{"id":198,"date":"2011-09-27T00:01:00","date_gmt":"2011-09-27T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2011\/09\/more-of-our-proud-death-penalty-heritage\/"},"modified":"2014-12-31T11:53:56","modified_gmt":"2014-12-31T18:53:56","slug":"more-of-our-proud-death-penalty-heritage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/markshea\/2011\/09\/more-of-our-proud-death-penalty-heritage.html","title":{"rendered":"More of Our Proud Death Penalty Heritage"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/22067139@N05\/5251556905\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Our youngest death penalty victim.<\/a>  And <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/22067139@N05\/2419978246\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">another tale to break your heart<\/a>.  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, \u201cWe are willing to say yes to the disgusting executions of these people so that we <i>get <\/i>to kill Lawrence Brewer, Ted Bundy, and Timothy McVeigh. We *love* killing those guys (hence the cheers for Rick \u201cMaximum Death\u201d Perry) and are willing to kill a few victims like this as human sacrifices to that love. Oh sure, we don\u2019t have insanely racist verdicts like these so much today.  But we still have <a href=\"http:\/\/newsone.com\/nation\/newsonestaff1\/man-with-down-syndrome-beat-by-police\/\" class=\" decorated-link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">police<\/a>, 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\u2019s the statistical deal that\u2019s being cut: better the innocent should perish than that the guilty survive.<\/p>\n<p>The Church\u2019s 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 \u201cjustice\u201d and you will not have to explain why a Christian is longing for a chance to kill somebody.<\/p>\n<div class=\"blogger-post-footer\"><\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>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 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":92,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-198","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>More of Our Proud Death Penalty Heritage<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Our youngest death penalty victim. And another tale to break your heart. Disgraceful and disgusting stories. 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