One of the fundamental pillars of American liberalism is that we should not make moral judgments about the worth of others or the worth of their actions. We’re all more or less the same according to liberal dogma.
The death penalty is the ultimate moral judgment and the forbidden nature of moral judgment is, in my opinion, why liberals oppose this form of justice.
This is, of course, utter crap, particularly when such an argument is advanced by the stalwarts of abortion. But even if liberals’ views were internally consistent they would still be completely wrong. In the world of men there is right, there is wrong, and there is ambiguity. But not as much of the latter as we are all trained to believe.
Rebecca Griego was murdered Monday by an ex-boyfriend who had been stalking her for weeks. She’d changed her phone number and even moved to get away, to no avail. To say that she is the moral equivalent of her murderer is a lie.
It’s more than one lie, however. There is a flawed system of thought that is responsible for the aptly named criminal justice system we now endure, a system that is more concerned with the rights of criminals than of their victims or society at large.
Its problems are all based on the one little lie that says we shouldn’t pass judgment on people or their actions.
It’s my belief that liberals choose to deceive themselves into believing this way in large part because they feel uncomfortable making these kinds of ethical decisions. It’s part sloppy thinking – the killer had a hard life, he wasn’t a bright man, he was under a lot of stress lately – and part gutless denial – gee, I don’t want to be responsible for putting a criminal in jail or, Marx forbid, on death row.
I understand. I’m uncomfortable making certain value judgments myself. There’s no shame in being unsure. However, not being content to stew in their own indeterminate juices, liberals instead chose to create and foist this misbegotten ball of feel-good goo on the rest of us. In many ways their softening of American values has gone a good distance toward the destruction of our justice system.
It wasn’t long ago that a policeman’s warning meant something in this country. If a cop caught a punk misbehaving and reprimanded him there was a good chance the behavior might stop. Why? Because if the two met again in similar circumstances the punk was going to learn a hard lesson about how to behave and wasn’t going to like it.
This, however, is far too close to being a moral judgment for liberals’ peace of mind. Who can know the punks’ motivation? Perhaps he had an abusive father and doing B&Es is his way of crying out for help. Certainly no mere peace officer is qualified to handle the situation outside of a courtroom. As a result, cops’ ability to make these decisions has been cut back dramatically with the result one would expect: their authority is lessened.
From Rebecca’s article:
University of Washington spokesman Bob Roseth said police files showed Griego had received phone threats against her life from the former boyfriend at least twice at work. But she apparently chose not to press charges against him, Roseth said.
“In terms of police action, there wasn’t much the police could have done to prevent it,” Roseth said. “Whether there are other things she could have done is a matter of conjecture.”
It’s not conjecture to realize that dozens of people knew what Rebecca was afraid of. Some of them were in the business of law enforcement. Others were not. Someone could have, should have, done something to give Rebecca’s killer a reason to behave. And the justice system should have let it happen.
The justice system should be primarily concerned with generating the right outcomes, not about making liberal thinkers feel good. But who can we expect to have the courage to act on her behalf when the authority of the system is as likely to be applied to good Samaritans as to the criminal?
From a more intimate perspective, if Jonathan Rowan simply could not live life without possessing Rebecca then the least he could have done was to kill himself with a little dignity in the privacy of his own home. But in his eyes Rebecca’s right to exist was no more important than his desire not to die alone.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Rowan may never have made an important decision in his life up to the moment he took his gun, went to Rebecca’s office, and killed her. Like most Americans he had probably never had to and had no idea how to do it.
It’s just a damn shame for Rebecca that he made the wrong choice Monday.
One could say that it’s not surprising that so many people seem to be making disgustingly bad decisions now that we’ve given up on teaching people how to decide between right and wrong.
But that would be too easy.