Culture of Death

To contact us Click HERE
(By Andrew MacKie-Mason)

Among the many reactions to the mass murder of children in Newtown, one strikes me as particularly incomprehensible: the call to reinstate the death penalty in Connecticut.

No threat of punishment will ever stop this sort of tragedy. To understand that very basic fact, we only need to acknowledge that the murderer here killed himself. No threat of death would have changed what he did, nor what any other mass murderer did. Even those who support state-sanctioned murder should recognize that there is no sense in using this event to support their position. The murders would have occurred even if Connecticut still had the death penalty; the death penalty would not have saved any lives.

Those who are pushing for the reinstatement of the death penalty, though, understand that. They know that it would be useless, that it would not change a thing, that it would not save a single life. So why do they argue for it? Because, "I simply don't believe a sensate person could think that a prison sentence, no matter what its length, is proportionate to this degree of evil." They do not seek to reinstate the death penalty in order to fight crime, or to save lives. They do it out of a need to do something.

That need is, at some level, understandable. This level of evil, directed at an elementary school, is a special kind of nightmare. It emphasizes our inability, as a society, to protect the most precious and innocent among us. It makes us feel powerless against the darkness. And so we look for something we can do, something that will somehow be enough to make up for the evil that has been done. And so these would-be supporters of state-sanctioned murder do not call for the death penalty because they actually believe it will end the violence. They call for it out of anger: anger at the killer, but more importantly anger at our collective impotence.

This heinous act emphasizes the need for many changes in our culture. Foremost among those changes, I think, should be a complete restructuring of our approach to mental illness.

But there is another lesson we should be taking away from this massacre, a lesson that should be taught in every classroom, in every home, in every church, and in every courthouse: killing is not a way to cope with anger.

Killing is not the answer for an individual angry at a society he does not belong in.

Nor is it the answer for a society angry at the murderer who has taken innocent lives.