Jun 11, 2009

Death Penalty for Capital Punishment?

Joseph Farah
By Joseph Farah

With all that is going on in America today, you may not have noticed the death penalty is under attack as never before.

It's not just the nomination to the Supreme Court of Sonia Sotomayor, a fervent opponent of capital punishment, that leads me to this conclusion. It's the fact that Barack Obama seems hell-bent on serving out his presidency as Europe's running dog lacky – and the Euro-elite couldn't be more opposed to the death penalty. The United Nations, another place Obama looks for instructions, is equally opposed to capital punishment.

The pressure is rising from the globalists, and Obama is their man in the U.S.

Even more alarming to me is a trend I noticed only recently: "Conservatives" having second thoughts about the death penalty.

You might be surprised to learn that conservative stalwarts from Richard Viguerie to Ollie North are personally opposed to capital punishment. Some of these conservatives are actually huddling together to see how they can achieve their objectives in ending the death penalty in America.

With all this in mind, I think it's time for a review of what's right about capital punishment.

First of all, it's biblical. I don't know about you, but I get my ideas about right and wrong from the Bible.

I defy anyone to read the Bible in its entirety and tell me God doesn't approve of capital punishment. In fact, God does not reserve it exclusively for the crime of murder. And He doesn't just approve of it, He prescribes it.

I suggest to you the reason He does is because God so highly values life. The irony, of course, is that death penalty opponents believe they are valuing life by opposing it. But that's just more evidence of what the Bible frequently refers to as man being "wise in his own eyes."

The very reason capital punishment is moral is because it places such a high value on innocent human life. It is the ultimate expression of how highly we value life. It is meant as a deterrent to those who might consider taking a life. And, there is not a doubt in my mind that if we used it more frequently and with more certainty in murder cases, it would serve as a formidable deterrent.

It's common sense.

Bringing about justice for heinous crimes is one of the reasons God institutes government. As usual, many in government want to abdicate their responsibility to performing the few duties for which government is useful – like defending the nation, controlling borders, controlling currency and bringing justice for those who are victimized.

Government prefers to meddle in affairs in which it has no business – such as invading privacy, restricting firearms, controlling free speech, seizing and redistributing wealth and prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

Executing duly convicted murderers is not only a legitimate role for government; it is a duty.

The Founding Fathers understood this. They oversaw its implementation. There was no thought by any of them that this was "cruel and unusual punishment," as some revisionists seek to suggest.

Of course, if further restrictions on capital punishment come to America, they won't come by way of an expression of the will of the people – by popular or even by legislative action.

They will come by way of judicial fiat – as so many other unpopular ideas have been forced down the throats of the American public.

It's also worth noting that so many of those most vehemently opposed to capital punishment seem to have no problem with the state's direct involvement in terminating the lives of the most innocent – unborn babies and those, like Terri Schiavo, with disabilities.

That's the world in which we live today – where black is white, up is down, left is right and right is wrong.