Living and dying in the US of A

The death penalty has been back in the news, with word of a failed execution in Tennessee and discussion of how to proceed, not to mention the announcement that the firing-squad execution of a mass murderer will be live-streamed. And horrifying crime is again in the news after a jury failed to convince one holdout that it’s OK to strangle your three young children to death if you’re in the throes of postpartum depression.

I am never OK with the forcible taking of human life. I believe only God has the right to decide who’s to live and die. I know that’s a song lyric, not a Bible verse — even the Bible contends there’s “a time for war” — but despite all attempts at rationalization or justification, I abhor killing humans under all circumstances, and I especially don’t want government proclaiming that sometimes it’s appropriate.

I was horrified from the start by the Supreme Court’s decision that condoned the slaughter of unborn children, and when accused of hypocrisy I could honestly reply, “No, I DO also oppose the death penalty,” and for good measure I might mention that I don’t condone war, to boot.

And so when the state botched the execution of an evil murderer, I was saddened in part because the state proved to be incompetent at yet another task. I have a somewhat inhumane reason for opposing the death penalty — since I believe in heaven even for those who sincerely repent of their sins and present their lives to Jesus late in the game, I believe in denying them entry into heaven for as long as possible until God decides he’s good and ready to take that once-evil soul. That makes me a big fan of life without parole for the most heinous crimes.

I do hope never to second-guess a person who defends herself and causes the death of someone who wants to kill her, but I do regret whenever a human dies, even a deranged would-be killer.

But I will not second-guess a decision to put a bungie cord around the necks of three defenseless children and squeeze the life out of them. There is a woman who must be put away in a place where she can never harm another human. Don’t waste your time trying to tell me “what drove her to it.”

I surrender the burden of choosing who lives or dies to my Lord and my Redeemer. And so, here is another day that Lord has made, and off I go to rejoice.

On the premise that life is precious

Picking up a random phrase from the other day, when I thought about writing “a dark and desolate tale of monsters with two legs and weapons and oppression on their minds”:

Do politicians get up in the morning and think, “How can I steal more liberty and further oppress the oppressed today?” When Adolf Hitler was a kid, did he want to be an evil dictator when he grew up? Do world leaders love to kill people and break things, or do the bomb and missile manufacturers make them an offer they can’t refuse?

If it’s illegal to make bombs in your basement, why do we let people build factories to make bombs by the thousand? By “we,” of course, I don’t mean you and I, because I do not condone bomb-making and I’m pretty sure you don’t, either.

I think we try to teach our kids that life is precious and to be respected. Households of my faith should be telling kids to love God and love their neighbors, and that the word neighbors encompasses their enemies. Of course, we probably have to define the word encompass for them, and if they’re young enough we may even have to explain what an enemy is.

It’s my opinion that the average human wants to live and let live, and we suppress the urge to kill on those rare occasions when something upsets or angers us enough for violence to enter our thoughts. Only the sociopaths who rise to high levels of government feel comfortable with the idea of killing other humans, and those are the ones responsible for most of the killing in this world.

You have to have a screw loose in the first place to consider yourself worthy of ruling other people, and so it’s no surprise that it’s government leaders who are fine with making life-and-death decisions about people they’ve never met. They have so many screws loose that it’s a wonder anything is still attached.

They know not

Listen to this post:

They’re having a partisan primary election here in Wisconsin today. There’s lots of conversation and the usual nasty political ads on TV.

I try to avoid the partisan wrangling as much as I can. The two major parties have mostly abandoned the issues that interest me — an end to warfare and freedom from government intervention in our lives — so I almost feel as if I have no dog in this fight anyway.

I do have to admit I’m a little alarmed at the Democratic Party’s shift towards embracing democratic socialism. I sense more socialism and less democracy in the kinds of things they’re saying.

The growth of the movement baffled me until I remembered that the Tiananmen Square Massacre was in June 1989, the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, and the Soviet Union collapsed in late 1991, so people now in their twenties and thirties have never witnessed what a powerful socialist or communist nation looks like.

I was born more than 11 years after Pearl Harbor, so that terrible incident and the war that followed are history to me. I need to remember that to the people who have been born in the last 25 years, the events of 9/11 are as in the same category as World War II is to me.

And so when they advocate for socialism, they have no personal knowledge of the horror they are wishing upon themselves and the rest of us. Since freedom from government intervention in our lives is one of my two big issues, I have no use for this brand of Democrat.

Meanwhile, I did not vote for him, but the president was starting to grow on me when he boasted about ending eight or nine wars in the first year of his term. However, then the Washington war mongers got to him. So, as I said, I have no real dog in this fight because no one is taking seriously the issues that I take seriously. But the lesser of two evils is the side that does not embrace candidates who would remake America into a socialist utopia.

However, as I wrote a year and a half ago for Wisconsin’s spring election, which covers public posts that are supposed to be nonpartisan, my bottom line is the knowledge of two things.

1. My peace of mind is not dependent on anything the government does, nor is my freedom a gift from the government.

2. The fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, kindness, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.

I stay sane by reminding myself of those two facts as often as I can.