Leftist Follies

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Leftist Follies
by Jeff Schwartz

We’ve all heard about Hillary Clinton’s Vast Right Wing Conspiracy and how all the problems both she and her husband have waded through these oh-so-long seven years have been anything but their own fault. She’s even gone as far to suggest that Monica Lewinsky was a pawn sent to the White House to specifically seduce her husband.

I find it absolutely mind-boggling that people can only see a right-wing conspiracy, yet the left wing of this sometimes-proud country of ours is completely innocent and pure in thought. It may very well be my own political bias, but I see the left as at least as bad, if not more, in what they do.

I can look at gun control as a perfect example. The end that justifies their means is the banning and confiscation of firearms. They pass laws, claiming that each one will help solve the problem of violence in our society. When they don’t enforce the law, they pass another more restrictive law. They claim the previous gun-control measure wasn’t enough, and they need just one more law, and that will solve the problem. The entire time they know what their end result is, and they know how to achieve it: little by little, the camel gets his nose under the tent until the whole beast is inside.

I can look back to the 1996 stunt that Bill Clinton pulled with the expedited granting of US citizenship to tens of thousands of legal aliens in an election year. I can even look at his attempt to buy votes for his wife in her upcoming US Senate race from New York. His granting clemency to Puerto Rican terrorists was a blatant and obvious attempt to woo the immense Puerto Rican voting block that state holds. These terrorists didn’t even renounce their beliefs!

Well, for this article, that’s enough whining about the Clintons. They make my stomach churn just by thinking about them.

I still see a left-wing conspiracy, and it resides in our Fourth Estate.

I’m sure you can remember the Matthew Shepard murder case in Wyoming. He was a young college student who happened to be gay. He was beaten and tied up to a fence post and left to die by his attackers. The news was all over this, making it to be a "hate crime" and demanding action. I don’t know why it was classified as a "hate crime" other than the fact that Shephard happened to be gay. Strangely enough, I simply thought it was a murder and that all murders were hate crimes.

In comparison, shortly after the Shepard murder trial, there was a case of two homosexual men in Rogers, Arkansas who kidnapped, raped, tortured and murdered a 13-year old boy. The few newspapers that reported this incident buried the murder amongst some liquor ads and other ancillary stories, not even attempting to give it the same coverage. There was no demand for "hate crime" prosecution, there was no cry out to pass more laws to help protect innocent 13-year old boys, and there was no endless news coverage.

It simply doesn’t promote the press’s agenda to demonize gays when they are trying to lift them up. Gays are supposed to be portrayed as normal people who are loving and caring and would never commit such a heinous act. If the press covered this case with the same zeal as they did Matthew Shepard, it would take away from what they are trying to promote.

At the time of this writing, every major political poll shows Al Gore in trouble. Every poll shows him lagging behind George W. Bush Jr. This is a very sad statement given the fact we’ve a robust economy, we’re not at war, and the public has an overly optimistic outlook for the country. A sitting member of the current administration should be leading by leaps and bounds. Al Gore is not.

It should come as no surprise that the press would find some reason to drag down G.W. and thus give a much-needed boost to Gore. Two weeks ago, they found it.

Texas is the state with more prisoner executions than any other. Recently, a condemned man about to be executed petitioned Bush for a Stay of Execution, claiming (big surprise) he was innocent, and that he wanted a DNA test taken to show he wasn’t the killer.

Some may believe that this man must be telling the truth, otherwise he wouldn’t have asked for such a conclusive test. My theory is this man has nothing to lose, and all he accomplished was buying him another 30 days of life before the inevitable happens. He is hoping the DNA test comes back as inconclusive and that the state panel that oversees the executions will have some doubts and relinquish the execution order permanently.

Suddenly, out of thin air, a study is made public that two out of three people on Death Row shouldn’t be there. In usual fashion, the press becomes orgasmic and fails to research who put out the information or whether or not the findings of the study were unbiased.

The press quickly attacks Bush, and he states proudly and strongly that he doesn’t believe he has executed a single innocent person while governor. Bush even granted the man his 30-day delay to prove his innocence.

The press also doesn’t make it a big deal that in Texas, a condemned man (or woman) is allowed but one 30-day delay by any sitting governor. They also don’t bother to say that in Texas there is an 18-member panel that makes the decisions regarding clemency, commuting sentences or conditional pardons. The governor has no such powers in Texas.

According to the Death Penalty Information Center, which is an anti-capital punishment organization, since 1973, 80 people have been released from Death Row because of proven innocence. Since 1900, 23 people have been executed who have later been found to be innocent. While those 23 executions are a travesty, it is not in my opinion reason enough to do away with capital punishment. It simply means the appeals courts need to take a closer look at capital punishment cases.

Many of those wishing to abolish the Death Penalty often cite statistics showing how racist the system is, and that minorities unfairly make up the population of Death Row. As they do with their arguments on gun control, their numbers just don’t add up.

Again, citing the DPIC, the number of blacks executed since 1976 have been 232, or 35%. The number of Hispanics executed in the same period has been 43, or 7%. The number of Native Americans and Asians executed has been 13, or 2%. The number of whites executed since 1976 has been 358, or 56%.

Those who wish the Death Penalty would disappear argue that it isn’t a viable deterrent. I don’t believe deterrence is something to take into consideration. I don’t even believe murderers count on being caught in the first place.

I believe the Death Penalty to be punishment to fit the crime.

The Death Penalty is doled out to those people whose crime was so heinous that there is simply no other suitable punishment. No one is executed for stealing a piece of bubble gum, vandalism, or even manslaughter. People are executed for first degree murder, and the reason they are sentenced to death is because the way they killed someone was so egregious that allowing the criminal to spend his or her life in prison is not a stiff enough punishment.

The Death Penalty does accomplish one thing every single time it is used: it guarantees that person will never do harm to another creature again. It means that person will never escape, will never attack an innocent guard, will never take part in a prison riot, and will never be trouble to anyone else ever.

Murderers do get released and are sent back into society. It isn’t unusual for those convicts to go back out and commit more crimes, including more murders.

According to statistics from the Department of Justice, of the 108,580 persons released from prisons in 11 States in 1983, an estimated 62.5% were rearrested for a felony or serious misdemeanor within 3 years, 46.8% were reconvicted, and 41.4% returned to prison or jail.

How is a victim’s family going to feel when someone who has already committed a violent crime is released back into society to repeat the act? Do you honestly think the victim’s family is going to be compassionate, or do you think the victim’s family is going to be even more set off because that person shouldn’t have been released in the first place?

There are instances where it is improper to execute murderers. If a person is truly mentally challenged to a degree that he or she doesn’t grasp the scope of the crime, that person should not be executed. The same rule applies to children. The Death Penalty should be reserved for the true monsters that live in our midst.

I stand behind the Death Penalty as a means of true punishment. I have absolutely no sympathy for a monster to go out and beat, rape and murder someone and then ask me to have the decency to let them live. Where was there decency to let their victims live? Where was their compassion? Why should the murderer’s life be worth more than the victim’s?