There’s been a lot of comment about the morality of executing Kenneth Smith via nitrogen hypoxia; basically, a mask is put over the inmate’s face and he breaths in nitrogen…which is a harmless gas in itself (our atmosphere is mostly nitrogen) but without the oxygen you die. And so Kenneth Smith died. The comments revolve around execution via suffocation (which is what it works out to) and the apparent suffering Smith went through before the end. This sort of this is first off irritating in that an execution isn’t supposed to be a spa day; the purpose of the operation is to kill someone. But there’s more to it than that.
As you guys know, for the longest time I’ve been opposed to the death penalty. This is based upon two things:
- The moral desire to allow even the worst among us the chance to repent as well as concerns for what sort of people we become when we execute.
- A mistrust of government having the power to decide that a citizen should die.
But I have of late been rethinking this subject. I’ve mentioned this before but it really comes down to understanding that our ancestors were not insensate brutes in their chosen methods of punishment and that the veneer of civilization is thin. Razor thin.
Human beings are not of nature civilized. We come into this world having to learn everything we’re ever going to be. We can’t walk or talk or even feed ourselves when we come out. It takes years of parental care just to ensure we survive and have the barest skills to live from day to day. To make us into people who won’t knock our neighbor on the head and take his stuff is an even lengthier process and if it isn’t imparted starting very early it becomes increasingly difficult to impart it later. By the time a kid is, say, 12 if morality has not been transmitted then it is increasingly unlikely that it will be transmitted. It can only past that point be learned by coercion. Coercion by other people or by circumstances.
It doesn’t take centuries to lose civilization. In fact, it can be done in just one generation. All you have to do is not teach it and, bang, it is gone when the kids of today become the adults of 20 years later. That we haven’t entirely lost civilization is because of the un-even application of anti-civilization teaching and the fact that parents still retain some vestigial authority. But you can see that it is very threadbare when packs of well-fed people systemically loot stores while mobs of ignoramuses shout pro-Hamas slogans because their tribal elders tell them to.
And it all comes down to the death of penalty. We don’t punish. Heck, not only do we not punish, we actively reward wrongdoing. And this from highest to lowest…from the Hollywood star who writes a best-seller about what a crappy person they were to the bum on the street being given welfare when he could work. Whether or not you’ll be punished for any particular wrong act is entirely capricious. There is not a 1 for 1 thing here – do bad, get whacked. It is do bad and if the prosecutor wants to make a case and you don’t have a good lawyer and if your victim’s family actually cares and so on and on. Smith eventually got his, but it was 36 years later. Think about that.
The man was paid $1,000.00 to kill Elizabeth Sennett. The guy who hired him (Sennett’s husband) gave Smith money to buy a gun for the job, but Smith chose to blow that money on drugs and so he did the deed by beating and stabbing Sennett to death. And even the $1,000.00 is only about one wild weekend for a druggie. That’s the price of a life in Smith’s estimation; a weekend party. And think about the method – beating and stabbing someone to death is not the easiest thing in the world.
There’s a reason the ancient’s used swords. The gladius of Rome weighed more than two pounds and was more than two feet long. They had to make it that big and heavy because stabbing or slicing someone to death isn’t easy…so, they needed a hefty, large blade to get the job done. If you tried that even with a combat knife of modern times then unless you get lucky and stab right into the heart, what you’re probably going to do is hurt rather than kill. Maybe hurt badly, but not kill. Same thing with beating someone to death – unless you get the lucky blow on the head, you’re probably going to be at it for a while.
So, what Smith did was quite horrific. It took a lot of stabbing and beating to kill Sennett. And the horrific nature of the crime is why he was given the death penalty. Had he just shot her in the back of the head, probably wouldn’t have. But that’s as if the method of being killed matters. It doesn’t. What matters is being killed. Smith took a life. He took every last thing Sennett had and was going to have. She had kids and grandkids. She had a life and she was 45 years old at the time. She could very easily still be alive today, spending a few last years in the loving embrace of her family. Smith took that from her. For a grand. And he took it in the most brutal way possible. Think about her for a second: a suburban housewife who never harmed anyone in her life is suddenly, violently set upon by men inside her home. What a horror! What must have gone through her mind? So, that is why Smith died – because of the extreme nastiness of what he did.
Those who were or are trying to gin up sympathy for Smith are simply beneath contempt. Those who call executing him – by whatever method – barbaric 36 years after he took everything from Sennett are just disgusting in their immorality. I really can’t express how low and vile such people appear in my eyes. To even talk about Smith without prefacing it with what he did – and explaining the really horrible nature of what he did – is just wrong. It is to act like Smith is some sort of victim. He isn’t. Smith was 22 years old. A full grown man. He knew what he was doing was wrong by simple fact that he tried to prevent his own execution: and if he knew he didn’t want to die, then he knew that Sennett didn’t want to die. He had not the least mitigating circumstance in his action – his only hope once he did the deed was repentance and a plea for God’s mercy.
But, he’s dead, now; so, we’re square, right? No, not really.
First off there is the capricious nature of it all – plenty of people who have done vastly worse than Smith aren’t on death row. Dahmer murdered 17 in a manner that makes Smith look innocent and he got life imprisonment (though his murder in prison still seems to me to be a sort of backdoor execution). Smith gets death for 1 murder, Dahmer gets life for 17: does this make any sense at all? And do keep in mind that Dahmer should have been caught long before he got to 17 – but regular folks and law enforcement just let it all slide because, well, there’s no penalty these days. Be bizarre. Have the smell of rotting corpses emanating from your apartment: we won’t do anything about it! Who are we to judge, right?
You see, it isn’t just about the murders and other worst crimes. It is the general sense that nobody is responsible and that punishment is never really warranted. Certainly not for small stuff. But the small stuff rather leads to or hides the big stuff, doesn’t it? In Dahmer’s case it might have been rather small when a naked man fled from his apartment and the police treated it as such and turned the poor man back over to Dahmer. Who then killed and ate him. You’d think that the naked guy running down the street would raise an eyebrow or two but in our modern world without penalty…nothing doing.
The morass of social collapse we are enduring today is the result of 60 years of inflicting no penalty, or inflicting penalty entirely at random where one poor sucker gets it in the head while the other guy gets a book deal. To stop social collapse it will be necessary to reimpose penalty. And quite uniformly. Maybe we still shouldn’t execute people, but those who murder and rape need to be very severely punished in a uniform manner. Whipping and rock breaking seems best to me if we aren’t to kill…make it 100 lashes for each rape and each murder in addition to imprisoning them. It is fair. It is just. And it is a penalty. And there must be a penalty.
And I very much do mean for all transgressions. Each theft, each vandalism, each public disorder, each broken oath…each crime must have a set, severe punishment inflicted without fail upon those who are convicted. It must become painful and humiliating to break the rules. The ancients knew this; they weren’t trying to be cruel when they broke a man at the wheel…they were trying to be just and instructive. Just in making the transgressor pay and instructive in telling everyone else that rule breaking has a high price.
Because rule breaking must have a high price. Remember that if you really break God’s rules – if you really, knowingly, choose to reject God’s mercy then you will be cast into hell. God doesn’t want that to happen to you. God will give you every opportunity to not choose that. But if its what you choose then that is what you chose. Same thing, on a lower level, for human society. Each of us, unless actually insane (a very tiny percentage at any given time) has a choice to make. We must decide what we are going to do and we must live with the consequences of our choice. If a person chooses to steal, rape and rob well then that person had every opportunity to choose otherwise but went ahead. Now, caught and convicted, must come the price. And, yes, a high price.
For goodness sake, do people really think about what a rape or murder entails? Do any of us want that to happen? And what in heck makes a man think he has some right to do such things? No, no, no and no. He wanted to do evil and did it and if we catch him when he’d better feel the punishment on his back. He must on his body feel every ounce of pain and humiliation he inflicted and then some. The price has to be paid. So, too, with all other transgressions, great and small. Naturally, the lesser offense gets the lesser punishment…but each offense must be punished and punishment for each type of offense must be the same for everyone convicted of it. No more plea deals: did you do it? If so, then punishment is X. The end.
So it must be, if we want to restore and retain civilization. It might seem a paradox but only because these days we have decreed that violence is inherently barbaric. It isn’t. Barbarism can be and often is violent, but it is also indolent. The barbarian has to steal because he will not work. The civilized man keeps violence at his side to ensure the indolent and violent barbarian is kept at bay. It is just the way human society works and it will be thus until Christ returns. Deal with it.
And start acting like men and women who care.
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