Edward Feser and Joseph Bessette have new book on capital punishment. Edward Feser links to a review of it: Briggs on By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed
My comment --
All societies have the obligation to deliver justice to their members, and also to non-members who are presently within the ambit or jurisdiction of the society. No society has such an obligation toward persons who are not members of the society *and* who are outside its ambit or jurisdiction.
To *refuse* to execute the murderer -- to *refuse* to deliver justice to her (*) victim(s) -- is to give the murderer to power to declare, by the act of the murder, that justice for the victim(s) is not the responsibility of the society. That is, it is to declare that murdered persons were not *really* members of our society and were not really within the ambit or jurisdiction of our society.
Thus, blanket opposition to capital punishment is profoundly immoral. A society which refuses, as a matter of "principle", ever to execute anyone whom justice demands be executed, is a society that is profoundly unjust and immoral; such a society will inevitably *create* broad swathes of injustice.
(*) in case it's not clear, I used the grammatically incorrect "she" to mock the idiots who do it to promote "gender inclusive" leftist bullshit.
Wednesday, July 12, 2017
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3 comments:
The people who don't care about the clear concept of "life for life" have trouble understanding the more general principle of "eye for eye" as well. That's why we lock people in cages for years for things that the Bible declares non-criminal, while we let abortionists roam free and refuse to execute convicted murderers.
Lots of people have begun saying that our justice system is crooked enough that the death penalty should be abolished to avoid killing an innocent man. The justice system is indeed crooked. We lock up lots of innocent men in cages. At least the death penalty forces us to take our injustice a little bit seriously. The problem of a crooked justice system means that we should fix our evidentiary laws to make them more biblical. It doesn't really have anything to do with the death penalty.
Indeed, our "justice system" is *very* corrupt; the lawyers (which includes the judges and the majority of legislators) want it that way.
Our "justice system" isn't *about* determining and dispensing justice; it is about giving lawyers the latitude to play the system for fun and (especially) profit.
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