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Because that’s the thing about Scooby-Doo: The bad guys in every episode aren’t monsters, they’re liars.

I can’t imagine how scandalized those critics who were relieved to have something that was mild enough to not excite their kids would’ve been if they’d stopped for a second and realized what was actually going on. The very first rule of Scooby-Doo, the single premise that sits at the heart of their adventures, is that the world is full of grown-ups who lie to kids, and that it’s up to those kids to figure out what those lies are and call them on it, even if there are other adults who believe those lies with every fiber of their being. And the way that you win isn’t through supernatural powers, or even through fighting. The way that you win is by doing the most dangerous thing that any person being lied to by someone in power can do: You think.

Now picture the times of Vespasian, and this is what you will see: men marrying, raising children, getting sick, dying, going to war, partying, engaging in business, farming, flattering, bragging, suspecting, scheming, hoping for others to die, complaining about hard times, making love (or wanting to), making money (or wanting to), coveting high office and seeking to be crowned king; but where is all this teeming life now? Leap ahead to the times of Trajan, and what will you find? The same, of course, and it too dead and gone. For that matter, examine the history of any people or time. See how hard they strove and how soon they vanished back into the elements from which they were born. But most of all, consider those you personally have known who, ignoring the good that lay at their feet, ran after some vain thing and never found the happiness that was within their reach all the time. A man’s interest in an object should be no greater than its intrinsic worth. Remember this and you will not become distracted by trivialities or discouraged if you never get around to some of life’s details.

My wife, my Mary, goes to sleep the way you would close the door of a closet. So many times I have watched her with envy. Her lovely body squirms a moment as though she fitted herself into a cocoon. She sighs once and at the end of it her eyes close and her lips, untroubled, fall into that wise and remote smile of the ancient Greek gods. She smiles all night in her sleep, her breath purrs in her throat, not a snore, a kitten’s purr.

Capital punishment is the most premeditated of murders, to which no criminal’s deed, however calculated, can be compared. For there to be an equivalency, the death penalty would have to punish a criminal who had warned his victim of the date on which he would inflict a horrible death on him and who, from that moment onward, had confined him at his mercy for months. Such a monster is not to be encountered in private life.