'Your Turn': Closer look exonerates Bush of blame

In the Feb. 18th "Jack of All Trades" column penned by Stephen Jendraszak, the writer makes several assertions that basically state President Bush is running this country into the ground and that he is a hypocrite. Based on the statements Jendraszak made, a detailed look will clear things up:

First: Jendraszak stated that the President's stance on abortion (pro-life) and capital punishment (for) are hypocrisy based upon the following statement: 'A true pro-life stance is a fundamental belief in the right of every individual to live a full life and achieve his or her potential.' I will agree with that statement -- it lies at the core of the pro-life movement, as I understand it. However, the two positions are not hypocritical -- rather, they are symbiotic.

Pro-life stances and being for capital punishment are linked by a common bond: the desire to see a life lived to it's fullest. Abortion prevents a life from even beginning, thus depriving the "fetus" of the opportunity to experience life, much less to the fullest extent of achievement. Capital is the same: it imposes a set punishment for the most heinous of crimes: the taking of an innocent life, now denied the chance to live out that life. Capital punishment directly provides a protection for the sanctity of life by making the taking of a life punishable. By placing a punishment on murder, the value of life is enhanced and protected.

Abortion and anti-capital punishment stances devalue life. Abortion makes it okay to prevent a life from starting in the world while a lack of capital punishment states that if you kill someone the worst that can happen to you is you get federal housing, three meals a day and cable TV on the taxpayer's dime. I would challenge Jendraszak to explain his statement that capital punishment encourages brutality and devalues life when it expressly is used to punish the taking of a life not valued by another.

I would also point Jendraszak to the reactions when then-Governor Ryan of Illinois commuted all death-row inmates in his state. The outcry from the families who lost loved ones (innocents) to murders was strident, as were the reactions of the prosecutors. The reason: all the work put into ensuring that the crimes were punished was for naught. Ryan's move immediately devalued the lives of those killed by implying the crimes of the murderers were not that severe and rated with rape, bank fraud and car theft.

Second: Jendraszak accuses the President of not building the "culture of life" spoken about. The lynchpin in his case is that "we failed to capture bin Laden, disable al-Qaida, or make the United States safer." Again, a look at the news says this isn't so. During the State of the Union speech, the President laid out the results: over 3,000 Al-Qaida operatives in custody, over one-third of the "top tier" personalities have been killed or captured. That is not simply disabling -- it is dismantling. These statements by the President are easily verified by numerous news sources that have reported these events.

As for Afghanistan, I would remind Jendraszak of the culture of life that existed before we went in. An ultra-orthodox sect of Islam that encouraged the subjugation of women and used oppressive controls on ones life ran the country. Several videos and news reports have shown how women danced and shed their burkas and promptly enrolled in academic classes once we ran the Taliban out of town. Organizations like the United Nation Population Fund (which, while not directly providing abortions, funds them, and is supportive of China's draconian one child policy) can now work in these areas thanks to the United States.

Similarly, the President was accused of not defending America. Really? I guess the War on Terror is not necessary since there are only a handful of kooks out there who would love nothing more to park a truckload of explosives in a major American city in the name of Allah. So few of them, why bother... oh, wait -- it was a handful that brought down the World Trade Center. The message of the War on Terror is clear: we will protect our citizens, whatever the cost, from those who wish to attack our culture or freedom. And this President is showing we are serious about it.

Third: The President is all for destroying the environment. An excellently research article was penned by a journalism professor David Sumner was printed in the Daily News on Dec. 9, 2002, and details the comprehensiveness and the increases for environmental research by this President. I would also challenge Jendraszak's statement that "his energy plan enriches his friends in the oil industry while failing to reduce pollution and save lives." Save lives? Jendraszak is implicitly accusing the President of negligent homicide through his policy -- I'd like to see some facts backing that statement up.

Fourth: The President is accused of making it harder to "maintain a decent quality of life." The prime evidence: job losses on the President's watch. Simply put, economic policy does not affect the market overnight (see the "J-curve" in an economics text). So, the effects being seen today in the market are a result of economic decisions made years ago during the previous administration and the middle-class tax increase of the Clinton years.

I give Jendraszak credit for pointing out a solid truth about the tax cut: the rich do benefit the most from it. Of course, that's because they pay the majority of the taxes! The IRS website has detailed breakdowns: the top fifty-percent of all taxpayers in the U.S. pay over ninety-six percent of the taxes! So, those who pay the most should benefit the most. Of course, we could just take the entire tax bill and divide it equally among the population. Of course, then a sizable percentage of the population would pay out all of the their income in taxes and have no money at all where as everyone now gets to keep the majority of their income so they can afford some quality of life instead of none at all.

I admire the passion Jendraszak brings to his articles, but I find his lack of facts and misguided reasoning deplorable. Jendraszak would be well served to remember the last part of the phrase begun by his column title.

Two issues, four possible stances:

1. anti-abortion, anti-death penalty. Predicated on the believe that all life is sacred. A reasonable position, favored by many religious liberals.

2. anti-abortion, pro-death penalty. Predicated on the belief that innocent life is sacred. A reasonable position, favored by many religious conservatives.

3. pro-abortion, pro-death penalty. Predicated on the belief that the value of a life is utilitarian. A reasonable (or, at least, consistant) position favored by many libertarians.

4. pro-abortion, anti-death penalty. To hold this position you have to be a complete and utter ethical moron, or a member of the Democratic Party. But I repeat myself.

Not that good an argument. Illinois is a special case. Problem in Illinois is that there have been about a dozen death row convictions reversed in the last few years, where it wasn't just the case that the person convicted was found guilty of lesser crimes, but that they were found not guilty at all -- due to DNA evidence and the recantations of witnesses who fessed up to being bribed by Chicago cops to lie on the witness stand in exchange for "reward" money. So rightly or wrongly Ryan (who is a corrupt RINO) commuted all the sentences (mainly to life in prison) because it may be assumed that there are a few others who are in fact innocent. That said, clearly 98+% are GUILTY GUILTY GUILTY and should fry....the issue is which 98%.

And I don't think I can avoid the demands of the commandments merely by appointing a government proxy to do my killing for me as a punishment rather than as a protection (which is a long and convoluted explanation of why I don't oppose killing during war, on either moral or religious grounds).

I assume that by "commandments" you mean the Bible in general and the Ten Commandments in particular. If you want to interpret them to mean that killing in the case of capital punishment is wrong, I respect that. I realize that most of the Bible can be interpreted in several ways and the doctrine one follows depends on how one weights various verses and their interpretations. However, I'd like to mention two points that are related to what you said.

The first is that many scholars say that the proper translation of the Sixth Commandment should be "thou shalt not commit murder" rather than "thou shalt not kill." I'm sure that you've heard this statement many times, and if you still think the "not kill" interpretation is more valid, I respect that.

The killing by proxy objection seems unusual. If capital punishment is an individual's killing by proxy and therefore not perfectly in line with the "shall not kill" commandment, why does God command that certain crimes be punishable by death in the rest of the Mosaic law? While my own sense of justice agrees with the idea of the government punishing wrongdoing, the New Testament states that the government is acting on behalf of God in punishing certain crimes. I believe it is Ephesians or maybe Romans where Paul writes of the government being ordained by God for the punishment of evildoers and that the government doesn't wield the sword in vain. I realize that many governments have exercised this power wrongly, but I interpret these verses to mean that governments are fulfilling the will of God when they inflict just punishment on criminals. It's all interpretation, and I respect your right to interpret differently. However, I wondered whether you'd ever considered these verses in that way.

In the books of the prophets, God says that He is punishing Israel and Judah because the blood of the innocent cries from the ground for vengeance that these governments should have given them. God says that He cannot bless Israel or Judah because of these cries. I can respect the idea that there are other ways to bring just vengeance, but I see execution of a murderer as a way to keep the blood of the innocent in the United States from calling to God for vengeance. In that sense, I don't see capital punishment as just a government proxy for my killing but instead as a government fulfilling its obligation to God.

WFTR
Bill

Thank you so much for your very thoughtful reply!

First of all, you are correct. I was referring to the 10 Commandments, and I usually DO interpret them to mean "murder" rather than simply "kill" because of the nuances between the two different terms. The difference for me, on the issue of the death penalty, is that the choice to kill is issued as a punishment by humans, rather than an instinctive response to a threatening situation or for the immediate protection of others (for example, self-defense, defense of others, war). In the death penalty situation, the person has already been convicted of the crime and the the imposition of death or imprisonment is the pre-meditated response. It is an act of knowingly ending the life of another because they have violated our codes. And that is the crux of my discomfort, since I believe it is for God to judge, and not us.

I understand and actually agree with your analysis about government being placed in a position to fulfill God's will, but where I was going with this (and apparently didn't communicate very well!) is that people often abdicate their personal responsibility to the (supposedly faceless) government, and let the big, bad ol' government do what they themselves are too squeamish to do for themselves.

Actually, I'm probably not even the best person to even be commenting on this issue, since I change my mind on it so often. Although I supported the death penalty for McVeigh, I sometimes also wish he had not been executed so that we could have pumped him for information and links of OKC to Al Qaida, and to make him ponder throughout his life the suffering he caused. A few years back, when I faced a serious personal loss of a loved one, a friend told me something that has always stuck in my mind: "There are worse things in life than dying." So, sometimes the death penalty is NOT the worst thing we can do to the wrongdoer. Sometimes a lifetime of imprisonment is worse.

Maybe it DOES boil down to what you think the worst punishment is, and who should be administering it.

Your thoughts are interesting, and I appreciate your posting them.

In many ways, I understand your concern about people separating themselves too much from what must be done to establish justice. A people who just want to let the government kill other people without thinking about what is being done are a people who are not worthy of the liberty that our Founding Fathers tried to give us. Executing a criminal is a very serious issue, and people should take it seriously. In a government that is supposedly of the people, by the people, and for the people, that responsibility is particularly strong.

I understand that keeping a prisoner alive may often be a "worse" punishment, but to me the issue is not "worst" but "just." There are those whose crimes are such that a part of me would want to keep them alive and torture them. My passion says to give them a long and miserable life. However, my sense of justice says that the appropriate punishment for some crimes is execution. We could both think of worse things to do to McVeigh, but the question is whether execution was the most just thing we could do.

WFTR
Bill

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