Major League Baseball Emails
Author: Baseball Bob
On A Significantly More Major Note, That Country’s Continuing Passion For The Death Penalty Definitely Chills The Blood.
There are occasions when the United States appears an extraordinarily long way from western Europe. Their puzzled television coverage of the soccer World Cup plays like the work of Venusians. Their taste for cherry-flavoured colas suggests collective derangement.
On a considerably more major note, that country’s continuing enthusiasm for the ultimate penalty certainly chills the blood. I should be more precise. Capital punishment remains, naturally, depressingly popular all around the world. Park yourself in a saloon bar or its digital equivalent following any gruesome murder and you will , most likely, hear any number of calls to “bring back hanging”.
In Dublin, Dubrovnik and Dortmund, a good chunk of superbly reasonable people still seeks the return of that final retribution.
In too many corners of the US , however , popular will drives the particular annihilation of condemned voters. On Thursday, Troy Davis, found guilty of murder on really wobbly proof, was executed by deadly injection in the state of Georgia. “I am innocent,” Davis said moments before the needle was applied. “I did not have a gun.”
It is fair to indicate that there are less executions in the USA than you may think. “Only” 46 inmates were put to death in 2010. Remember that a troubling 17 of those happened in Texas and as well as feeling a little more concerned about the advance of Governor Rick Perry you’ll admit that the country’s authorities are not exactly syringe-crazy. Still, it’s not a cheerful lot for the computed 3,250 sitting sweatily on death row.
Few front-line US legislators have made any major effort to oppose the ultimate penalty. Returning to our opening point about the foreignness of America, it is worth noting that, in 2007, Barack Obama, then a rising force, wrote that he supported the ultimate penalty in cases “so heinous, so beyond the pale, that the community is justified in expressing the full measure of its outrage by meting out the ultimate punishment”.
European readers could notwithstanding the numerous lawyerly qualifications be forgiven for rubbing their eyes furiously and looking around to test they’d not been taken to Opposite Land.
At this stage in his career, Obama was being hailed as the fresh face of latt-drinking liberal America. Yet he was supporting a policy that, in western Europe, only parties of the far right include in their manifestos. Welcome to the skinhead fringe, Barack.
The gruesome truth is that no US presidential applicant stands a chance if he does not support capital punishment. It comes as barely a surprise to hear that, at a debate, Perry, a significant contender for the Republican nomination, attracted applause when commenting on Texas’s exaggerated taste for murdering its own voters. It is more sobering to remember Bill Clinton’s conspicuous flight back to Arkansas to watch the execution of a mentally diminished black man in the 1992 campaign.
Here’s the point. You might disagree that the conventional American politician’s disposition toward the death penalty demonstrates that states firm respect for democracy. In a place that frequently elects sheriffs, judges and ( beats me ) comptrollers, it would require serious courage some might say audacity to defy the voters on such a big issue. After all , a Gallup poll revealed that only twenty-nine percent of US people oppose the death sentence.
And yet. The parliamentary democracies of western Europe have, over the decades, stubbornly, bravely declined to yield to popular strain on this matter. Of course, membership of the Council of Europe prohibits individual states from bringing back the death sentence. But there are always votes in stringing up bad guys. Even a futile announcement of intention would appeal to a wide bit of the voters.
Consider a farcical play around with well-liked democracy in the UK. The coalition government promoted the setting up of a site that would permit visitors to sanction “e-petitions”. Any sufficiently favored campaign could, in theory, generate a debate in the House of Commons. Well, you can see where this is heading. Inside a few days, thousands had voted for a debate on bringing back capital punishment. A 2010 YouGov survey suggested that only 37 per cent of UK voters would oppose the reinstitution of the death sentence.
Yet there is , among MPs, no serious support for a change in the law. In spite of latest comments by retired judge Richard Johnson, who requested a return to executions, the situation remains much the same in this fine country.
For once, it behoves us those among us from the bleeding-heart inclination, anyway to tip our hats to the flesh pressers. They’re not all cowards. They don’t always capitulate to the noisiest, angriest voices. The fact that they have refused to reach for the rope doesn’t imply they aren’t listening. It simply recommends they really have some moral fibre. Are you paying attention, Mr Obama?, as reported tagza.com.
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