I see that Charlie Kirk’s young widow Erika has (unsurprisingly) gone all Christian and forgiven the loathsome little shit who murdered her husband.
I can’t find it in myself to do that, and it’s not because I’m not a Christian.
You see, “forgiveness” has gotten a bad reputation of late, and that’s because we see it all over the place. Judges “forgive” career criminals and release them back into society; prosecutors of the Soros persuasion refuse to prosecute crime as they want to “forgive” the criminals because of their race or ethnic background (or political leanings), and even parents want to “forgive” the criminals who raped their daughters or sons.
Erika Kirk has even asked not to go after the death penalty for her husband’s murderer:
“I’ve had so many people ask, ‘Do you feel anger toward this man? Like, do you want to seek the death penalty?’ I’ll be honest. I told our lawyer, I want the government to decide this,” Erika shared.
“I do not want that man’s blood on my ledger. Because when I get to heaven, and Jesus is like: ‘Uh, eye for an eye? Is that how we do it?’ And that keeps me from being in heaven, from being with Charlie?”
Yeah, well this is why our society has delegated the business of revenge to a third party — in this case, the state of Utah — because it eliminates the personal from the process and hands it over to the People. And the people of Utah have voted for the death penalty for murder. It has nothing to do with the survivors.
And yes, forgiveness can make you feel your “ledger” is clean and your conscience made pure; but your personal inclinations are not as important as the interests of society as a whole.
Society as a whole needs to be protected from animals like Kirk’s assassin — and I’m not just talking about his own activities. I’m talking about others like him, who may decide to follow his path because there’s no chance that they’ll lose their own life as a consequence. Life imprisonment, in other words, may work to protect people from an individual’s future activities — but it is definitely less of a deterrent for others than a death sentence.
I’m not going to argue the point with people who are against the death penalty per se. I’m also not going to the trouble of looking up what happened to the capital murder rate in states like New York which abolished execution, or in states like (I think) Ohio which reinstated the death penalty. The plain fact of the matter is that the death penalty is a deterrent against murder — the stats pretty much all show that — but even past that, I believe strongly in the concept of vengeance against those animals who have stepped so far outside the bounds of a lawful society that their continued existence is a smack in the face of the victims and their survivors, whether the latter want to acknowledge that, or not (as in the case of Erika Kirk).
Give Charlie’s murderer a fair trial, then hang him. And hang all those who do the same.
Enough of this forgiveness bullshit: it’s time for retribution.
