Death Penalty

Max Sawicky sawicky at epinet.org
Fri Mar 5 12:43:30 PST 1999


Ingrid,


> on a certain level, I'd love to agree with you, because I do
think that the way in which many on the left discuss these and other issues does tend to alienate people who would otherwise be receptive to progressive causes. But I also think you're a bit full of it. . . . >>

Now there's a news flash. More seriously,


> taking a more "nuanced" position. But for starters, you have
yet to supply evidence that working people support capital punishment more so than the affluent middle class. >>

Now that you mention it, I can't say it is true either and I don't feel like looking up stats to confirm or disprove because it is not critical to my argument. More to the point is that the population as a whole, income aside, supports capital punishment by high margins. As a side note, if blacks support it by high margins, the likelihood that working class whites do as well is high. I raise the class issue not because it confirms the rightness of a position, but to try and shake people a little to consider why workers might support capital punishment more than others. What I got in response is that workers are not in full possession of their moral faculties.


> If it's true that working people are more supportive of the
death penalty, one reason for this that hasn't been mentioned is that most victims of violent crimes are also working class (Ted Kyzinsky being a rare bird among murderers). The emotional gratification of exacting revenge, of venting rage, obviously does come into play. >

Sure.


> But I think you were too dismissive of what Curtiss was trying
to say. He never claimed that the moral sensibilities of working people were wanting; you chose to infer that. He merely pointed out that working people have a lot of reasons to feel rage and bitterness about being exploited (and living in a society that denies this reality).>

To me this summary is limiting and therefore demeaning, as is the ascription of revenge as the sole motive.


> He was speaking from personal experience, and I agree from
personal experience. And so revenge fantasies do help to vent the bile. Pardon my old-fashioned phraseology, but meanness begets meanness and violence begets violence, which is just one of many reasons why I can't support the death penalty. And since when was it hard to argue with Catholic and other religious workers against the death penalty?? At least on this position, one could quote biblical chapter and verse, not to mention the Pope, to support one's case.>

Right -- authority is on your side re: capital punishment and Catholics. I was thinking of abortion in that vein.


> Of course, abortion is another case, and I have to confess that
I've never been able to argue with those who toe the Pope's/Evangelical Christian line on this, and have long since given up trying. >

I don't expect anyone to convince them otherwise, or vice versa. I do think that there are aspects of the abortion issue which would a) mute their attraction to right-wing politics; and b) are defensible deviations from the absolutist position.


> . . . And one reason why working people may indeed be more
opposed to abortion is that their own reproductive rights are continuously under assault in an economic culture that often demands two-wage-earner families and constantly beats up on those who have children without having the means to provide for them.>

I don't follow this at all. All this should promote the pro-choice view.

< But you can't blame honest leftists for this. I always liked that line by Ralph Nader that the difference between the Democratic and the GOP party lines boils down to how they view the status of the fetus.>

Indeed it is. To the pro-choice majority, the fetus is like unto a toenail, right up to the moment when it is capable of taking its first breath of air. And to at least one post here, for two weeks after that (!). Not to try to get emotional here, but what are we to make, for instance, of the case of the high school girl in NJ who gave birth in the bathroom in the middle of her prom and disposed of the baby? I seem to be working myself into more of a pro-lifer than I really, which is pretty minimal.


> I honestly believe that if we really set about making it easier
for working people to raise their children without having to make so many painful compromises, the violence and rage that surrounds the abortion debate would dissipate.>

I don't doubt it. Whether this would be an unmitigated good is another matter. In either case, getting from here to there is the problem though.


> You're right perhaps that we should try to frame our arguments
better, but you're wrong if you mean that we should take a "middle ground" on controversial issues that lack support of the majority of working people.>

There is no "middle" that I can see on abortion. There are those who see an absolute right to either the fetus or the woman. My compromise position to me is not a "middle," but close to pro-choice. It is that at some point the fetus should be accorded the rights of a person. In practice this right will collide in some cases with the right to life of the woman, and some imperfect resolution will be necessary.


> Should we support the bombing of Iraq because a majority of
working people support the President on this one?

clearly not.


> I wouldn't be a leftist if I didn't believe that people were
generally better than our present political economy allows them at times to behave. And I'm retrograde enough to still believe in appeals to reason (sometimes).>

Yes, but I think it is also true that supporters of capital punishment and opponents of reproductive rights are better than left conventions characterize them to be.

mbs



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