it is not enough to say that they (or their officials) are opposed to it. They want it abolished everywhere. They are not satisfied that it was abolished in France (in 1981, and over the opposition at the time of some 70 percent of the population), as well as in Britain, Germany, and the other countries of Old Europe, or that--according to a protocol attached to the European Convention on Human Rights--it will have to be abolished in any country seeking membership in the European Union; and its abolition in Samoa was greeted by an official declaration expressing Europe's satisfaction. (To paraphrase Hamlet, "what is Samoa to them or they to Samoa that they should judge for it?") In fact, their concern, if not their authority, extends far beyond the countries for which they are legally responsible.Camus in The Stranger and Nietszche before him predicted this state of affairs:Thus, the European Union adopted a charter confirming everyone's right to life and stating that "no one may be removed, expelled, or extradited to a State where there is a serious risk that he or she would be subjected to the death penalty." They even organized a World Congress Against the Death Penalty which, in turn, organized the first World Day Against the Death Penalty. They go so far as to intervene in our business, filing amicus curiae briefs in Supreme Court capital cases.
What explains this obsession with the death penalty?
[The Stranger] lives in a world in which there is no basis for friendship and no moral law; therefore, no one, not even a murderer, can violate the terms of friendship or break that law. As he said, the universe "is benignly indifferent" to how he lives.Why? Because no passions, no caring, and therefore no demand for justice. Here's Berns conclusion. I think there is an argument to be made against him, but I call attention to him simply to say this is the issue Catholics opposing the death penalty must wrestle with:It is a bleak picture, and Camus was criticized for painting it, but as he wrote in reply, "there is no other life possible for a man deprived of God, and all men are [now] in that position." But Camus was not the first European to draw this picture; he was preceded by Nietzsche who (see Zarathustra's "Prologue") provided us with an account of human life in that godless and "brave new world." It will be a comfortable world--rather like that promised by the European Union--where men will "have their little pleasures for the day, and their little pleasures for the night," but no love, no longing, no striving, no hope, no gods or ideals, no politics ("too burdensome"), no passions (especially no anger), only "a regard for health." To this list, Camus rightly added, no death penalty.
Punishment has its origins in the demand for justice, and justice is demanded by angry, morally indignant men, men who are angry when someone else is robbed, raped, or murdered, men utterly unlike Camus's Meursault. This anger is an expression of their caring, and the just society needs citizens who care for each other, and for the community of which they are parts. One of the purposes of punishment, particularly capital punishment, is to recognize the legitimacy of that righteous anger and to satisfy and thereby to reward it. In this way, the death penalty, when duly or deliberately imposed, serves to strengthen the moral sentiments required by a self-governing community.Simply to hold, "Christ forbade vengeance" or "we must respect life" is to reveal you do not understand anything about the political order. The government punishes precisely to prevent vigilante justice and to express the moral priorities of a people. The task is to show how abolishing the death penalty supports, rather than undermines, respect for life and the" moral sentiments of the self-governing community." When you can defeat the arguments of Walter Berns, then your intellectual task will have been fulfilled. Till then, you haven't even pulled up a seat at the table.
