More of Our Proud Death Penalty Heritage

Our youngest death penalty victim. And another tale to break your heart. Disgraceful and disgusting stories. But this is what a nation signs on for when it wants to maximize the death penalty and cheer for the maximum number of people put to death. I spoke the other day of Christian *zeal* for the death penalty. Arguments for the death penalty seem to me, in the end, to always boil down to saying, “We are willing to say yes to the disgusting executions of these people so that we get to kill Lawrence Brewer, Ted Bundy, and Timothy McVeigh. We *love* killing those guys (hence the cheers for Rick “Maximum Death” Perry) and are willing to kill a few victims like this as human sacrifices to that love. Oh sure, we don’t have insanely racist verdicts like these so much today. But we still have police, judges and juries who make bad calls for whatever reason (and governors without a single qualm of conscience who brag about their kill counts). That’s the statistical deal that’s being cut: better the innocent should perish than that the guilty survive.

The Church’s basic argument is, if you try minimalize killing unless absolutely necessary, you will not have to make up rationalizations for why killing George Stinney, Jr. was “justice” and you will not have to explain why a Christian is longing for a chance to kill somebody.