Some kudos from a fellow columnist:
Especially brilliant piece today. You are a visionary and an overarchingly original rational thinker who goes beyond labels to arrive at great truths nearly no one else has the courage to articulate. and that’s a good thing. I mean that. I hope this piece gets circulated widely.
While, unsurprisingly, a number of regular readers disagree. SM writes:
I contend the death penalty serves at least two purposes:
1. It removes a dangerous element from society (never to be paroled)
2. It brings closure to the bereaved (justice has been served). Without this closure the bereaved become lifelong living victims.
When the State or a corrupt judiciary supplants God’s higher moral authority then forced abortions, mass starvations and gas chambers occur. Our Constitution and its implementation by Government will only be just and upright when the people practice Christian morality and virtuosity.
Both purposes are irrelevant. As for the first point, there are approximately 16,000 murders per year in the United States. 70 of those murderers are executed annually. Removing less than half of one percent is neither a deterrent nor a safeguard. With regards to the second, the bereaved are ALREADY lifelong victims. Even punishing the guilty with fifty years of the most sadistic torture will not bring back their beloved nor will it prove much of an emotional palliative.
Washington has already supplanted God’s moral authority, at least in its own eyes. Therefore, every opportunity to strip it of the means of visiting the usual devastation on the populace must be pursued.
Meanwhile, WF manages to argue my own case for me in an email entitled “WRONG”:
No, death penalty proponents in the Christian camp will go to the command given to Noah in Genesis, when Noah was the only civilization there was. God felt that it was important enough to give that command before there was any government to enforce it. The defining factor (for people like me) is innocence or guilt, not legality, not statistics, not anything else. Schiavo (and the unborn) was innocent of any crime, Ted Bundy (for one example) was guilty. The innocent should be protected, the guilty slain.
Hmmmm, so the command existed prior to the government… reasonable minds should therefore logically conclude that the death penalty exists outside the apparatus of government and may very well not be a legitimate power of government at all.