A Timely Meditation
September 22, 2011
Hat tip: Michael Iafrate.
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Hat tip: Michael Iafrate.
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Of course, nothing but silence from the so-called “pro-life” Catholic blogs. Disgraceful.
Very apropos.
Crickets …
In all fairness, I can understand a group taking the stance that they are a secular, political organization focused exclusively on protection of the unborn and, in order to include the widest possible following, work exclusively on that issue. But when “pro-life” groups seem to find the time to work against contraception and same-sex marriage and endorse the entire GOP economic agenda, I really think they show their true colors when they can’t say a peep about this.
It is certainly an interesting historical contrast.
In 1939 lynchings were ignored by the law racist murderers bragged about their acts with impunity, while enlightened opinion rightly shared Holiday’s outrage at the violence done.
In 2011 Lawrence Brewer is executed for having committed a lynching, a crime for which society no longer has any tolerance. Now enlightened society is outraged that the state, unlike 70 years ago, is willing to punish such crimes to the fullest extent of the law.
I think our justice system (including its use of capital punishment) is far from perfect. But we’ve clearly come a long way in the last three quarters of a century.
70 years ago, “enlightened society” was outraged that such crimes weren’t punished at all.
Of course, “Strange Fruit” was posted in reference to the murder of Troy Davis who remains glaringly absent (“disappeared,” if you will) from Brendan’s predictable defense of the racist, death-worshiping system to which he is devoted.
And let me anticipate Brendan’s reply — that the fact that the Brewer case ended in reciprocal murder “proves” that the system is not “racist.” The absurdity of that claim or insinuation (the latter is already present in his comment above) should be obvious.
Brendan points to the voices of “enlightened society,” but of course does not refer to the voices of church teaching or the victims of this society. Not to mention the voice that haunts us from the cross — that first century lynching is irrelevant to his politics.
I hadn’t realized the post was specifically in reference to the execution of Roy Davis, Michael. That execution may have been racist, I suppose, though he was convicted by a majority-black jury. Must since the post simply said “a timely mediation” my thought was of the song in relation to the lynching for which Brewer was executed.
FWIW, it seems to me that there were enough questions about Davis’ case that his sentence should have been commuted to prison. God rest his soul.
For Brendan and his co-bloggers:
In the right-of-center Daily Telegraph, Tom Chivers said the death penalty was “barbaric” and far more likely to be used against black people than white. But the main thrust of his argument was that there were serious doubts over the conviction.
“If you are pro-death penalty, you should be shouting twice as loud as the rest of us about the imminent murder of Troy Davis,” Chivers wrote. “Otherwise, you can’t claim to be supporting a stark but necessary act of justice. You’re just a fan of killing people in general. There are words for people like that. None of them are nice.”
http://www.cnn.com/2011/09/22/world/davis-world-reaction/
But we’ve clearly come a long way in the last three quarters of a century.
It is some comfort that today’s conservatives mostly support everything the liberal movement has done up until fairly recently.
Though if you want to look at it that way, there’s also all the great stuff that liberals used to support but have been so good as to abandon: eugenics, prohibition, defending Stalin, etc.
Let’s not let this descend into a conservative vs. liberal bashing session.
It’s tedious and tiresome…