In a perfect example of moral imbecility at work, the Healing Presence Singers recently performed on the streets of Philadelphia to advocate gun control in the wake of the murder of 26-year-old Amber Long, who was shot instantly by a purse snatcher.

ALAN writes:

The absence of moral outrage in response to murders like the one in Indianapolis is one example of the moral rot in today’s culture.  It is a result of hatred of responsibility: The responsibility to make moral judgments and act firmly on the basis of those judgments. Americans were once quite able and willing to do that, and The Law provided a proper moral and political framework for doing so. As Lawrence Auster wrote in 2006:

“Once upon a time, the press and the broadcast media represented the moral sense of the community and described vile murderers as vile murderers.”  [ “Evil Without Judgment”, View from the Right, Oct. 3, 2006 ] 

That is true.   The readiness to make those moral judgments and express them in plain language were the hallmarks of moral certitude.  But all of that is now gone.  What we have today in place of that moral certitude is moral imbecility.  It is reflected in how Americans think and speak, as when they say that a vicious crime is a “tragedy.”  Utter nonsense.  

Jill Farris said:  “The proper response to evil acts should be anger and revulsion.”  [ “When Anger is Proper”, The Thinking Housewife, Aug. 24, 2011 ]

Absolutely right.

“If men are not angry when someone else is robbed, raped, or murdered, the implication is that there is no moral community because those men do not care for anyone other than themselves.  Anger…..is the passion that protects the community or country by demanding punishment for its enemies.  It is the stuff from which heroes are made.”  [ Walter Berns, For Capital Punishment, 1979, p. 155 ]

And:  “A moral community is not possible without anger and the moral indignation that accompanies it….”   [ p. 156] 

And:  “…it is moral strength, or the strength that derives from the conviction that one’s cause is just, that is required not only to mount operations against foreign terrorists but to respond in an appropriate manner (which may mean severely) to domestic criminals.  Those who lack it will capitulate—in the one case by paying the ransom demanded and in the other by refusing to impose the punishments prescribed by the laws—but will conceal the fact of that capitulation behind a cloak of pious sentiments…..”  [ pp. 6-7 ]

The difference between moral certitude and moral imbecility may be seen in the way people responded to two murders in St. Louis.

1.  In 1995, two white college students, 20 and 22, were kidnapped, raped, shot, and left for dead by two young thugs.  One died; the other survived only by playing dead.  The thug who shot them was tried and convicted.  At his trial, the woman who survived said to him:  “You are nothing beyond the evil acts you have committed.”   Her brother condemned him as a monster.  And their father said of him:  “He must die in jail, and then may he rot in hell.”   [ “Student’s Murderer Gets Six Life Terms”, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Dec. 14, 1996 ]

Their response is the proper response to any vicious crime.  A proper code of Law would echo and uphold that response.  But what Americans have today is not a proper code of Law.  It is a body of law eviscerated by the mush of “compassion” and the self-serving Fairy Tales told by forensic psychiatrists, which are useful to avaricious attorneys and swallowed whole by gullible judges, juries, and legislators.

2.  In 2002, a 64-year-old white woman was knifed to death by a Negro vagrant inside the church where she worked and where he (along with other vagrants) was welcome, even though he had an extensive criminal record.  He was immediately apprehended, but a St. Louis court refused to prosecute him (on the grounds of a standard psychiatric Fairy Tale made up by forensic psychiatrists).

Of his mother’s murderer, her son said he was a man who “we as a society failed in many ways…  I’m not angry.  There was plenty of opportunity for us as a society to take better care of him.”  [ “Murder victim’s memory lives in St. Louis church breakfasts for the homeless”, Dec. 28, 2012, here]

There are so many things wrong in this man’s response to the bum who killed his mother that I cannot address them here.  Suffice to note that this kind of mush is now common among Americans, and it is one reason for the disgraceful ineptitude of American law.

Her son’s response is a perfect example of the capitulation mentioned by Walter Berns.  What we see here is a joint exercise in evasion:  The Law evades its responsibility to prosecute him and uphold his Constitutional right to a trial, and her son evades his responsibility to demand that it punish him.  Instead of its traditional and proper role as rule-enforcer, The Law now chooses to act as Do-Gooder.  And most Americans see nothing wrong with that.  It refuses to try, convict and sentence a murderer.  Instead, it credits Fairy Tales concocted by psychiatric myth-makers and sentences taxpayers to pay for the room, board, and comfort of such murderers.  Worse yet:  Taxpayers agree to do it.  This is moral imbecility on a grand scale.

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