After the recent death penalty ruling, I had the opportunity to talk to a acquaintance that is an ardent conservative. He's still an ardent Bush supporter, and though he doesn't like McCain, he will vote for him to avoid the "liberal takeover of America".
No surprise that the recent death penalty ruling provided him with what he thought was a brilliant opportunity to poke a stick in my eye about the "direction" this country would be headed, if the "liberals" took power.
The first ludicrous statement he made involved the assertion that somehow striking down the death penalty was equivalent to letting the child-molester go. I reminded him that child molesters could still be put in jail for life w/o parole. Furthermore, I reminded him that giving them the death penalty was likely to give them a longer lease on life rather than a shorter one. Many child molester put in the general population of the prison fare much worse and are often the focus of attacks and murder, if hardened criminals learn of their crime. It has been long know that many prisoners find raping a child worse than murder and will exact their own vengeance on the perpetrator. Ask Jeffrey Dahmer. Whether you agree with my logic or not, this did not ultimately satisfy my conservative acquaintance, insisting that the decision once again demonstrated the "weakness" of liberals.
So he pulled out what he thought was his ace in the hole. "What if you had a daughter and she was the one that was raped", and he upped the ante with, "and she was permanently damaged" as if rape isn't enough to permanently damage someone. "Wouldn't you want the death penalty for her attacker?" He smiled in what he thought was apparent triumph.
Ultimately I surprised him with a rejoined he did not expect. I looked him straight in the eyes and said, "no, I would never want the state to deprive me of what I thought was my right. The right to kill the bastard myself. To look him in the eyes and end his life." "Wouldn't YOU want to kill the bastard yourself?" Why would you want to give your right to vengeance to the state?
If I wanted true vengeance, I would want to pull the trigger myself, not pull a switch, but torture him before he died and pull the trigger myself. I thought that the death penalty was the true weakness b/c I gave the power of death of the child molester over to the state.
Now that I had gotten his attention, he just stared at me, slack-jawed, which allowed me to say the following:
Ultimately, I told him, I am not allowed to exact my own vengeance. The state won't let me kill him, to exact my own vengeance, without risking my own freedom, which would hinder my ability to help my daughter heal and provide for her.
Furthermore, I told him, having the state kill the perpetrator for me ultimately would do nothing for me nor would it help heal my daughter or my family. It never does. Anecdotal evidence has shown that families are often ripped apart by violent crime, and the death penalty does not heal the damage. In fact, for most families, the drawn out process of automatic appeals does more harm than good.
If I was to be denied personal vengeance, I told him---and this was my opportunity to push my own progressive agenda---my preference would be to "make him work off his crime" by allowing him to continue working and to have the state seize a portion of his income, $10/day say, for the next 30 years and he could help put my daughter through college, help pay the down payment on her first house, etc.
Through all this he just listened, but didn't disagree.