Commentary 22- Schroth on Daily News 2

From NJVoices, New Jersey Star-Ledger, 02/29/08

ON ONE THING, OBAMA IS WRONG
Posted by Raymond A. Schroth February 29, 2008 11:15AM

I thank the readers who wrote 22 responses to "DIE, YOU BASTARDS." As often happens, the discussion goes beyond one of the main points I was trying to make; but the role of dialogue in a democratic society -- and the Church -- should be to keep listening, wherever the discussion may go.

I wrote because I was appalled that the journalistic standards of the New York Daily News were even lower than I had thought. They rejoiced at the idea of killing someone.


They applauded the possible death sentences of a group of Muslims on trial for their role in 9/11 and expressed this blood lust in an editorial with language like, "burn in hell" and "Die, you bastards."

The blog discussion focused on the rightness or wrongness of the death penalty and the value of life in the womb.

I welcome that connection. Because, in the Cardinal Bernadin "seamless garment" analogy, we cannot separate life in the womb from life in the slums, in the emergency room, in the electric chair, on the battlefield, in a prison cell, in an Israel house hit by a rocket, or in the Palestinian or Iraqi home and neighborhood about to be destroyed by a "smart" missile from a drone.

Which brings me back to Barack Obama, about whom I have written enthusiastically here. In Tuesday's debate in Ohio, to demonstrate his ability to make tough decisions in foreign policy, he backed the Bush administration's decision recently to "take out" an Al Queda leader in Pakistan with a missile shot.

That is the warped mentality of Godfather movies -- that we solve our problems by "offing" the top bad guys on the other side. I saw no follow-up stories on the recent strike. But historically, whether by the United States or Israel, both practitioners of this kind of assassination, often the "bad guy" isn't home -- as happened early in the war when he wiped out part of a Baghdad neighborhood in a failed try at Saddam Hussein -- and we too often kill the wrong people. Or if we hit a limo with an enemy inside on a crowded Jerusalem street, we also "take out" a couple of nearby teenagers who thought they had a long time to live. Barack Obama should think more about that.

When this happens a lower-level spokesman expresses "regret." What does that mean? We don't regret doing it at all. "Sorry, madame, about your son or daughter who had the bad luck of being around where we were demonstrating our power."

Let me respond briefly to themes raised during the week.

I think every abortion is a tragedy, a moral failure, a wrong. But there is no evidence that Republican presidents, who have earned Catholic votes by saying they are pro-life, have diminished the number of abortions -- especially those attributed to the poverty of women with no husbands or support and who fear they cannot raise a child.

On the death penalty. The traditional justification for both the death penalty and just war is the right of self-defense. That is the only justification. Not that the killer is someone who, as a killer, "deserves to die." He remains a human being with a right to die only when God calls him.

With the current prison system, we no longer need to kill a person to protect ourselves. As a priest, I have seen a number of prison cells. A long life there is a hell of its own.

One writes: "What bothers me deeply . . . is how easily we seem to accept killing . . if it falls within (outside?) certain boundaries defining the act of taking a life."

Me too. In the basic Hollywood action film corpses pile up haphazzardly in car chases and shootings, as if the dead were no more than pins in a bowling alley. How many Americans know or care whether the Iraqi civilian dead are 35,000 or a million?

The tortured Al Queda "mastermind" confessed that he slit the throat of Daniel Pearl. But his interrogators didn't believe him for a moment, because they already knew that could not be true. Yet, we accept the testimony that will help us hang him.

Of course, as one correspondent says, Amerca has a superior legal system compared to other death penalty countries. But on this issue we are too much like them to allow us to feel morally superior. There's a violent itch deep in the American psyche that has hogtied the "better angels of our nature."

Original Referenced Link


My Commentary:

Posted by Zemack on 03/01/08 at 10:58AM
As a non-religious person, I base my moral argument in favor of the death penalty on the value, nature, and requirements of man's life, qua man, not "God's will". (See my commentary to Mr. Schroth's article "Die, You Bastards".)

However, for argument's sake, I want to view the issue from Mr. Schroth's perspective. He writes:

On the death penalty. The traditional justification for both the death penalty and just war is the right of self-defense. That is the only justification. Not that the killer is someone who, as a killer, "deserves to die." He remains a human being with a right to die only when God calls him.

The logic here is, God gave the killer life, and only God can take it away.

Well, isn't freedom also a gift from God? I am assuming here that Mr. Schroth agrees with the Declaration of Independence, which states that men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." Life and Liberty! What, then, do we make of the following statement by Mr. Schroth:

With the current prison system, we no longer need to kill a person to protect ourselves. As a priest, I have seen a number of prison cells. A long life there is a hell of its own.

If we accept, again for argument's sake, that the "Creator" is God, then what do we make of Mr. Schroth's apparent support for the incarceration of the killer (or of anyone convicted of a crime)? If not only man's Life but also his Liberty is given by God, then by the same logic by which he opposes the death penalty one would have to conclude that:

God gave the killer liberty, and only God can take it away.

Which means, release all of the prisoners, close down the prisons, and dismantle the criminal justice system.

That is not, of course, what Mr. Schroth advocates. But the inconsistency is glaring, in my view. If one believes that the perpetrator of a lesser crime "deserves" to lose his freedom, then the perpetrator of the ultimate crime, cold-blooded murder, does indeed "deserve to die".