One Brick Short

I really wouldn’t mind if they decided to kill him.

That’s not entirely true, of course. I’m really divided. The liberal part of me – the part that believes that some welfare is a good thing, an important thing and that any public assistance given in the form of grants, food stamps or stipends should be given and not charged back at some later date for repayment when the person, hopefully, gets on his or her feet – says life in prison is fine.
The conservative part of me – the part that believes government has no business telling us what medical procedures we can and cannot have, including abortion; the part that believes that people need to be responsible for themselves and that, sometimes, the people need to be protected from predators – is all for it.

And so I come to the conclusion that I really wouldn’t mind all that much if they killed him.

He is a serial rapist, a person accused of particularly brutal robberies or killings or anyone who is a base and simple predator and nothing but a danger to society. Society – and I really think I probably believe this – has the right to be protected from serial killers and hardened criminals who can look you in the eye and pull the trigger three or four times without remorse. It has the right to protect itself from serial rapists who take brutal revenge for their mental weakness out on innocent women, children and even men. Society has the right to self-protection, to know these predators can never harm anyone again under any circumstance.

We’re not talking about redeemable people. We’re talking Lucas and Toole, Dahlmer, Bundy, anyone who consistently preys on the weak or unexpecting. We’re talking anyone so dangerous outside of the prison walls that they require life sentences to keep them away. They serve less than no useful purpose to society; they actually pose a serious threat so long as they’re alive.

Whoa! I’m not recommending capital punishment. I’m against capital punishment. No, I’m not recommending punishment at all. I’m not saying punish people by killing them, I’m saying protect the rest of us by doing so. If a vicious dog bites and mauls toddlers, we don’t punish it by euthanasia; we protect other innocents from a proven danger.

No offense to criminals’ families, for whom the pain is no doubt unbearable, but I see little difference between the societal predator and the vicious dog. Perhaps I would think different were I wearing a different shoe on my other foot, but I’m not and I pray I never will.

In the meantime, for now anyway, I see the theoretical death warrant not as a punishment, but as a protection and so I really don’t think I would mind very much if they killed them.

I know I could be wrong about that. That’s the disadvantage to being double-yellow line on the political byway. I know that tomorrow, after all the pleading and the anger and thoughts of the victims have slipped away and are replaced with Christmas thoughts, I may feel differently about my statements and even recant.

But I doubt it.