{"id":2720,"date":"2005-03-17T19:50:57","date_gmt":"2005-03-18T00:50:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/vardibidian\/2005\/03\/17\/2720.html"},"modified":"2018-03-12T16:48:09","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T21:48:09","slug":"cruel-unusual-punishment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/2005\/03\/17\/cruel-unusual-punishment\/","title":{"rendered":"Cruel, Unusual, Punishment"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I wasn’t going to write about capital punishment for a while, but the latest going around the blogosphere is A-List blogger Eugene Volokh’s comment Something the Iranian government and I agree on<\/a>. The something in question is public torture and execution<\/a>, at least in the case of the most horrible crimes (as Prof. Volokh considers them, but I don’t think he’s outside the mainstream, there). He writes “though for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing [...] was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging.” He admits, of course, that such a punishment is cruel, and therefore unconstitutional, but then adds, “I would therefore endorse amending the Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause to expressly exclude punishment for some sorts of mass murders.”\n

The response to this comment was immediate and visceral, but, as Prof. Volokh states, rise from such radically different premises that the responses were not likely to make him rethink his position. My immediate response, as some of my Gentle Readers will expect, is a retreat to Judith Shklar<\/a>, and the instinct to put cruelty first. If y’all remember (or independently know), Prof. Shklar discusses the vices<\/a>, and what it means to put cruelty first on that list. A good deal follows from that instinct, and a good deal follows from other instincts. In other words, I have no logic for Prof. Volokh; if he does not put cruelty before injustice, my only arguments are passionate, rather than reasoned. I see nothing that appeals to me in a moral scheme that puts injustice first.\n

Not, you understand that I know that Prof. Volokh does put injustice first. Perhaps it is oppression that he puts first, or pride, or lust, or perhaps its something specific to the abuse of children. I don’t read the man regularly; I tried for a while a year or two ago, but there wasn’t much to hold my interest. Anyway, I point this out really to remind myself to write more seriously about the ways in which Liberalism puts cruelty first, and the ways in which that differs from Conservatism, neo-conservatism, and whatever Our Only President and his cronies subscribe to.\n

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.\n<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I wasn\u2019t going to write about capital punishment for a while, but the latest going around the blogosphere is A-List blogger Eugene Volokh\u2019s comment Something the Iranian government and I agree on. The something in question is public torture and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[201],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2720","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-navel-gazing"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2720"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17341,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2720\/revisions\/17341"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2720"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2720"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2720"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}