At One with Atonement
A writer for The Hartford Courant, Helen Ubiñas, has attracted considerable feedback from readers about a recent column, questioning whether redemption (I suspect she meant atonement or forgiveness) was possible for two suspects in a horrific rape/murder/arson in Cheshire, Connecticut, two years ago. That column appears here. The column seemed largely misunderstood, chiefly because it seemed largely not to have a point. (Ms. Ubiñas muddied the waters by seeming to advocate an eye for an eye, while invoking the prospect of redemption and the “limits” of her God. Her God was unavailable for comment.) She followed that up by generating still more feedback with today’s column, a kind of apologia/backtracking/paean to peace for the victims families that appears to have gotten her deeper in the soup than Campbell’s.
But there is a point being lost in the all the emotion of this discussion. Yes, we all have personal reactions to capital punishment – the taking of a life by the law, under the law. But it’s not a personal decision. It’s a legal/societal one. Capital punishment, beyond the actual punishment, was intended to be a deterrent to capital crime. In countries in which it is enacted swiftly and decisively, it is. But it’s not an effective deterrent in the U.S. because perpetrators have more “rights” than victims. That’s not a judgment. It’s an observation of fact. Check our murder rates.
We’ve abandoned the purpose of capital punishment, just as we have so many other fundaments of our ostensible social “order”. It’s another conservative/liberal dichotomy. Conservatives believe our imperfections must be subject to the rule of law to keep the order and maintain equal opportunity. The logic and rule of law stand above all. Liberals believe our imperfections can be pandered to by inventing every individual “right” imaginable to monopolize power under the government through the promise of equality. The emotions and “rights” of the individual stand above all. Chaos be damned.
It’s harder to serve the rule of law (social order) than it is to claim our individual “rights” (equality, rather than equal opportunity). So, we are where we are. If Ms. Ubiñas’s God is involved at all – or anyone elses’s for that matter – it’s clear he has an endless imagination and brutally keen senses of humor and irony.
If he’s waiting for us to help ourselves, it’s a good thing his calendar is eternity.