Dear Editor
I WOULD like to know why the European Union wants us to get rid of capital punishment so badly. I was able to find an article which answered my question. It is entitled: “Religion and the Death Penalty,” by Walter Berns.According to Mr Berns: The best case for the death penalty — or, at least, the best explanation of it — was made, paradoxically, by one of the most famous of its opponents, Albert Camus, the French novelist. Others complained of the alleged unusual cruelty of the death penalty, or insisted that it was not, as claimed, a better deterrent of murder than, say, life imprisonment; and Americans especially complained of the manner in which it was imposed by judge or jury (discriminatorily or capriciously, for example), and sometimes on the innocent.
The death penalty, Campus said, “can be legitimized only by a truth or a principle that is superior to Man,” or, as he then made clearer, it may rightly be imposed only by a religious society or community; specifically, one that believes in “eternal life.”
Only in such a place can it be said that the death sentence provides the guilty person with the opportunity (and reminds him of the reason) to make amends, thus to prepare himself for the final judgment which will be made in the world to come. For this reason, Campus said, the Catholic Church “has always accepted the necessity of the death penalty.”
This may no longer be the case. And it may no longer be the case that death is, as Camus said it has always been, a religious penalty. But it can be said that the death penalty is more likely to be imposed by a religious people.
According to the philosopher Immanuel Kant — who said it was a “categorical imperative” that a convicted murderer “must die.” In a word, religious people are more likely to demand that justice be done. Whatever the reason, there is surely a connection between the death penalty and religious belief.
European politicians and journalists recognise or acknowledge the connection, if only inadvertently, when they simultaneously despise us Americans [and Guyanese] for supporting the death penalty and ridicule us for going to church.
We might draw a conclusion from the fact that they do neither. As for the death penalty, it is not enough to say that they [EU] (or their officials) are opposed to it; they want it abolished everywhere [including Guyana].
They are not satisfied that it was abolished in France, as well as in Britain, Germany and the other countries of Old Europe. Mr. Berns continues, according to a protocol attached to the European Convention on Human Rights, it will have to be abolished in any country seeking membership in the European Union. Thus the European Union adopted a charter confirming everyone’s right to life and stating that “no one may be removed, expelled, or extradited to a State where there is a serious risk that he or she would be subjected to the death penalty.”
They even organized a World Congress Against the Death Penalty, which in turn organized the first World Day Against the Death Penalty.
Mr. Berns asked what explains this obsession with the death penalty. Hard to say, but probably the fact that abolishing it is one of the few things Europeans can do that make them feel righteous. Nowhere in the new European constitution–some 300 pages long, not counting the appendages — is there any mention of religion, of Christian Europe, or of God. God is dead in Europe [and the EU wants to kill God in Guyana]. Punishment has its origins in the demand for justice, and justice is demanded by angry, morally indignant men; men who are angry when someone else is robbed, raped, or murdered. This anger is an expression of their caring, and the just society needs citizens who care for each other and for the community of which they are part. One of the purposes of punishment, particularly capital punishment, is to recognise the legitimacy of that righteous anger and to satisfy and thereby to reward it. In this way, the death penalty, when duly or deliberately imposed, serves to strengthen the moral sentiments required by a self-governing community.
Editor, I was very pleased to see the new government pass laws for the death penalty for terrorists, and I strongly recommend that they don’t abolish the death penalty by bowing to pressure from the EU, no matter how much they try to bribe or bully them.
ANTHONY PANTLITZ
