1959. A Lower Morality. The Southern Presbyterian Journal. 3. May 20
A Lower Morality
Along with the cheapening of marriage and the condoning of divorce
for any cause, another instance of the lowering of moral standards is the wide-spread
attack on capital punishment. Recently the news services have reported the Governor
of Florida as saying, "Only God can give human life; man should not take it
away."
Such a statement has little logic to commend it. If all our knowledge
of God comes by revelation, and if God's revelation explicitly allows and even commands
capital punishment, then the statement quoted is an affront to God. Now, as a matter
of fact, God's revelation indeed commands capital punishment, both in the Old Testament
and in the New.
But perhaps those who make the original statement neither believe
the Bible nor base their knowledge of God on revelation. Then we must ask how they
obtain any knowledge of God. Though the arguments are rather long and technical,
and therefore cannot be reproduced here, it can pretty well be shown that man either
has no knowledge of God at all or that he receives it by revelation.
The Florida Governor is also reported as saying (and if he did
not say it, other people have , "the prospect of life imprisonment is a far
worse prospect than death itself."
Are we then to believe that those who oppose capital punishment
are motivated by a desire to find a worse punishment? Perhaps they can add torture
to life imprisonment.
Of course this is not what they mean. They pose as humanitarians.
But for this very reason their statement that life imprisonment is worse than death
shows up their hypocrisy. They cannot have it both ways. They pose as alleviating
the penalty while advocating something worse.
It is also claimed that capital punishment does not deter. And
since deterrence is supposed to be the reason for the penalty, capital punishment
should be abolished.
Again, there is little logic to such ideas. Omitting another
lengthy discussion to show that deterrence is not the main reason for inflicting
a penalty, one may ask does imprisonment for theft, for rape, for drunkenness deter?
If failure to deter is a reason for abandoning penalties, then all penalties might
as well be abandoned.
But as a matter of fact, capital punishment does deter. I have
never known an executed murderer to commit murder again. Capital punishment is a
perfect deterrent. Life imprisonment is not. Murderers commit murders in jail. And
however much humanitarians assert that murderers should not be paroled or pardoned,
other humanitarians, or the same ones when we are not looking, contrive their release.
Remember Loeb and Leopold: one murdered in prison, the other freed though Bobby
Franks remains dead.
Crime can never be eradicated; but stricter laws and stricter
law-enforcement would be of great help. What would be of equal help would be a conversion
of this lawless nation to Christian standards of morality. Murder would not be minimized
nor divorce condoned. And the theories of non-Christian criminologists would have
little influence.
— G. H. C.
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