Burning for Burning: Blessed Is the Prisoner

The powerful shall be measured by how they treat the weak.

The Heretik

Right now I have a knot in my stomach that is twisting like a knife. I feel slimed. I have felt slimed before, many times by my own foolish acts and misdeeds, but this comes from something I read.  I tracked this from The Gutter Girl at Looking at Stars through Digby at Hullabaloo to its source Eugene Volokh, UCLA law professor. From this perch,Volokh dropped  some astounding things on The Heretik's head  The hard K sound makes me think of the hard guttural inflections of the mid Twentieth Century, a zenith for xenophobia, a nadir for know nothings.

PreHeretikTweek image from BBC

From the BBC: An Iranian serial killer who murdered at least 20 children has been executed in front a large crowd of spectators.

Mohammad Bijeh, 24, dubbed "the Tehran desert vampire" by Iran's press, was flogged 100 times before being hanged.

A brother of one of his young victims stabbed him as he was being punished. The mother of another victim was asked to put the noose around his neck.

The execution took place in Pakdasht south of Tehran, near where Bijeh's year-long killing spree took place.

The killer was hoisted about 10 metres into the air by a crane and slowly throttled to death in front of the baying crowd.

Hanging by a crane - a common form of execution in Iran - does not involve a swift death as the condemned prisoner's neck is not broken.

Calm and silent

The killer collapsed twice during the punishment, although he remained calm and silent throughout.

I want to be very clear here.  Agents of vengeance often make  the  defense of human rights a seeming crime.  The defense of human rights, even for the most heinous criminal, is never a crime.  The defense of human rights and of respect for law even for the most lawless among us is what?  Such defense and such respect separate us from The Dark Age of Long Ago.  At least I thought it was long ago.

What is at stake here is the concept of justice itself.  Those in favor of justice boldly cite their religious principles.  The most cited is  Exodus 21: 21-23:

And if any mischief follow, then thou shalt give life for life,
Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot,
Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.

More than vengeance, the concept in this cited quote is proportion.  That sense of proportion in justice is for society to  meet out, not its individual citizens.  A civil society exists precisely to keep things civil, to assuage the pain of the afflicted and in the pursuit of justice to keep things in balance.  Society's calm hand exists to keep our more heated hands off each others throats.  Those who would inflict pain may irreparably wound the current era of civil society. 

Some will say, so what?  Wound us. We will be stronger for it. This is a moral masochism, a deformation of the moral core.  Perhpas they will cite Nietzsche and some tripe about that which does not kill us makes us stronger.  No, not stronger.  Not better for the pain we so wish to share and inflict. No.  That which does not kill us does not make us stronger or better. No.  That which does not kill us may maim us and make us bitter.  And bitter washes away sweet life every time.

What Follows Is A Short Bio of Law Professor Eugene Voloklh.  Following That His Post that Stirred my Stomach to Such Disquiet
All Words His, Red Highlights Mine

Eugene Volokh teaches free speech law, copyright             law, the law of government and religion, and a seminar on firearms             regulation policy at UCLA Law School.  Before coming to             UCLA, he clerked for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor on the U.S. Supreme             Court and for Judge Alex Kozinski on the U.S. Court of Appeals for             the Ninth Circuit.

From: The Volokh Conspiracy -. 

Something the Iranian Government and I Agree on: I particularly like the involvement of the victims' relatives in the killing of the monster; I think that if he'd killed one of my relatives, I would have wanted to play a role in killing him. Also, though for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing — and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act — was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging. The one thing that troubles me (besides the fact that the murderer could only be killed once) is that the accomplice was sentenced to only 15 years in prison, but perhaps there's a good explanation. I am being perfectly serious, by the way. I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way. And, yes, I know this aligns me in this instance with the Iranian government — but even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and in this instance the Iranians are quite correct. UPDATE: I should mention that such a punishment would probably violate the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause. I'm not an expert on the history of the clause, but my point is that the punishment is proper because it's cruel (i.e., because it involves the deliberate infliction of pain as part of the punishment), so it may well be unconstitutional. I would therefore endorse amending the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause to expressly exclude punishment for some sorts of mass murders. Naturally, I don't expect this to happen any time soon; my point is about what should be the rule, not about what is the rule, or even what is the constitutionally permissible rule. I think the Bill of Rights is generally a great idea, but I don't think it's holy writ handed down from on high. Certain amendments to it may well be proper, though again I freely acknowledge that they'd be highly unlikely.

Yesterday's Good Men Who Commit Evil Today Do Not Wake Up Better Tomorrow.

Comments

[G. D. Frogsdong]

The question that is asked is, "So you're opposed to the death penalty, but what if your child were the murder victim? Wouldn't you want to kill the killer?"

The correct answer is, "Yes, and that is why I would not be allowed to sit on the jury, be the judge, or take part in the execution."

[Shakespeare's Sister]

Excellent post, as always, H.

BTW, I'm so glad you've picked up Linnet. She rocks!

[Linnet]

GD Frogsdong--exactly.

Dude, Volokh looks like such a bland and civilized guy. What's that they say about the banality of evil?

[The Heretik]

What's that they say about the banality of evil?

What goes around comes around.
anonymous

The chickens will come home to roost.
Malcolm X

Oy.
The Heretik

[LJ/Aquaria]

Saw the quote about Nietzsche and how boneheaded people would think it applied. Argh! Not a slam against you Heretik, because my take is that you understand how people are too dim to even know what Nietzsche was really talking about! Argh argh argh!

Nietzsche probably would have had some choice words for today's Christofascists. He wasn't too fond of them, even way back when. Yeah, he said what doesn't kill us makes us stronger, but, as always, it's part of a larger concept that most of the people who quote that overlook--he viewed that as a learning experience to overcome a mistaken thought or action or moral viewpoint to BECOME stronger in thought, in action and in morality. He certainly wouldn't have condoned being a masochist. Will to Power, and all that. I doubt that he would have condoned torture, either, given his rather strict views about morality.

But what's new about the corrupt and weak of mind and spirit misinterpreting Nietzsche? It's been going on for 100 years now, and it's always the same bozos who do it!