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Monday, December 13, 2004Barbarism MultipliedThe shocking thing about the latest in the Peterson case is not the verdict, which was widely if not universally expected. What disturbs, rather, is the apparent jubilation that came with the announcement of the verdict. What are we? Romans at the Coliseum? The TurkeyBlog is, of course, on the record as opposing capital punishment for reasons based on belief about Christian redemption and a libertarian distrust for giving the state such power over its citizens. But... If we are to have the death penalty, and indeed we do, a certain measure of sobriety is called for in its application. Let us consider what the death penalty means in a society shaped by a Judeo-Christian ethic with a government whose philosophical origins are indisputably Lockean. From the religious perspective, we have the warnings about "judge not lest ye be judged" and the bit about casting the first stone. These are not merely calls to play nice; they are founded in the understanding that we are all bathed in sin and all ultimately lost without Christ's redemption. Denying another's opportunity for redemption by the abridgment of his life is, in this context, pretty heavy stuff. Stuff that Scott Peterson apparently did. Do we want to join the party? As for the governmental question, the reasoning is thus: Man has come from a state of nature into a state of civilization in which we are protected from violence from others in abjuring it ourselves. Within the state of civilization, that is, we give up the right to exercise physical and other powers we might if unconstrained by society. If you blow this, you're in a state of nature where society can hunt you down like an animal inasmuch as you threaten it in the manner of an animal - no guilt, no remorse, just action. We stretch this out by use of trials to among other things decide if a person really fits this category - the death penalty phase really is, in a sense, an effort to determine whether a person continues to exist as a person in the eyes of the state or if he or she is now an animal, too devoid of humanity, too soulless, to be allowed to exist in our midst. The religious and social contract questions are in some senses separated, but they are largely intertwined because, history shows, it takes an ethos pretty close to Judeo-Christianity to wind up thinking about things in such a way that you create a contract society. So, what sayeth society today? It declares through the agency of a jury, people's representatives, that the continued existence of Scott Peterson is an abomination unto the land that must be stopped. If that is the verdict, it is not a cause for rejoicing, but only sadness that this is what has become of a human being. Those who cheer may be less violent, but they are no less animal. Let's hope that as the jury did its work and as subsequent courts do theirs there was and is a greater comprehension of the enormousness of what is at stake lest Scott Peterson's fate prove as great an enormity as his crime. 
posted by gbarto at 7:33 PM |
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