Capital Punishment Brings Out the Worst in the Liberal Elite.
9th September 2011
James Taranto points out some inconvenient truth.
Perhaps the most striking statement at last night’s Republican presidential debate came not from Rick Perry or Mitt Romney but from the audience, which applauded the preface of one of moderator Brian Williams’s questions.
Capital punishment draws strong emotional reactions on both sides, doesn’t it? And whatever one thinks of the death penalty or the audience’s behavior last night, the harshness, self-righteousness and simple-mindedness of these responses belie the left’s self-image as intellectually sophisticated and tolerant of other viewpoints.
It seems to us that the crowd’s enthusiasm last night was less sanguinary than defiant. The applause and the responses to it reflect a generations-old mutual contempt between the liberal elite and the large majority of the population, which supports the death penalty.
September 9th, 2011 at 20:49
I find it odd and amusing that those who are so passionate about preserving life unborn have no qualms about killing once the child is out.
September 9th, 2011 at 21:46
Dennis, so you agree with me that it IS killing an unborn child?
Further… killing and unborn, innocent child is the SAME as executing a convicted murder?
September 10th, 2011 at 09:40
*sigh* Just because I re-state someone’s position doesn’t mean I agree with it, Whitehawk.
The Right To Life movement couches itself in lofty moral terms of “preserving life”. Yet the same folks who want to “preserve life” on one end of the spectrum are all for “not-preserving” it on the other end of the spectrum. Curious, don’t you think?
And killing is killing, be it young or old.
September 10th, 2011 at 13:56
That’s because the kid didn’t do anything to deserve killing, and the adult did. This is the essential moral distinction that the left, with it’s refusal to acknowledge moral distinctions, just can’t see.
September 10th, 2011 at 16:21
Well, whenever the right, with all its moral distinctions, offers to step up and help raise all these innocents which they want to save–but want someone else to raise and pay for–then they can talk. Otherwise, they’re just bloviating righteousness.
If selfishness is the highest virtue–which the libertarian/Randist/Conservative pundits endorse–then getting rid of an unwanted baby is perfectly acceptable and in fact laudible.
As it happens, I have no problem with killing, be it baby or grownup. There are too many folks in the world as it is. One less at the trough means a little more food for the rest of us.
September 10th, 2011 at 19:02
“And killing is killing, be it young or old.”
Thanks for being honest.
“As it happens, I have no problem with killing, be it baby or grownup. There are too many folks in the world as it is. One less at the trough means a little more food for the rest of us.”
So if who gets killed can be so arbitrarily determined, as long as there are less at the trough, what keeps us from designating liberals from Michigan as the next to be removed from the trough? Because some would say they are “unwanted.”
It gets pretty messy from here if this is the path we choose.
September 10th, 2011 at 20:50
Let me clarify: I have no problem with killing for a good reason.
Killing murderers is a good reason, because they have demonstrated their inability to control themselves in a civilized polity. Death is the only way to permanently remove them from our midst. It is not administered as a punishment, it is simply to protect the rest of us.
Abortion is also a good reason; unwanted pregnancy is an 18-year sentence to poverty and misery. Babies may be cute and loveable and precious, but in the end they are time- and money-suckers without peer. And we do the unborn no favors by bringing them into a household that neither wants nor values them.
As for reducing the number of mouths at the trough, we aren’t choosing “that path”, or there would be civil war–and who wants that? (Besides, we did that once already, as Texas has reason to remember; they lost, and it rankles still.)
September 10th, 2011 at 22:20
“Abortion is also a good reason; unwanted pregnancy is an 18-year sentence to poverty and misery. Babies may be cute and loveable and precious, but in the end they are time- and money-suckers without peer. And we do the unborn no favors by bringing them into a household that neither wants nor values them.”
This is the point I am pressing. Who gets to decide who is unwanted and who is a time or a money sucker and that that makes them deserve death. And what if the child’s parents decide when it is TWELVE that they no longer want it? Is it still ok to kill the child? Who has the moral equipment (or should I say arrogance) to decide what lives are not worth living?
The answer is no one.
Even if we could look into the future 60-70 years, asses the baby’s life and make a judgement on its value would we have the moral right then to grant life or pass a sentence of death. Much less do we have the moral right to pass a sentence of death without knowing anything of its potential.
The issue of abortion is at least as great an issue as slavery was. In one sense it is the same in that no one person or persons have the right to absolute sway over another person’s life.
September 10th, 2011 at 22:57
“Who gets to decide who is unwanted…” The woman who has to bear it, feed it, clean it, clothe it, and educate it. That’s who.
And no one decides that babies are time and money suckers, they simply are by their very nature. I know; I raised three of them. I don’t regret or begrudge any of them, but I know how much they each cost, in all the different ways that costs can be calculated.
After the child takes its first breath, it can be called human and is due all of the protections we extend to every human. Until then, it’s just an extension of the mothers body, and the decision is hers and hers alone.
September 11th, 2011 at 16:03
“Even if we could look into the future 60-70 years, asses the baby’s life and make a judgement on its value would we have the moral right then to grant life or pass a sentence of death.” We do that all the time, friend; it’s called “the death penalty”.
No, you can’t have it both ways. Either we have the moral right to decide life and death issues, or we do not. There’s no middle ground. If yes, then it is given to us to muddle through as best we can. If not, then executing criminals is outside our moral mandate. You cannot logically support the one while opposing the other.
September 12th, 2011 at 11:50
Have 3 myself and still not done paying but…
“After the child takes its first breath, it can be called human and is due all of the protections we extend to every human.”
So it is not human before it takes its first breath? The DNA of the child would say otherwise. It would be a completely separate and distinct individual from its mother.
“Until then, it’s just an extension of the mothers body, and the decision is hers and hers alone.”
Just an extension of the mother’s body? So if it is a boy, the mother has a penis and testicles? I think you better ask the mother about that one.
“No, you can’t have it both ways. Either we have the moral right to decide life and death issues, or we do not. There’s no middle ground. If yes, then it is given to us to muddle through as best we can. If not, then executing criminals is outside our moral mandate. You cannot logically support the one while opposing the other.”
So you can have it both ways based on location, in the womb or out of the womb yet I cannot have it both ways based on the harm a mature adult, convicted by his peers, can and has done to society?