Yes. No. Yes. No. Maybe. Sometimes. Crap.

[jchrisobrien]

Call it the astrological influence of being a Libra cusp (concerned with balance), call it weighing both sides of the issues, or call it plain on wishy washy, but I have a profoundly hard time coming down on one side of the fence or the other for a lot of the big moral issues out there.  The Tookie Williams execution is the latest example of this.  If you don't know, just plug tookie williams in google and read about him yourself, you can make up your own mind as to whether he is repentant or not. 

I was raised Roman Catholic, so I was taught that killing was wrong, be it during war, murder, execution, or abortion.  Later I learned about exemptions during wartime, and taking a life while defending your self, and a thousand other shades of grey.  I've seen the hypocrisy of people who are pro-choice but anti-death penalty, and those who say life is sacred unless you are a murderer.  I hear the arguments on either side, and I sway to and for depending on the eloquence of the speaker or the precision of their logic.

It's more than frustrating, it's weak.  Your beliefs define your character, and if you're beliefs change with the wind, what does that say about you?  I believe that people are organic: they grow and change over time, and once your learn something that doesn't mean you are committed to that belief for the rest of your life.  Change should occur after you wrestle with an issue, hold up your beliefs to a spotlight, kick the tires and see how they hold. 
Buy the car because you like it, not because the salesman made you like it.

I am a vortex of thoughts and opinions.  Murder is the worst thing you can do to someone. Forgivness is a sign of civilization.  People have to take responsibility for their actions, and suffer the consequences if that applies.  People can change.  Some people never change.  You can come from a horrible background and neighborhood and better yourself.  You can come from a cultured, civilized background and be an amoral prick who justifies their vile behavior through philosophy or a thousand shades of grey.  People will say anything to save their life.  You can't force someone to change.

If it's inhumane to kill someone who has killed another, what do you do to them?  How should they pay for their crime?  How many years of your life should you sacrifice to pay for the years you took from another?  Can you ever really pay for that crime, and if you can't, why bother incarcerating them in the first place?  I am told there are plenty of studies that say that the death penalty is not a deterrent.  By that token, people are going to kill or rape or steal regardless of what you do.  What is our response to that? 

These kind of question quickly spiral out of the micro view and into the macro.  They become questions of culture, of society.  People wouldn't steal if they weren't poor.  Any society that grows has rules, and needs ways of punishing people who break those rules.  All kinds of words on all sides of the argument again.  Drowning in a sea of emotion and logic.

If I really buckle down and think about it, I can come up with answers that satify me.  It's good when things happen that make you question your beliefs, and even better if you can be consistant about them in the end. 

Comments

[sinspired.livejournal.com]

Regardless of the rights and responsibilities of society to provied a fair and just system of deterrent and punishment, and, indeed, a moral framework for crime, the fact remains that it was Mr. William's decision to kill 4 people in the commission of two robberys in a state and at a time when he knew or SHOULD have known that he could die for that crime. Despite his protestations of innocence, despite his reform, the fact is, he made a choice, and has paid for it.

There are three types of people arguing against this:
Those who, despite the evidence, are convinced he was railroaded.
Those who, despite his guilt, believe he was reformed.
Those who, despite his choices, believe we should not kill under any circumstances.

His responsibility was to be a person who did not commit these acts, or, at the very least, in our court system full of holes, a person who can create reasonable doubt that he committed these acts. He was neither.

The states do not rush to these executions. They give ample and repeated options to stay and/or stop an execution for those who have some legitimate means of it.

This is probably the problem. If there was no chance of weasling out of a punishment like this, it would act as a deterrent. But the founders made many tough choices (some wrong, ask any child of former slaves about the "3/5 compromise"), and this was one of them... That it is better that ten guilty men go free than one innocent man be punished. So our entire system is built around it.

So, I have some sympathy I can find those who maintain his innocence based on some sort of evidence... To the rest I say, he will reap his rewards later, be they good or bad.

[silas7.livejournal.com]

There is that, too.

The law says if you kill, you will be killed.
He killed.
He was killed.

The law itself was carried out. Whether the law is right or just is the question. Whether a man can redeem his actions is the question. Whether we can accept that is the question.

[sinspired.livejournal.com]

But laws, like so many of our social constructs, are an illusion. Laws do not keep you from doing anything. You keep yourself from doing it. I guess what I'm avoiding saying here is that the law itself cannot be right or wrong. The law didn't choose for him. He chose, both for himself, and for those he killed.

Redemption? Didn't he maintain his innocence? How can you be reedemed for having done something that you didn't do? He needed to accept his actions to redeem himself, and he did not. Perhaps his plea for clemency would have went better if he had begged forgiveness from the families of his victims.

And I guess that means I can accept it. But, then again, I accept ritual animal sacrifice as well, so, take it with a grain of what-you-will.

[silas7.livejournal.com]

A law can be just or unjust, right? It can be fair or unfair. Laws and rules are illusions, but in the end aren't they needed?

I agree that his lack of admission of guilt makes his redemption suspect.

[sinspired.livejournal.com]

Even if the law is unfair, he did not choose to respect what is fair - that he still had the choice not to subject himself to that punishment.