Posted on 01/18/2010 3:55:31 PM PST by DogByte6RER
Anti-death penalty movement wooing conservatives
LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Roy Brown seems like a rarity — a conservative who's against the death penalty.
But to Brown, a state senator and the 2008 Republican nominee for governor of Montana, the philosophy aligns perfectly with conservative ideology. He's one of the more high-profile figures reaching out to other social and fiscal conservatives, hoping to create a bipartisan movement against capital punishment.
"I believe that life is precious from the womb to a natural death," Brown said.
The Roman Catholic church has long been an organized and vocal critic of the death penalty, but the new effort is trying to bring in other conservatives shaped by both evangelical faiths and political ideology.
Now, liberals and conservatives — longtime opponents on contentious social issues from abortion to capital punishment — are working together in a time of strong political polarization.
The effort took center stage at the National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty's annual conference over the weekend in Louisville. Brown was joined by a conservative minister, the Rev. Matt Randles of Headwaters Coventant Church in Helena, Mont., and Heather Hass, a former National Republican Congressional Committee staffer. They walked fellow activists through how to make their case to others about the anti-death penalty movement.
Shari Silberstein, executive director of Equal Justice USA, a Brooklyn, N.Y.-based anti-death penalty organization, said working with conservatives is about common sense and common ground.
"It's not really an ideological question," Silberstein said.
The effort has been backed by Richard Viguerie, a fundraiser and activist considered the father of the modern conservative movement. Viguerie, in a July 2009 essay in Sojourners magazine, wrote that executions are supposed to take the life of the guilty —
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The pro-life movement should focus its support to defending INNOCENT life.
Serial killers, child-rapist murderers and mass murdering terrorists deserve a quick ticket ride to hell via the gas chamber/gallows/IV.
Yeah, the old Ted Bundy = a baby argument.
The cold, hard fact is that as much as you might well believe the statement, not everyone agrees ~ particularly the killers.
Turns out the thesis is one of those readily negated with a single example ~ and on a daily basis we have thousands of examples of killers murdering innocent people.
When it comes to these murderers, there's a type among their numbers who will kill again even if incarcerated. It might be a guard, a fellow prisoner, a visitor ~ someone. They will strike out and kill without provocation at the first opportunity.
What happens when we imprison such people is that we decide to have someone else killed and worst of all someone we don't even know ~ a total stranger.
It is undoubtedly a higher moral value to execute these mad-dog killers, who we know personally (through our courts) than to turn them loose on others.
So we shouldn't bomb the heck out of Al Queda in Pakistan and Afganistan in other words?
“Some people just need killin.”
If the Romans did not have the death penalty, Jesus could never have died for our sins.
And in so doing, they contradict the teaching of the Church, which approves of the death penalty if necessary to protect society from the depredations of the murderer. They justify this opposition to the death penalty by postulating some unknown methods that exist in the modern criminal justice system that somehow work to protect society. But I've yet to see anywhere that those methods are spelled ou, or even vaguely identified.
Sounds like Montana needs to find itself another GOP nominee for Governor.
The argument goes: what if it were you who was falsely accused/convicted? The death penalty is irreversible.
The counter argument is that I am not likely to be in such a position because I don’t associate with, nor place myself in such proximity to such places and characters where the issue of me being falsely accused is an issue. If I am accused of killing someone it will be because I actually did it.
go away RINOs. If Scott Brown can defend capital punishment in MA then it is unthinkable to accept any less anywhere else.
Oops, it said former GOP nominee.
“I believe that life is precious from the womb to a natural death,”
I agree, which is why the tiny minority of individuals who do things like burn 3000 people to death in the Twin Towers should have their lives taken away from them. To do less diminishes the lives they destroyed deliberately and willfully.
I can live without the death penalty, if the punishment makes the criminal wish for death.
See my profile page for details.
“The effort has been backed by Richard Viguerie, a fundraiser and activist considered the father of the modern conservative movement. Viguerie, in a July 2009 essay in Sojourners magazine, wrote that executions are supposed to take the life of the guilty — but noted there are enough flaws in the system to fear an innocent person has been put to death.”
If there is a chance that the person is innocent, they should not be in prison at all!
Mario Cuomo used the same argument: “We might execute an innocent person.” If there is that much doubt as to somebody’s guilt, we have to acquit and release them. Life without parole for somebody who “might be innocent” is only one step worse than executing somebody who might be innocent.
The solution is to eliminate any flaws in the trial phase that might put an innocent person on death row (or in prison, or even on probation with a criminal record).
“Life without parole for somebody who “might be innocent” is only one step worse than executing somebody who might be innocent.”
I meant one step better than executing somebody who might be innocent—had it backward.
This should not cause surprise: to kill a human being, in whom the image of God is present, is a particularly serious sin. Only God is the master of life! Yet from the beginning, faced with the many and often tragic cases which occur in the life of individuals and society, Christian reflection has sought a fuller and deeper understanding of what God's commandment prohibits and prescribes. There are in fact situations in which values proposed by God's Law seem to involve a genuine paradox. This happens for example in the case of legitimate defence, in which the right to protect one's own life and the duty not to harm someone else's life are difficult to reconcile in practice. Certainly, the intrinsic value of life and the duty to love oneself no less than others are the basis of a true right to self-defence. The demanding commandment of love of neighbour, set forth in the Old Testament and confirmed by Jesus, itself presupposes love of oneself as the basis of comparison: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself " (Mk 12:31). Consequently, no one can renounce the right to self-defence out of lack of love for life or for self. This can only be done in virtue of a heroic love which deepens and transfigures the love of self into a radical self-offering, according to the spirit of the Gospel Beatitudes (cf. Mt 5:38-40). The sublime example of this self-offering is the Lord Jesus himself.I think the fact that the courts and parole boards will not keep these people locked up forever means that we must have a death penalty. It is the only way to ensure that our government will not put these monsters back into our communities. I don't see that as being in any way in conflict with the teachings of the Church.Moreover, "legitimate defence can be not only a right but a grave duty for someone responsible for another's life, the common good of the family or of the State". Unfortunately it happens that the need to render the aggressor incapable of causing harm sometimes involves taking his life. In this case, the fatal outcome is attributable to the aggressor whose action brought it about, even though he may not be morally responsible because of a lack of the use of reason.
This is the context in which to place the problem of the death penalty. On this matter there is a growing tendency, both in the Church and in civil society, to demand that it be applied in a very limited way or even that it be abolished completely. The problem must be viewed in the context of a system of penal justice ever more in line with human dignity and thus, in the end, with God's plan for man and society. The primary purpose of the punishment which society inflicts is "to redress the disorder caused by the offence". Public authority must redress the violation of personal and social rights by imposing on the offender an adequate punishment for the crime, as a condition for the offender to regain the exercise of his or her freedom. In this way authority also fulfils the purpose of defending public order and ensuring people's safety, while at the same time offering the offender an incentive and help to change his or her behaviour and be rehabilitated.
It is clear that, for these purposes to be achieved, the nature and extent of the punishment must be carefully evaluated and decided upon, and ought not go to the extreme of executing the offender except in cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society. Today however, as a result of steady improvements in the organization of the penal system, such cases are very rare, if not practically non-existent.
In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: "If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person".
I’ve been against the death penalty for many years now. Not for compassionate reasons, but for practical ones. Turns out many Freepers are of the same point of view, which at first was surprising to me.
If the death penalty is immoral, then God is immoral. He was the one that instituted it. “If you shed someone’s blood, your blood will be shed.” That is a divine principle.
First outlaw abortion.
Then you can get back to me on this death penalty stuff.
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