The implication that distress from public executions will engender the better angels of our nature is not well-founded. Audiences at public executions, past an

The implication that distress from public executions will engender the better angels of our nature is not well-founded. Audiences at public executions, past and present, cheer. Photos of public lynchings from the Jim Crow South show throngs of smiling faces. Thousands of people traveled across state lines to witness the spectacle of the last legal public hanging in Kentucky. The crowd at the last public beheading in France (in 1939) exhibited such "hysterical behavior" that public executions were immediately banned. Regular public violence is not rejected by human nature, it is normalized.