Capital Punishment is Indeed a Deterrent

Joseph M. Bessette in the Wall Street Journal:

Consider this example that the philosopher Edward Feser and I recount in our book, By Man Shall His Blood Be Shed: A Catholic Defense of Capital Punishment: At a professional conference, a criminologist reported that two burglars had broken into his mother’s apartment and tied her up as they searched for valuables. As they were about to leave, one said: “She has seen us and can identify us. Should we kill her?” “No,” answered the other, “we don’t want to risk the death penalty.” They let her live. One can hardly imagine a clearer example of deterrence.

Another example comes from Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California. In the 1960s she served on the California Women’s Parole Board. At one hearing, Mrs. Feinstein asked an armed robber seeking release from prison why she never used a loaded gun. “So I would not panic, kill somebody, and get the death penalty,” she answered. That convinced Mrs. Feinstein that (in her words) “the death penalty in place in California in the ’60s was in fact a deterrent.”

A third example is recounted by law professor Robert Blecker, who had spent years interviewing prisoners. A veteran criminal told Mr. Blecker that the reason he spared the life of a drug dealer in Virginia whom he had tied up and robbed was because the state had the electric chair. In a similar situation in the District of Columbia, which had abolished the death penalty, the criminal had killed his victim. “I just couldn’t tolerate what they had waiting for me in Virginia,” he said.

These examples are powerful illustrations that the death penalty can and does deter some would-be murderers. Like the rest of us, criminals want to live, and, as the these examples show, they will often adjust their behavior accordingly. Without the death penalty, what incentive would a “lifer” have not to kill while in prison or, if he escaped, while on the run?

There is also a deeper kind of deterrence, largely overlooked in discussions of the death penalty, which doesn’t require rational calculation. When society imposes the ultimate punishment for the most heinous murders, it powerfully teaches that murder is a great wrong. Children growing up in such a society internalize this message, with the result that most people wouldn’t even consider killing another human being.

I would add that eliminating the death penalty undermines the message that murder is a great wrong and contributes to leniency and a ratcheting down of penalties in respect of non-capital crimes such as rape.

Here the principle of justice, which demands that malefactors receive a punishment proportionate to their offense, and deterrence of this deeper sort meet. If we abolish the death penalty for even the most heinous and coldblooded murderers, we fatally undermine the idea of justice as the cornerstone of our criminal-justice system. Over time justice will be replaced by a therapeutic or technocratic model that treats human beings as cases to be managed and socially engineered rather than as morally responsible persons.

Bishops Without Chests

And the hits keep coming.

When Did Sex Begin?

In 1963. Or at least so we hear from Philip Larkin in his Annus Mirabilis. It was indeed a remarkable year. I was but a boy in grade school, but old enough so that I now remember all those wonderful songs and not so wonderful events such as the Profumo scandal in Britain. What ever happened to sex kitten Christine Keeler, by the way? Brace yourself.

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.
Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.
Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.
So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Cesare Pavese, “Passion for Solitude”

Passion for Solitude

BY CESARE PAVESE

TRANSLATED BY GEOFFREY BROCK

I’m eating a little supper by the bright window.

The room’s already dark, the sky’s starting to turn.

Outside my door, the quiet roads lead,

after a short walk, to open fields.

I’m eating, watching the sky—who knows

how many women are eating now. My body is calm:

labor dulls all the senses, and dulls women too.

Outside, after supper, the stars will come out to touch

the wide plain of the earth. The stars are alive,

but not worth these cherries, which I’m eating alone.

I look at the sky, know that lights already are shining

among rust-red roofs, noises of people beneath them.

A gulp of my drink, and my body can taste the life

of plants and of rivers. It feels detached from things.

A small dose of silence suffices, and everything’s still,

in its true place, just like my body is still.

All things become islands before my senses,

which accept them as a matter of course: a murmur of silence.

All things in this darkness—I can know all of them,

just as I know that blood flows in my veins.

The plain is a great flowing of water through plants,

a supper of all things. Each plant, and each stone,

lives motionlessly. I hear my food feeding my veins

with each living thing that this plain provides.

The night doesn’t matter. The square patch of sky

whispers all the loud noises to me, and a small star

struggles in emptiness, far from all foods,

from all houses, alien. It isn’t enough for itself,

it needs too many companions. Here in the dark, alone,

my body is calm, it feels it’s in charge.

Cesare Pavese, "Passion for Solitude" from Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950. Copyright © 2002 by Cesare Pavese. Reprinted with the permission of Copper Canyon Press, P.O. Box 271, Port Townshend, WA 98368-0271, coppercanyonpress.org. Source: Disaffections: Complete Poems 1930-1950 (Copper Canyon Press, 2002)

………………………

Who knows how many women are eating now, women dulled by labor, thought of by Cesare, alone at table, in a dark room, who, like the struggling star is alone, but unlike the star, is enough for himself, body calm and in charge feeling no need for a woman.

A Modest View of Oneself

A modest view of oneself may reflect self-knowledge or lack of self-confidence. But to know which requires self-knowledge.

And Still More Corruption

The PA Catholic Sex Abuse Horror

There ought to be a moratorium on the admission of homosexuals into the seminaries. Granted, the homosexual propensity is not sinful, only the exercise. But given the current level of corruption in the seminaries and in the Church in general, a moratorium on the admission of homosexuals would be a good first step in restoring the seminaries to their task of purely spiritual insemination.

For you liberals, moratoria are by definition temporary.

Maximilian Kolbe

Today is the feast of Maximilian Kolbe.

Although it is a deep and dangerous illusion of the Left to suppose that man is inherently good and that it is merely such contingent and remediable factors as environment, opportunity, upbringing and the like that prevent the good from manifesting itself, there are a few human beings who are nearly angelic in their goodness. One can only be astonished at the example of Maximilian Kolbe and wonder how such moral heroism is possible. And this even after adjusting for a certain amount of hagiographic embellishment.

Is there a good naturalistic explanation for Kolbe's self-sacrifice?

Wikipedia:

At the end of July 1941, ten prisoners disappeared from the camp, prompting SS–Hauptsturmführer Karl Fritzsch, the deputy camp commander, to pick 10 men to be starved to death in an underground bunker to deter further escape attempts. When one of the selected men, Franciszek Gajowniczek, cried out, "My wife! My children!", Kolbe volunteered to take his place.^[8]

Strange Unbalanced Creatures

One and the same person at one time unjustly mocks, belittles, ridicules, blasphemes, denigrates, scorns, and contemns. At another time he idolizes, unjustly places on a pedestal, engages in inordinate praise, and prostrates himself before a pseudo-god.

Corruption in the Roman Church: What is to be Done?

Rod Dreher continues his relentless exposure of the deep corruption in the Roman Catholic Church.

In his latest installment, The Cancer of the Cover-Up Mentality, Dreher reports on the unsolved 1969 murder of the young nun, Sister Cathy Cesnik.

In his August 11th entry, The Church's Coming Catastrophe, we find in Update 2 good advice from a priest on what is to be done:

Continue reading “Corruption in the Roman Church: What is to be Done?”

Phrase of the Day: ‘London to a Brick’

I just now encountered this strange expression in Graham Oppy's review of Owen Anderson's, The Clarity of God's Existence: The Ethics of Belief after the Enlightenment. The phrase occurs in this passage:

On the one hand, given that Anderson insists that he cannot be satisfied with ‘a sound proof that is extremely difficult to understand and that is knowable by only a few’ (123), it seems clear that his ‘program’ is bound to fail: for surely it is London to a brick that, if his ‘program’ could be successfully carried out, it would yield a proof that is ‘extremely difficult to understand and knowable only by a few’.

The phrase, apparently not in use in the U. K., is Australian and New Zealand slang for 'it is certain.' Explanation here.

Are There Reproductive Rights?

I should think so. The right to procreate is one; the right not to procreate is another. But no one has the right to kill an innocent human being. So no one has the right to kill an innocent human recently born, not even the mother. Infanticide cannot count as a reproductive right. Now if there can be no right to infanticide, how can there be a right to kill an innocent pre-natal human being? (The 'innocent' is of course redundant but helps underscore the obvious for the inattentive.)

The point is more easily digested if you think of a third trimester fetus. (By the way, contrary to what some conservative zealots think, 'fetus' is not a question-begging or derogatory term. In fact, its emotional neutrality recommends it.)

The natal -prenatal difference is not a difference that makes a moral difference. Or do you think that a difference in spatial location makes a moral difference? There is a difference between killing me in my house and killing me outside my house, but that difference in spatial location does not a moral difference make.

You will tell me that there is a temporal difference between the pre-natal and the natal. True. The difference may be a day, a week, a month, a trimester. These temporal differences do not make a moral difference either: they do not justify a difference in treatment. Compare the temporal difference between the neonate and the two-year-old. That is not a difference that translates into a difference in rights or a difference in the moral gravity of maltreatment.

I invite you to think of the other differences and reflect on whether they make a moral difference. For example, the neonate breathes on its own whereas it did not while in the mother. Is that a difference that makes a moral difference? If it does, then is the right to life of an adult on a ventilator in any way impaired by his having to use such a device to breathe?

You say a woman has a right to do anything she wants with her own body? I'll grant you that if you grant me that the healthy human individual developing within her is not her body. It is not her body nor a part of her body in any sense of 'part' that could justify her doing anything she wants with it. For those who cannot think without a pictorial aid:

So yes, women have reproductive rights. But it cannot be assumed that the right to an abortion is automatically one of them, or even that there is a right to an abortion. There is a grave moral issue here that Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren and others of their ilk do not want you to see. But it is not going to go away and you need to address it as honestly as you can.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Worst Song and Singer Ever?

Yoko Ono. The only thing good about it is that it lasts only 44 seconds. YouTuber comment: "Sounds like a cat, with its nuts trapped in a vice."

Warzone is less awful, but still crap.

Paul McCartney's comment: Get back, Jojo (Yoko), get back to where you once belonged. Go home. Wikipedia:

In an interview in Playboy magazine in 1980, Lennon described "Get Back" as "… a better version of 'Lady Madonna'. You know, a potboiler rewrite." Lennon also said that "there's some underlying thing about Yoko in there", saying that McCartney looked at Yoko Ono in the studio every time he sang "Get back to where you once belonged."^[7]

One of the Ways Moral Relativism Defeats Itself

Bruce Bawer in Death by Entitlement quotes an NYT commenter:

One reader comment, a “Times Pick,” read, in part, as follows: “A great story and an admirable couple. But those who condemn their killers as evil probably fail to recognize that ISIS fighters see themselves as being on the side of good. For them, these young Americans were an embodiment of the Great Satan….Instead of bandying around moral absolutes, perhaps we should recognize that good and evil are relative categories, dependent on your culture and your values.”

Suppose that good and evil are not absolute but are culturally relative. Why should we recognize this? And why shouldn't we impose our Western values on benighted jihadis?

For the argument in full dress, see A Relativist Cannot Rationally Object to the Imposition of One's Values on Others.

The Cautionary Tale of Pippa Bacca

Conservatives take a sober and realistic view of the world and the people in it. They are reality-based, and put no faith in utopian schemes. Like good Aristotelians, they take the actualities of the present and the past as a reliable guide to what is possible, rather than the future-oriented fabrications of a high-flying reason cut loose from experience. They admit the reality of evil and the corruption of human nature. Liberals and leftists, by contrast, tend to believe that people are basically good and that it is only extraneous factors that corrupt them. Evil has no purchase in reality for them but is merely a word we apply to those whose beliefs and values differ from ours.

Immanuel Kant wisely wrote of the "crooked timber of humanity of which no straight thing has ever been made." For liberals and leftists, however, the warpage is not inherent in the timber but comes from without, from contingent social arrangements that can and must be changed.

People who live this delusion sometimes come to a very bad end. Performance artist Pippa Bacca is a case in point. She and a friend hitchiked from Italy to the Balkans to the Middle East in wedding dresses to promote global harmony. Just three weeks into the trip she was raped and murdered in Turkey by a driver who offered her a ride.

The refusal to face reality is a mark of the leftist who prefers his u-topian view of the world to the world.