"Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me: Thou must die."
John Donne -From "Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" (1623)
I don’t know very much about Tookie Williams or the crimes he was convicted of committing. I do know that a significant percentage of convictions for serious crimes are flawed and owe more to a lack of reasonable people than lack of reasonable doubt. Money buys acquittals, lack of it fosters capital punishment and the taint of racism is hard to deny.
If one or two executions out of ten are flawed, we’ve reached a level at which God himself would have spared Sodom. How many killings does it take to make one a murderer; how many to make us all murderers? Is it acceptable to forgive one’s self if one does nothing to interfere with the killing of a prisoner whether from mercy or the uncertainty of a flawed system? Are we forgiven for just following orders? I may have hated Williams If I knew him – who knows, but I hate myself for living in a country that killed him, propped up on a little stage, tied to a tree and in front of an audience thrilled to watch him die.
Every time I hear someone preaching about our national lack of morals being the result of not carving the Ten Commandments on our walls and every time I hear someone affirming the mandate of “Judeo-Christian values” I remember that the nations who share our satisfaction with the process of burning, poisoning, gassing, beheading or breaking the necks of the convicted tend not to be Christian but rather Communist, or Islamic. For all our Christian Supremacist bellicosity, we are a very violent nation with respect to our official actions.
Thou Shalt Not Kill is often softened by translating it as “Thou shalt not murder” as though the distinction were clear and unambiguous, but to me, the borderline is need. We did not have to kill Tookie Williams in order to save ourselves or to ensure the survival of our nation or any small part of it. We don’t kill to stop the killing; we kill because we feel good about it. We feel good about it because we are part of a culture that teaches that justice is the product of outrageand morality the offspring of anger. If we hate, if we are consumed with rage, then it’s OK to kill as a group, but not as an individual.
This is hard to understand in the context of gang violence. How big does the gang have to be before the killing becomes legal? If the gang is called – say Texas, is it then permissible? You know the answer.
This is one of those seasons when the Christian Right insists that we all pay homage to their majority. It’s a shame that there is no season when they pay homage to mercy.
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6 comments:
It's their Chinese menu form of Christianity - for death penalty and pre-emptive war and torture against abortion. For the government to keep people on feeding tubes against government from feeding people when they're not in a hospice. For gun rights against civil rights. For no taxes on millionaires and high taxes on low income people. Subsidies for corporations none for people. Proerty rights over personal rights. Makes sense if you're insane.
We refuse to recognize the results of doing away with such harsh punishments in other countreies as though what applies elsewhere cannot apply here. what we have that most of Europe does not have is a furious, ignorant and violent underclass, but whose fault is that? They are too big a poitical pawn for government to want to do anything about it.
I'm too big a cynic to think it's hypocrisy - I think it's on purpose. They sell religious chavinism without selling the religion and they do it because an angry population is easier to manipulate.
I can't help but notice that you never establish a solid premise and yet you keep pushing forward with your progressively weak thought stream as if you, at some point, had.
Of course you can help it - you just don't agree with the premise that capital punishment must be flawed by the inevitability of mistakes. How many examples would it take?
Obviously you simply disagree, but having no argument you mumble about "thought streams" and assume some haughty pose as a substitute.
The correct translation of the Hebrew is: "Thou shalt not murder."
Much of the "developed" world lawfully tortures women and kills homosexuals — should we follow their example?
Indeed the verb "ratsah" suggests an unlawful killing, but that's just passing the buck since laws change and morality changes as society changes. I suggest that we're changing toward less ruthlessness, more compassion, more respect for life and less for vengeance than we had when stealing a horse would get you strung up from a tree.
"Much of the "developed" world lawfully tortures women and kills homosexuals"
What do you mean by developed? Iran? I suggest there's little moral development in such places -- and where in anything I said would you infer that I'm suggesting more violence rather than less?
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