General Conversation Resumed

 
Looking back at responses to my columns while I’ve been away from the office, I am not surprised to see that the old death penalty quibbles continue. I do wish we could start this from a higher base(that is the purpose of the index). We might then break out of some of the logical circles in which many contributors are trapped.

Let me set out one or two of these;

1. How can you favour execution when the Ten Commandments say ‘Thou Shalt Not Kill’? Well, because most Christians read the Commandment as ‘Thou Shalt do no Murder’ (this is how Christ himself expresses the Commandment at Matthew, 19, 18, Authorised Version, and how it is rendered in those Anglican churches which still display the Ten Commandments at the east end of the Church). Is this a get-out? I believe the original Hebrew of Exodus is ambiguous, but could any moral system survive which did not distinguish between defensive and offensive violence, or between the guilty and the innocent?  I don’t think so. Even the Roman Catholic Catechism, which became more hostile to the death penalty under John Paul II, is not wholly hostile to it. And the 37th of the Church of England’s 39 articles famously says : ‘The Laws of a Realm may punish Christian men with death for heinous and grievous offences’ and further ‘ It is lawful for Christian men, at the commandment of the Magistrate, to wear weapons and serve in the wars’. This is why I am particularly baffled by those who write in and ask how I can be against the killing in the womb of tiny children who are by definition innocent, while I favour the execution of (some) convicted murderers. Surely the contradiction is the other way? How can those who blithely accept this daily massacre of the innocents in misnamed ‘clinics’ not also be in favour of executing the guilty, since their view of the value of life appears purely utilitarian?

2. What about America, then? They have the death penalty, and it hasn’t reduced murders there. I cannot count the number of times that I have pointed out that no state in the USA has an * effective* death penalty, that is, one which is applied swiftly and consistently. The modern death penalty in the USA (quite unlike its far swifter and more consistent operation before the 1960s)  is a political show, designed to assuage an angry public, not to operate as an effective deterrent. The fact that people *are* executed isn’t the point. It’s that most murderers are not executed, and that those who are, are executed many, many years after their crimes.  The question of measuring deterrence is very difficult, as the British Royal Commission concluded. This was the case in this country. The penalty was suspended twice between 1948 and 1957 (with interesting effects on crimes of violence in both cases), and after 1957 was much restricted and much less of a real danger to violent criminals. Countries which abolish the death penalty invariably do so after a long period of controversy, during which the penalty is used less and is often suspended for lengthy periods. It often also happens at a time of general social change. The moment of actual abolition is often not a good point from which to measure its effect. I’d add (yet again) that in our world of very advanced medical skills and equipment, people nowadays survive violent attacks of a kind that would assuredly have killed them  in 1955. Offences which might have been deterred by the gallows are not, therefore, recorded as homicides, but as attempted murders or various forms of wounding. By some calculations, were it not for the NHS’s fine trauma services,  Britain’s annual homicide rate would now be in the thousands.

3. For the nine millionth time, the danger of executing an innocent person must be reduced by all possible precautions. But it is absurd to imagine that it will never happen. Is this an absolute argument against the death penalty? Only in the way that it is an absolute argument against defending yourself militarily from an aggressor (innocents are also bound to die in this process, though the aim of the violence is good, however hard you seek to avoid it ) and (in my view) by basing your transport policy on motor vehicles, which is certain to lead to a large slaughter of innocents . Many forms of medical treatment, particularly major surgery, also seem to me to be hedged about with this difficulty. But perhaps above all there is the fact that all murder victims are innocent deaths, many of them preventable by the death penalty ; and that convicted murderers quite frequently kill again after being released from prison. So the argument that ‘ we can’t execute in case innocents die’ suffers in two ways . First, if generally applied, it prevents many other actions we would normally regard as good, therefore if you cannot show that the death penalty is not in itself a valuable good, then the fear of innocent deaths is a hard argument to rely on. Next, that if the arguer’s concern for the deaths of innocents is so great, why does it not manifest itself in preventing the murders of innocents?

I won’t in future respond to any arguments here on the death penalty which don’t at least take the above points into account.

Mr Armstrong, our resident Tishbite, chides me for saying that universal equality has no practical application, suggesting that by doing so I am denying Christian principles. I did not, in a three-minute audio essay, wish to address the question of equality before God. Nor was I addressing an audience which would necessarily accept the distinction between  the temporal and the eternal. I happen to think that equality before God has no ‘practical’ effect, in the temporal world. It is only of interest or use, as a concept, to those who accept the existence of the eternal. It’s most unwise to assume that people generally do accept this,

So I don’t. By the way, something similar motivates my dislike of the phrase ‘born-again’, which I think (with its smug certainty and unappealing imagery) has done a great deal to repel inquisitive and sympathetic people who might otherwise have paid more attention to the Christian religion.

I note that on the Middle East I am chided for saying the bombing of the King David was a terrorist act. It most certainly was. Many non-combatants, including women, died horribly. One unpleasant detail of this event which has always stuck in my mind, as I know the hotel well, and the pleasant road in which it stands.  is the fact that one officer, going to see if a friend of his who worked there had survived, found out in the most appalling way that he had not. He looked up at the front of the YMCA building opposite the hotel, and saw his friend’s severed head, gorily stuck to the stonework, into which it had been propelled by the force of the blast.

Another correspondent chides me for quoting Samuel Katz. But I point out clearly that Katz was a highly biased witness. Nonetheless, his book is worth reading, as it illuminates parts of the history of the region which are normally ignored, and explains to the British or American reader the thinking of a powerful and significant segment of Israeli society.

I long ago concluded that neither side in this conflict is free of moral stain, and it is absurd to reach conclusions on the idea that one side or the other is wholly right, or wholly wrong. I particularly regret Israel’s failure to do more to reconcile its Arab citizens, as I have written. I favour a compromise. I acknowledge that, if we were starting again, we would be wrong to do as we did. But that does not mean we can now expect the state of Israel to disappear, or help it to do so.

But I see no significant desire for such a  compromise in the Arab Muslim world. Indeed, I would fear for the safety of any Arab politician or journalist who openly advocated any compromise which allowed for the continuing existence of a viable Jewish state in the region. Whereas many Israelis, and Zionists, have been willing to consider major compromise, and Israel has given up large amounts of territory in return for unreliable promises of peace.