I saw a report on the news this weekend about how Nebraska's legislature has voted to abolish the death penalty in that state. There were clips of some speeches and an interview with one guy about why he was pushing this issue.
It was mentioned several times that capital punishment is of questionable morality and that this was a reason for many a vote to get rid of it.
We hear this all the time from death penalty opponents, and I have no problems with their making such an argument. Likewise, I don't have a problem with individuals saying that deficit reduction, specific tax policies, minimum wage increases, and so forth are items that should be pursued/not pursued because "it's the right thing to do" (as the President is often saying). I might not agree with these arguments, but I don't think they are invalid simply because they invoke morality. I daresay most other people do the same.
Unless it's abortion. When abortion is the subject, all of a sudden, we have to check morality at the door. How many times have we heard a politician justify child murder by saying "I can't impose my morals on other people"?
Yet this same politician will be more than willing to defend a certain perspective on entitlement spending or military action based entirely on what they themselves perceive as moral. There is no concern whatsoever on imposing one's view of what the moral wage rate, tax rate, or drone strike etc happens to be on the rest of the population.
Why is abortion different? Not only is it different, it is sacrosanct among the American left.
I guess the morality of child murder just isn't all that important.
1 comment:
Votes against the death penalty are often about money since capital punishment's appeal process is expensive in the US and averages ten years and that average detracts from deterrence. Yet still the US Supreme Court compared studies and found in 1976 after four years of researching such studies...that executions stop some premeditated not passion murders. A global map based on world murder rates disputes the last catechism's confidence in prison only solutions. The only large area containing poor people in great number that is safest from murder and safest of all world areas is Asia which has executions generally. The worst world murder rate is Latin America which has few operating death penalties and inequality of incomes. China with a billion poor people has a murder rate 16 times lower than the Catholic continent...and three times lower than Europe which is mostly middle class and thus less needful of deterrence on paper. If China were enforcing only murder laws within Catholic Phillipines hypothetically, it might well save roughly 7000 humans per year. This is my view is the most tragic turn in papal thinking beginning with Cardinal Bernadin but put in place by the previous two Popes who had a late life pacifism inclination. Pope Francis too is onboard but didn't cause this change at the papal level and catechism level.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_intentional_homicide_rate
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