has been used in our nation.

If anything is going to deter future criminal activity, I believe the prospect of death will do it more quickly than any other option.

But we must not forget one thing: The death penalty is irreversible. Once someone is executed, you cannot bring him or her back to life.

If we must continue to use this form of punishment, we need to ensure that the process is flawless.

So far, things don't look too good. One hundred death row inmates have been exonerated in recent years after DNA tests proved their innocence.

Thus, while I don't oppose the death penalty completely, I cannot fully support the practice given the number of mistakes discovered in recent years.

That being said, if I could close the year with one thought it would be this quote from Socrates:

"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."

Although we might not like everything we read, see or hear nowadays, knowing what is going on in the world is a powerful thing.

So if I could ask one favor of whoever reads this column, it'd be this: Don't allow yourself to be ignorant.

Columnist April Bethea can be reached at adbethea@email.unc.edu.