PAGE TITLE: http://www.nationalreview.com/
ARTICLE TITLE: On the
Death Penalty
DATE: Wednesday,
September 28, 2011
AUTHOR: Jonah
Goldberg
AUTHOR
INFORMATION: Jonah Jacob Goldberg (born
March 21, 1969) is an American conservative syndicated columnist and author.
Jonah Goldberg, a contributing editor to The American Magazine, was the
founding editor and is currently editor-at-large of National Review Online. He
is a Pulitzer-nominated columnist for The Los Angeles Times. Goldberg is
currently a visiting fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. His column is
carried by the Chicago Tribune, New York Post, Dallas Morning News, and scores
of other papers. His first book, Liberal Fascism, was a #1 New York Times and
Amazon bestseller and was selected as the #1 history book of 2008 by Amazon
readers. He is a member of USA Today's Board of Contributors and previously
served as a columnist for the Times of London, Brill’s Content, and the
American Enterprise. His writings have appeared in the Washington Post, Wall
Street Journal, Christian Science Monitor, Commentary, The New Yorker, Food and
Wine, and numerous other publications. He is currently a Fox News Contributor.
He lives in Washington, D.C., with his wife, Jessica Gavora, and their
daughter.
Jonah Goldberg
|
I’m still
getting a lot negative feedback on my
death penalty column from last week. That’s hardly surprising (even though
it wasn’t a particularly popular column here, traffic-wise). What is a bit more
surprising is how many people seem to have not understood my point. I’ve reread
the column a bunch of times and I still don’t see what’s so hard to grasp.
The gist of
my argument is that this emphasis on “uncertainty” isn’t nearly as persuasive
as those making it seem to think it is. Death penalty opponents seem fixated on
the idea that one wrongful execution demolishes the case for the entire death
penalty. Anti-death penalty activists insisted the doubt about Troy Davis cast
doubt on the entire system and, by extension, the execution of anybody. Note: I
don’t think Davis was innocent. But even if he was innocent I don’t buy that
one man’s innocence blows up the case for the death penalty. From my column:
But he proves no such thing. At best, his case proves that you can’t be certain about Davis. You most certainly can be certain about other murderers. If the horrible happens and we learn that Davis really was not guilty, that will be a heart-wrenching revelation. It will cast a negative light on the death penalty, on the Georgia criminal-justice system, and on America.But you know what it won’t do? It won’t render Lawrence Russell Brewer one iota less guilty or less deserving of the death penalty. Opponents of capital punishment are extremely selective about the cases they make into public crusades. Strategically, that’s smart; you don’t want to lead your argument with “unsympathetic persons.” But logically, it’s problematic. There is no transitive property that renders one heinous murderer less deserving of punishment simply because some other person was exonerated of murder.Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people including 19 children. He admitted it. How does doubt in Troy Davis’s case make McVeigh less deserving of death?
Whether you
agree with it or not, I think my argument is pretty clear. And yet, I keep
getting email from people who simply restate the argument I’m objecting to ONLY
MUCH LOUDER. “You can’t be certain!” “You can never be certain!” etc.
I think
that’s all nonsense. You may not be able to be certain in some cases, but in
other cases it’s quite easy to be certain. For starters, let’s have a death
penalty in those cases.
It’s a
strange thing. I think that opponents of the death penalty have
convinced themselves that this uncertainty argument is a silver bullet. If
we can just prove one case was wrong, we can through magic or the transitive
property prove them all unjust. That was the point of one worst movies of the
last decade, The Life of David Gale, the makers of which owe me two hours worth
of The Life of Jonah Goldberg.
Now I don’t
want anyone — anyone — to ever be wrongly executed. One misapplied death
penalty is one too many. At which point opponents of the death penalty say “Aha.
Then you most oppose the death penalty for everyone.”
Really?
Must I?
If
anything, I’m even more opposed to police accidentally shooting bystanders or
shop clerks mistaken for robbers. Well we know that happens. And yet, I’m still
in favor of cops carrying guns. I’m against — absolutely against — all sorts of
accidental deaths that are the direct result of government messing something
up. I’m against Air Traffic Controller errors that lead to deaths, but I’m
still in favor of flying and air traffic controllers. It is a scandal, given
how much we spend on the death penalty and all the endless appeals, for any
mistake to go as far as it has. But why is it that the death penalty is the
only government function that must be abolished after a single error?
Ultimately,
I’ve decided that one’s attitude to the death penalty is largely faith-based.
At the most basic level the decision to support or oppose capital punishment
comes from a core first principle, an assertion of fundamental belief. That’s
why, I think, opponents invest so much passion in these second-tier
arguments. They know shouting “You just don’t get it!” doesn’t work. So
they put that energy into technical, procedural or abstract issues that don’t
get to the heart of the question.
And that’s
why I find nearly all of the arguments against the death penalty insufficient
or unpersuasive. “World opinion” — by which most people seem to mean the UK,
France and parts of Italy — is against us. Okay, who cares? I mean that
seriously. Why should it matter? These are our laws, not theirs. And
when I hear a European opponent of capital punishment declare we’re no
different than China or Saudi Arabia for keeping capital punishment on the
books that strikes me as more of an indictment of European reasoning skills
than of American justice. We don’t execute people for their political or
religious beliefs. We execute them for first degree murder. It’s a big
difference.
This
blogger, in a very lengthy rejoinder to my column, asserts that I support
the death penalty for purposes of “revenge” — since I don’t think deterrent
alone is a justification. Maybe this is just semantics, but what he calls
“revenge” I call justice.
(Also, as a
side note, I find it interesting how so many secular people use fundamentally
religious arguments without admitting it. I understand that under Christianity
vengeance is the Lord’s. Well, whose is it in a secular society?).
The best —
or at least most honorable — argument against capital punishment actually
proves my point. Many prolifers tell me that they are against the death penalty
because they are prolife from beginning to end. That’s great. But that’s an
assertion of faith.
From my
more secular vantage point, the arguments over abortion and capital punishment
don’t track each other very closely. There’s no trial with an abortion
and the life ended has committed no crime. The nature and extent of the state’s
involvement in an execution and a terminated pregnancy are profoundly
different. I should note that the Catholic Church — at least to my
understanding — has never seen abortion and capital punishment as anything like
the same thing.
I’m not
saying the seamless garment adherents are wrong to oppose the death penalty.
I’m saying that the basis for their opposition is grounded in something you
either believe or you don’t.
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