Surely we have here the winner of the “Stupidest Statement of the Year” contest. While many other contenders could be mentioned, this remark has to take the prize. And the fact that it comes from a politician should surprise no one. Even less surprising is the fact that it comes from an Australian Greens politician.
It not only must be one of the more silly statements uttered in recent times, but it betrays a completely bewildered mind and a morally bankrupt ideology. The context for the remark is this: Victorian Liberal MP Bernie Finn has just called for the death penalty for drug lords.
Predictably the Greens went apoplectic about such a suggestion – one that sounds quite sensible to me. Consider what Greens MP Colleen Hartland said about the call: “I don’t support any form of state-sanctioned murder, no matter what the crime.”
Sorry, but could you repeat that for me Colleen? “I don’t support any form of state-sanctioned murder”. You don’t? Are you sure about that? Then please explain to me what you call your – and your party’s – support for legal abortion. It seems to me that this comes awfully close to “state-sanctioned murder”.
Here we have the most pro-death political party in the nation going schizoid over the issue of death. Can someone please clarify this for me? The Greens are 100 per cent in favour of death – certainly in the forms of abortion and euthanasia. But here they want nothing to do with it. Green schizophrenia seems to know no bounds.
It seems that the Greens position runs something like this: ‘We fully support the killing of unborn babies, the elderly, the infirm, and anyone who wants an easy way out. Yet we will fight to the death – no pun intended – for the right to life of drug lords who peddle their poison to the rest of society, causing untold misery and death”.
No wonder so many people can only scratch their heads when they hear the phrase, ‘Australian Greens’. This has got to be the most morally vacuous and intellectual defective political party to have ever blighted the Australian political landscape.
Back to school
Not only are the double standards and the hypocrisy of the Greens absolutely reprehensible, but they must also be taken to task for failing to realise the most basic and simple of truths. But this has never been a strong point for the Greens.
So let me explain this to them in really simply terms. Any second grader can pull out a dictionary and discover a most basic distinction between two terms. Why the Greens cannot grasp this elementary distinction is beyond me. The two terms in question are ‘killing’ and ‘murder’.
Very simply, while every murder involves killing, not every killing is murder. This is so very basic I have to wonder why I have to state the obvious. But for the Greens I guess we must take things real slowly and real carefully. So let me develop this distinction a bit further.
Murder, as any law court knows, or any dictionary can inform us, has to do with the intentional killing of any innocent person. That is why murder is illegal, because it is always wrong to deliberately snuff out the life of an innocent person. But of course there are plenty of cases of killing which are not murder.
There is justified killing in other words. Such killing is neither immoral, nor – normally – illegal. The obvious candidates are self-defence, just war, and the death penalty. In all three cases the taking of a life is not murder and is not morally unjustifiable. In all three cases the person being killed is not innocent, and has warranted the forfeiture of his life.
If a rapist breaks into my home and seeks to assault my wife and children, and in the process of defending them, I kill the intruder, no court of law anywhere will charge me with murder. I have killed a person in self-defense, but I have not murdered anyone.
In the same way, when the Allies fought the Nazis to liberate Europe, they were involved in a just war. They were seeking to stop an aggressor, to protect the innocent, and to liberate the concentration camps. In the process of course many German soldiers were killed.
While the Nuremberg trials afterward found plenty of Nazis guilty of murder for slaughtering the innocent, no Allied soldier in the normal course of events was found guilty of murder. (That a soldier can on occasion be found guilty of murder is of course another matter.) The allies were not murdering anyone; they were fighting a tyrannical regime which was attempting to enslave the world, murdering millions along the way.
And a third form of legal and moral killing is capital punishment. State-sanctioned killing of the worst of criminal offenders – be they murderers, rapists or drug kings – has long been recognised as legitimate and morally justifiable. Of course not everyone likes capital punishment and moral arguments can be raised against it.
This article is not the place to discuss the merits or otherwise of capital punishment. I have sought to do that elsewhere. For example, I have answered those opposed to the death penalty on religious grounds in this two-part article:
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2007/10/11/on-capital-punishment-part-1/
https://billmuehlenberg.com/2007/10/12/on-capital-punishment-part-2/
Regardless of where one stands on this contentious issue, the point which I am attempting to make here is this: this Greens MP is deliberately – or perhaps worse yet, out of sheer ignorance – playing games of verbal engineering in order to push her moral outrage – outrage which is selective to say the least, and grossly duplicitous to say the worst.
State-sanctioned capital punishment is killing, and not murder, just as most just war situations and most cases of self-defence resulting in death are cases of killing, but not murder. Again, this is such basic and such rudimentary stuff, that it is quite unbelievable that someone who has managed to become a politician is either unable or unwilling to make such crucial distinctions.
But of course we get this from the Greens all the time. So this is nothing really new here – just more of the same old same old. But given that we expect our politicians to offer a modicum of intellectual and moral ability in public, when such unhelpful and/or misleading statements are made, ordinary citizens have the right to challenge them on this.
Haven’t you ever noticed the left’s moral calculus Bill?
The more innocent and defenceless you are the less you can expect to be protected by them, but the more evil and noxious you are, the more they are willing to defend your right to exist.
What do you expect from the depraved?
How anybody can reach a conclusion like, “The innocent can be killed for ‘choice’, but the clearly guilty must be preserved from their just desserts” is beyond me, but it seems to be a central tennet of leftists everywhere.
Jason Rennie
Yale economist, John Lott jnr., on the death penalty
“Generally, the studies over the last decade that examined how the murder rates in each state changed as they changed their execution rate found that each execution saved the lives of roughly 15 to 18 potential murder victims. Overall, the rise in executions during the 1990s accounts for about 12 to 14 percent of the overall drop in murders.”
I can also recall an author of a very recent book on CP, defending the case against it, basically conceded that the death penalty’s abolition in western countries around the world was done by elites against the will of the people.
That fact really didn’t surprise me. It would have been morally obtuse elites like Hartland.
Damien Spillane
“no court of law anywhere will charge me with murder” – but I wouldn’t bank on an acquittal in Britain, Bill.
John Thomas, UK
The phrase “state-sanctioned murder” with regard to capital punishment, is of course a rhetorical trick that’s used to bypass reasoned argument and to obscure the distinction between justifiable killing and homicide. In other words, the Australian Green’s mastery of double-talk permits them to promote euthanasia and abortion while condemning the death penalty no matter how heinous the crime. This indicates a schizoid mentality – as Bill observes.
So much of what passes today as virtuous concern for the “rights” of criminals, animals, and even the earth itself, is propaganda in which truth and justice are turned on their heads.
Alex Anderson
..no matter what the crime.?”
Maybe you should of left this bit of the statement out Colleen, it suggests that if you don’t commit a crime then it pretty much open season on your life, at the very least at the beginning and end of it. Funny that, cause that seems to mirror your polices.
Here let me re-write it for you; “I don’t support any form murder.”
On this God would agree with you, You shall not murder.
“no court of law anywhere will charge me with murder” – wouldn’t bank on that in Victoria either, sorry Bill I see to many holes in that argument.
Jeffrey Carl
Recommended reading:
Mark Steyn on the return of backyard abortions;
Oh. Well, “Dr” Gosnell’s just one rogue abortionist. How about the “right to choose” over at Planned Parenthood? There are a whole range of choices – not so much for the illegally smuggled underage foreign sex slave, but at least for her pimp. If you’re a middle-aged guy running a child-sex business, you have the “right to choose” what’s best for that 13-year old Venezuelan hottie you brought over a couple weeks back. As the Falls Church clinic assures him: “We don’t necessarily look at the legal status, like I said.”
That’s good to know. With Planned Parenthood aiding and abetting child prostitution, my friend Rich Lowry argued that the back alley is back: “Legal abortion was supposed to end “back-alley abortions,” both their dangers and their entanglements with shady characters. But the practice and the mores of the back alley are with us still, tolerated by people for whom the ready provision of abortion trumps all else.”
Rich is right. Ever since Roe v Wade, proponents of a woman’s “right to choose” have warned us against going back to the bad old days of rusty coat hangers and unsterilized instruments from money-grubbing butchers on the wrong side of town. Now, happily, the back alley is on the main drag, and with a state permit framed on the wall.
If execution is state sanctioned murder, then imprisonment is state sanctioned kidnapping; fines are state sanctioned theft; impoundment of an illegally parked vehicle is state sanctioned grand theft auto!
Jereth Kok
Yes quite right Jereth!
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Bill,
Right on!
Graham McLennan
Think someone has already said it Bill but not sure if you would get away with killing a would be rapist. Its so long ago I forget the details but I seem to remember that a hotel owner was successfully sued because he upset a would be robber who came through the roof.
Maybe killing is OK just so long as you don’t hurt his feelings.
I think people forget just how many deaths the drug lords are responsible for. Of course we still have the problem we have mentioned previously that if you make a mistake you cannot revoke the death penalty afterwards. However that goes for euthanasia and abortion too.
Katherine Fishley
Greens MLC Colleen Hartland’s claim “I don’t support any form of state sanctioned murder, no matter what crime,” (HS 11/2011) is demonstrably untrue. She voted for “state sanctioned murder” in 2008 when she voted for the legalisation of abortion up to birth. And compounded her vote in 2010 by voting against a Motion to investigate the deaths of 45 aborted babies born alive and left to die. I challenge anyone to tell a bigger porky than this!
Victorians can sleep easy. A restoration of capital punishment is not going to happen. That may well leave us with drug lords but the answer to them is a restoration of community respect for all human life from the womb to the tomb. Law Institute of Victoria President Caroline Counsel gave the lead in her statement: “We value all human life, born and unborn, and are fundamentally opposed to the death penalty in any circumstances”. The primary responsibility for instilling respect for all human life lies with parents and educators. But if Governments like the Brumby Labor Government fail in their first responsibility, that of protecting human life, what can you expect of drug barons? Or of supporters of capital punishment, who may well argue, “We execute the innocent, why not the guilty?”
Denise M Cameron
Hi Bill,
My nickname for the Greens is “The Gangrenes”
Every time they open their mouths they spue forth their vile agenda.The only way to get rid of the dangers of gangrene from the body is to amputate it.
In the same way may every christian in this country be shocked and appalled and pray that this anti christian ideology and influence be destroyed by prayer.
Michael Bourke
Unfortunately Jereth I know people who agree with your statement.
Kylie Anderson
The human race is a virus upon this planet and the greens are the cure! But who will be allowed to survive in their brave new world?
Russell Boden, UK
Haven’t you ever noticed the left’s moral calculus Bill?
The more innocent and defenceless you are the less you can expect to be protected by them, but the more evil and noxious you are, the more they are willing to defend your right to exist.
What do you expect from the depraved?
How anybody can reach a conclusion like, “The innocent can be killed for ‘choice’, but the clearly guilty must be preserved from their just desserts” is beyond me, but it seems to be a central tennet of leftists everywhere.
Jason Rennie
Yale economist, John Lott jnr., on the death penalty
“Generally, the studies over the last decade that examined how the murder rates in each state changed as they changed their execution rate found that each execution saved the lives of roughly 15 to 18 potential murder victims. Overall, the rise in executions during the 1990s accounts for about 12 to 14 percent of the overall drop in murders.”
http://johnrlott.tripod.com/op-eds/FoxNewsDeathPenalty062007.html
I can also recall an author of a very recent book on CP, defending the case against it, basically conceded that the death penalty’s abolition in western countries around the world was done by elites against the will of the people.
That fact really didn’t surprise me. It would have been morally obtuse elites like Hartland.
Damien Spillane
“no court of law anywhere will charge me with murder” – but I wouldn’t bank on an acquittal in Britain, Bill.
John Thomas, UK
The phrase “state-sanctioned murder” with regard to capital punishment, is of course a rhetorical trick that’s used to bypass reasoned argument and to obscure the distinction between justifiable killing and homicide. In other words, the Australian Green’s mastery of double-talk permits them to promote euthanasia and abortion while condemning the death penalty no matter how heinous the crime. This indicates a schizoid mentality – as Bill observes.
So much of what passes today as virtuous concern for the “rights” of criminals, animals, and even the earth itself, is propaganda in which truth and justice are turned on their heads.
Alex Anderson
..no matter what the crime.?”
Maybe you should of left this bit of the statement out Colleen, it suggests that if you don’t commit a crime then it pretty much open season on your life, at the very least at the beginning and end of it. Funny that, cause that seems to mirror your polices.
Here let me re-write it for you;
“I don’t support any form murder.”
On this God would agree with you,
You shall not murder.
“no court of law anywhere will charge me with murder” – wouldn’t bank on that in Victoria either, sorry Bill I see to many holes in that argument.
Jeffrey Carl
Recommended reading:
Mark Steyn on the return of backyard abortions;
Oh. Well, “Dr” Gosnell’s just one rogue abortionist. How about the “right to choose” over at Planned Parenthood? There are a whole range of choices – not so much for the illegally smuggled underage foreign sex slave, but at least for her pimp. If you’re a middle-aged guy running a child-sex business, you have the “right to choose” what’s best for that 13-year old Venezuelan hottie you brought over a couple weeks back. As the Falls Church clinic assures him: “We don’t necessarily look at the legal status, like I said.”
That’s good to know. With Planned Parenthood aiding and abetting child prostitution, my friend Rich Lowry argued that the back alley is back: “Legal abortion was supposed to end “back-alley abortions,” both their dangers and their entanglements with shady characters. But the practice and the mores of the back alley are with us still, tolerated by people for whom the ready provision of abortion trumps all else.”
Rich is right. Ever since Roe v Wade, proponents of a woman’s “right to choose” have warned us against going back to the bad old days of rusty coat hangers and unsterilized instruments from money-grubbing butchers on the wrong side of town. Now, happily, the back alley is on the main drag, and with a state permit framed on the wall.
http://www.steynonline.com/content/view/3710/28
And Rich Lowry on the same topic
http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/258903/return-back-alley-rich-lowry
Damien Spillane
If execution is state sanctioned murder, then imprisonment is state sanctioned kidnapping; fines are state sanctioned theft; impoundment of an illegally parked vehicle is state sanctioned grand theft auto!
Jereth Kok
Yes quite right Jereth!
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch
Bill,
Right on!
Graham McLennan
Think someone has already said it Bill but not sure if you would get away with killing a would be rapist. Its so long ago I forget the details but I seem to remember that a hotel owner was successfully sued because he upset a would be robber who came through the roof.
Maybe killing is OK just so long as you don’t hurt his feelings.
I think people forget just how many deaths the drug lords are responsible for. Of course we still have the problem we have mentioned previously that if you make a mistake you cannot revoke the death penalty afterwards. However that goes for euthanasia and abortion too.
Katherine Fishley
Greens MLC Colleen Hartland’s claim “I don’t support any form of state sanctioned murder, no matter what crime,” (HS 11/2011) is demonstrably untrue. She voted for “state sanctioned murder” in 2008 when she voted for the legalisation of abortion up to birth. And compounded her vote in 2010 by voting against a Motion to investigate the deaths of 45 aborted babies born alive and left to die. I challenge anyone to tell a bigger porky than this!
Victorians can sleep easy. A restoration of capital punishment is not going to happen. That may well leave us with drug lords but the answer to them is a restoration of community respect for all human life from the womb to the tomb. Law Institute of Victoria President Caroline Counsel gave the lead in her statement: “We value all human life, born and unborn, and are fundamentally opposed to the death penalty in any circumstances”. The primary responsibility for instilling respect for all human life lies with parents and educators. But if Governments like the Brumby Labor Government fail in their first responsibility, that of protecting human life, what can you expect of drug barons? Or of supporters of capital punishment, who may well argue, “We execute the innocent, why not the guilty?”
Denise M Cameron
Hi Bill,
My nickname for the Greens is “The Gangrenes”
Every time they open their mouths they spue forth their vile agenda.The only way to get rid of the dangers of gangrene from the body is to amputate it.
In the same way may every christian in this country be shocked and appalled and pray that this anti christian ideology and influence be destroyed by prayer.
Michael Bourke
Unfortunately Jereth I know people who agree with your statement.
Kylie Anderson
The human race is a virus upon this planet and the greens are the cure! But who will be allowed to survive in their brave new world?
Russell Boden, UK