Liberal Ideal

 

            Prejudice is incompatible with the wide-eyed openness of the solar perspective.  To see what is, to stand back and see ourselves and our ideas, to see through our assumptions and prejudices, this is the ideal solar perspective; liberalism writ large.  Not only to see beyond narrow prejudices of fear and bigotry, but to peer even through the assumptions behind our most cherished ideas and attitudes.

 

            Only the truly liberal mind is worthy of aspiration.  That leftism and liberalism are often confused, is in part due to a reality of mid-20th Century politics.  Individuals with social democratic, even socialist ideas (Social Security, worker's compensation, etc.) were not often free to use the correct labels.  Advocates of social programs often are liberal, in that they are open to a wide range of ideas, but that does not make the programs, or even necessarily the ideas behind them, liberal.  In fact, those ideologues of the far left who insist that only their way of thinking can be correct, and that their proposals must be put into effect and kept by force if necessary, are as illiberal as the far right.

 

            Liberalism now has an opportunity to awaken the West from its conservative drowse, just as it held out the torch for revolution throughout the communist "East".  Western conservatives, for all their noise, always tended to agree with the Stalinists that Soviet Communism would never loosen its grip.  Only liberalism, with its firm belief in democracy, in the future, in endless possibilities, kept the faith.  There is no tyranny in liberalism.  Enforcement of a single way of thinking is anti-liberal by definition.

 

            A test of the liberal mind, the mind ready for the leap of faith in reason to the solar perspective, lies not merely in willingness to listen to other views.  A true test is to look clearly and critically, as if for the first time, at an issue long considered decided for liberals.  To the truly open mind, all conclusions and opinions remain subject to reconsideration.

 

            Arguments for and against capital punishment are often held as a great divider between the enlightened and the mob, couth versus uncouth, liberal and everyone else.  Nowhere has the 20th Century's orthodox "liberal" knee jerked more consistently.  The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Amnesty International, two icons of modern "liberal" thinking, both suspend their basic mandates to oppose lawful execution.  The ACLU supports due process, except when it results in a death sentence.  Amnesty defends political prisoners who do not advocate violence, but surrenders this stipulation if the person goes beyond advocating violence, commits murder, and earns death.  A "liberal" position taken by a major newspaper is that, "No crime justifies killing the criminal," without justification for the argument, as if it were an unexamined article of faith.

 

            The truly liberal mind seeks to see things as they are, and above all takes nothing on faith.  How can it be that no crime justifies execution?  A life for a life seems the most equal of justice.  If murder is not a special crime, how can execution by a special punishment?  Much opposition to execution appears to be mere group prejudice, little more than peer pressure:  my group opposes it, so I do.  Some of the arguments against the death penalty amount to un-thought-out prejudices hardly above squeamishness.  To oppose execution because one would not personally kill is absurd.  By the same logic one would oppose prison sentences due to reluctance to house felons in ones own basement.  Execution is not murder.  The murderer takes an innocent life, the executioner takes a guilty one.

 

            Morality speaks more strongly for capital punishment than against it.  As does logic.  As does the "sacredness" of human life.  We have no compelling evidence that human life is sacred, beyond our own choice to make it so.  We are as much a part of the overall muck as trees, alligators and pond scum.  However, if we choose to call human life sacred, then the death penalty should be automatic.  No amount of jail time balances the sacred, innocent life lost.  The only thing sacred enough to surrender as repayment for extinguishing a life is ones own life.

 

            Logic is no easier on murderers.  Everyone dies eventually.  Executing a murderer robs him of an indefinite number of years, not an infinite number.  His soul is untouched, if he has one.  Indeed, execution robs the murderer of the very same years he takes from his victim.  To declare it cruel or unusual defies both logic and history.  A life for a life has been the usual through most of human history.  As for cruel or excessive, no other crime and punishment match so closely.

 

            Logic on a broader scale is even harsher.  If we are all parts of the whole, if the murderer is a part of our greater self, the expanding tree of human life, or even life itself, then why should we not prune our most diseased branches?  Murderers are parts of humanity gone bad.  Our bodies eliminate diseased cells.  So, arguably, has the body of humanity the right, perhaps even the responsibility, to rid itself of those diseased cells that contribute nothing and destroy others without care.

 

            From a broad perspective, the major problems with capital punishment are practical ones.  We cannot undo an execution if we later find out the wrong person was convicted.  Perhaps the level for proof to execute should be greater than for mere conviction.  Perhaps we should be sure beyond any doubt before executing.  Another practical problem is that, with arbitrary sentencing, some types of people have historically been more likely to be executed for the same crime.  Consistency is the key; a given punishment for a given crime, period.  If this requirement is too stringent, then we should eliminate the death penalty altogether.

 

            The only strong reason for a people to choose to eliminate capital punishment is mercy and an over-riding sense of self as a species, and as a community.  On this level, we may ask whether execution in any way ennobles or uplifts us, and the answer is:  no, not at all.  We may or may not be lessened by the loss of the least deserving, but we are in no way enriched by it, as we may be by even unearned mercy.  But random mercy is as unjust as random execution.  So, society may and must choose between general mercy and consistent penalty.  If we do choose to prune where we must, we must do it with our eyes open, unafraid to see it for what it is: an earned consequence of an individual choice, the supreme price for the supreme crime, a pruning of our most diseased limbs.

 

            Speaking of individual choice, one practice inconsistent with any notion of individual responsibility is to deny murderers the right to choose to die.  Whether this means putting the person on suicide-watch, denying access to tools useful for the purpose, or, in the extreme case, appealing a death sentence against the convicted person's wishes, the result is historically, personally and even morally absurd.  Whatever society thinks, decides or can prove, the perpetrator knows the depth of guilt.  If the individual decides to pay the ultimate penalty, what right has anyone else to choose otherwise?

 

            So, the truly liberal mind-set reaches beyond any established set of ideas or opinions.  Liberal thinking requires constant re-examination of established notions.  To take liberal thinking a step further, to see the future as something we choose from an infinite number of possibilities, is to adopt the solar perspective, which in the final analysis means accepting and being one with our true natures: active parts of a dynamic world, an evolving solar system, and an infinite universe the mysteries of which we have only begun to understand.

 

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