Credit where credit it due: Since I complain so much about Blogger when it’s slow, it’s only fair to praise it’s speedy performance over the past several days. Ev must have the servers tweaked out nicely.
Oklahoma: I read this morning, as I’m sure did most everyone else around the world, about the execution of Timothy McVeigh. And while I’m sure the world is not in need of one more opinion on the subject, I’ll weigh in as well. In general, I’m opponent to the death penalty for a variety of reasons (partly because of the risk of killing the innocent, and partly because I think it’s a bad idea to give governments the legal sanction to kill their own citizens). Though in cases like McVeigh’s, where there is no doubt about guilt and where, in fact, the guilty is quite proud to own up to his own participation in the event, I can’t say that I’ll be lighting any candles. McVeigh is certainly an violent, dangerous, and arrogant man. His defense of his actions as some sort of political speach (as if there were no other acts of protest available) sicken me. And if anyone deserves to die, he certainly is high on the list. At the same time, I think it only makes a nation look bad to have to resort to killing in order to solve its problems. And I also think it doesn’t help, for those who defend the death penalty on the (in my opinion [and I’ve researched it a bit], non-existent) grounds that it provides a good negative example for other citizens thinking of committing crimes, that McVeigh faced his own without flinching.
McVeigh cites the Ruby Ridge and Waco incidents as the motivation (and justification) for his actions. I have concerns as well, as I’m sure many must, about the way in which the governement agencies involved handled these standoff situations. At the same time, having concerns with government actions, about which we still (and I imagine, will remain) unclear is certainly no justification for the sort of violence that McVeigh inflicted on 168 unsuspecting office workers and children (who, in his words “had to lose their lives”). Political speech, even in more radical forms, is one thing. Killing civilians is quite another. As one of my English professors, M. Keith Booker once said, you gain nothing in protesting terrorism if you become a terrorist yourself in the process.