Another Murder Part II

Earlier today, I wrote about yesterday's killing of a man who most people in this country probably figure deserved to die regardless of whether they think we should have killed him or that his death will make a difference.  I didn't name him then, and won't now because it doesn't matter just who he is.  Death, ultimately, is death.

Killing is killing.

I meant to close with a passage lifted from John Donne's Meditation XVII (1624) but, frankly, I got distracted and forgot.  I thought about adding the passage as an update, but that didn't feel right.

So here, by themselves, because every death is personal and individual and different than every other, because the good and the bad alike die, because killing is killing despite the fact that killings and men and the facts and circumstances are never equivalent, and because really, the words are true.

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.