If current trends continue, next year’s presidential race promises to be a close one. The president’s natural advantages of incumbency likely will be offset by a weak economy and low public approval ratings, thereby creating an opening for a strong challenger.
Most agree that the focus will be on a handful of battleground states. Among these states could be several in the Midwest -– Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and perhaps even my home state of Minnesota.
There is something else distinctive about the “purple” states I’ve listed above: All but Ohio have abolished the death penalty. And, in Ohio, there is a strong tradition of clemency granted to those on death row, the chief justice of the state supreme court has called for a review of the administration of the death penalty, public opposition is growing, and only half a dozen executions are scheduled for all of 2012 (each of which is likely to draw considerable and controversial attention in Ohio).
Now in the typical presidential race, the death penalty never becomes a salient issue or provides a distinctive basis for choosing between the candidates. There are very few federal death penalty statutes and very few federal death penalty sentences. There have been only three federal executions since 2001 and none since 2003. Moreover, not since Michael Dukakis in 1988 has any Democratic nominee for president opposed the death penalty, thus taking the issue off the table.
Election Year 2012 could be different –- not because a majority of Americans are opposed to the death penalty (that sadly is not yet true) or even because President Obama and his eventual Republican challenger will have meaningfully contrasting positions on federal executions. Instead, as a more subtle and sub-surface factor, an aggressively pro-death penalty candidate, like Texas Governor Rick Perry, could face a small but steady erosion of support in key states, perhaps just enough to tip the election to President Obama.
Consider states like Iowa and Minnesota, in each of which I’ve spent about a decade of my adult life. Neither state is a high crime state, despite long since have abandoned executions as a form of punishment. While Republicans in each state occasionally make noises about restoring the death penalty, it tends to be a rhetorical device to signal toughness on crime, not a serious policy proposal. With some exceptions, Iowans and Minnesotans across the political spectrum are more or less satisfied not to have a death penalty and pleased that their state governments are not spending tens of millions on death penalty cases (in contrast with states like Texas and Illinois).
Proudly pointing to hundreds of executions in one’s home state may be an applause line before a partisan Republican audience, especially in the South. But in states like Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio, on which the presidential election is likely to hinge, that record induces queasiness in a not-insignificant number of Republicans and even more Independents.
First, Republican and Republican-leaning voters, especially in the upper Midwest, are not uniformly in favor of the death penalty. Republicans and Independent from Catholic and other perspectives often question or reject the death penalty as a morally legitimate tool of criminal justice. To be sure, given his unacceptable views on protection of life for the unborn, President Obama is unlikely to be the beneficiary of Catholic and other pro-life voters who are uneasy with an aggressively pro-death-penalty Republican nominee. But some of these voters might simply withhold support from a Republican candidate who is too readily and energetically associated with executions.
Second, in tight budgetary times, Independents who otherwise would trend Republican might look askance at a candidate who has made the financially foolish decision to spend millions of dollars on each execution, rather than choosing to devote those increasingly precious dollars to hiring more police officers, creating alternative juvenile sentencing schemes, etc.
Finally, given that at least one innocent person likely has been executed in Texas under Governor Perry’s watch (here and here), his denial that he has lost any sleep or struggled over these cases is disconcerting. If he becomes the Republican presidential nominee, we may expect powerful film documentaries and a plethora of reports about "Texas Justice" in death penalty cases to hound the candidate throughout the fall.
To be sure, given that the number of lives taken by the death penalty in the United States (even including Texas) remains a tiny, tiny percentage of those taken each year by abortion, protection of life for the unborn remains a much more pressing question in the national forum. Still, the prospect of even a small slippage of the Republican voter base in the Midwest for a candidate seen as overly aggressive and unduly callous about dealing death should prompt careful consideration, thoughtful evaluation, and soul-searching by both the candidates and voters in the upcoming Republican primaries.
Greg Sisk
Thursday, September 15, 2011
Last week, Rob Vischer asked whether we should be concerned that the audience at a presidential debate cheered the death penalty and that Governor Rick Perry said he never struggled or lost any sleep over the possibility that an innocent person might be executed. Others carried forward that discussion (here and here). Perry also insisted that Texas provided a rigorous criminal process to ensure that such a travesty would not occur.
In today's Minneapolis Star-Tribune, two prominent Minnesota lawyers who had worked on post-conviction remedies in a Texas death penalty case begged to differ (here). Tom Johnson (who is a former county attorney for the county in which Minneapolis is located) and Greg Merz told the story of the case in which they worked, in which the prosecution offered either of two friends a pass from the death penalty if he would testify against the other, an offer accepted by the defendant's friend who subsequently recanted (but that didn't matter under Texas procedures).
The defendant's trial lawyer in this capital murder case failed to object to a juror who expressed the opinion that executing a few innocent people to speed up criminal justice might be better for society, failed to cross-examine the primary witness against him, called no witnesses for the defense, failed to adduce any evidence about the defendant's mental disabilities, and made a closing argument in the apparent mistaken understanding that it was the sentencing phase and guilt was already established. Even with mental, cultural, and educational limitations, the defendant could tell his attorney was incompetent and asked the judge repeatedly for a new lawyer, to no avail. The end of the story, of course, given that this happened in Texas, was that he was convicted, sentenced to death, post-conviction remedies were denied, and, under Perry's watch, he was put to death.
As Johnson and Merz conclude:
On nights when the Texas executioner is at work, there is good reason for Perry to go sleepless.
Greg Sisk
Sunday, September 4, 2011
In a column on the front-page of the Sunday editorial section of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, Mitch Pearlstein of the Center of the American Experiment writes about the “fragmentation” of American families as “the explanation for economic disparity that we too readily sweep under the rug.”
The statistics for Hennepin County, which is Minneapolis and its suburbs, are deeply depressing: 18.3 percent of white children are born out of wedlock (which is hardly reassuring), while 84.3 percent of African-American children are born to a single parent. To be a black child in Minneapolis living with both parents is truly to be a minority. How ineffably sad! And the social science research confirms how powerful is the negative impact on economic progress, individual opportunity, educational gains, future marriage prospects for children, etc. As Pearlstein says:
Simply put, so long as fragmentation rates remain as huge as they are, enormous numbers of children will keep doing inadequately in school (and, as a result, in economic life) –- no matter how much money we spend, no matter how boldly politicians lead and no matter how passionately teachers teach.
What can we do? We of course need to address the decline of marriage, which is not helped by the ongoing depreciation of marriage into an expression of self-fulfillment for adults rather than as a stable home for a mother and father in which to raise children. The Catholic Church must maintain its moral stance on marriage, while somehow making that teaching more present and practically meaningful to a new generation living in a moral-cultural abyss. The outrageous statistics of family broken-ness may provide a starting place for the discussion. The current sad state of affairs is a testament to the dangers that follow radical changes in fundamental social structure, which began in the 1960s but continue today. The Catholic message is an answer to that crisis.
In the meantime, how do we help those who are trapped in the cycle of family fragmentation, that is, children who grow up without two parents and who too often are left without the educational benefits and discipline and healthy attitudes that adhere to children growing up in a stable and unbroken family? Spending more money on welfare programs or public schools or this or that social experiment hasn’t been working and certainly cannot do all of the work.
Pearlstein says the answer is educational choice. And I read him as focusing less on the academic quality of private schools than on the different culture and community that a private school can foster, supplying the very things that at-risk children need. The research confirms that private school options for children from single parent homes bears fruit by making progress and maturity into adulthood sustainable over the years:
I asked this principal of a Catholic elementary school in the Twin Cities what her institution's mission was. “To manifest God’s love in every child,” she said, or words close to that. As educational mission statements go, this was one of the briefest yet meatiest ever drafted.
We on the Mirror of Justice have posted regularly about the importance of our Catholic schools and why we as Catholics should support them. Creating opportunities and building a support system for those at risk by family fragmentation is one more reason to maintain and strengthen our Catholic schools.
Friday, September 2, 2011
Early on during President Obama's decision to intervene (by air) in Libya, when he was taking shots from both left and right, I offered my thanks on this blog for his decision to avert a massacre by the malignant Gaddafi regime. More recently, I've been much less sanguine about the consistency and principled nature of Obama's foreign policy. But I stand by my belief that he made the right call in Libya (even if he later offered implausible arguments for why American military action there did not implicate the War Powers Resolution). Recent events in Libya confirm the wisdom of President's Obama choice here, as well as that of Secretary of State Clinton who had urged the President to take action.
In the New York Times, columnist Nicholas Kristoff's encouraging report best sums it up, with important qualifications as well; herewith a couple of excerpts:
Americans are not often heroes in the Arab world, but as nonstop celebrations unfold here in the Libyan capital I keep running into ordinary people who learn where I’m from and then fervently repeat variants of the same phrase: “Thank you, America!”
* * *
President Obama took a huge political risk, averted a massacre and helped topple an odious regime. To me, the lesson is not that we should barge into Syria or Yemen — I don’t think we should — but that on rare occasions military force can advance human rights. Libya has so far been a model of such an intervention.
Catholic teaching cautions us to be careful about the use of military force. Catholic writers and thinkers too often extend that to opposing every use of military force. Acknowledging that "military force can advance human rights" needs to be part of that discussion.
Wednesday, August 17, 2011
Rod Dreher, on the RealClearReligion site, observes how Muslims in Great Britain have responded to the riots with community solidarity and cooperative efforts to protect neighborhoods and businesses. He notes a study of teenagers in an impoverished neighborhood in Birmingham and how differently Muslim kids saw the world and their future:
In 2009, Britain's Learning for Life project released a study of the beliefs and attitudes of 14-to-16 year olds living in the impoverished Hodge Hill neighborhood of Birmingham, Britain's second-largest city and a target for looters. The contrast of views of Hodge Hill's Muslims and non-Muslims is remarkable, and instructive.
Though everyone studied lives in the same neighborhood, and in relative poverty, the character profile of Muslim kids was far different. The report found that Hodge Hill's Muslims took religion seriously (unlike the others, who had no real engagement with religious thought or practice), and come from strong families guided by engaged fathers. Among the Muslims, parents and children alike are optimistic about their futures, with their aspirations "often centered around responsibility to the family."
The Learning for Life researchers found that Muslim students were more engaged with their communities, "get on better with their neighbors," and that "there is a strong sense of Islamic solidarity within the community."
And there's this, from the Learning for Life report:
Muslim students tended to think that Britain was fairer. One remarked that 'it's what you make of it innit? Seems fair to me' -- suggesting that they had a higher level of self-control than other groups. Non-Muslim students were more critical of Britain, commenting that it had done little for them.
Muslims in America are very similar and distinctive in this regard. As reported by the Pew Research Center in 2007, in its comprehensive study of Muslims Americans, a larger percentage of Muslims (71 percent) than the general public (64 percent) has internalized the American work ethics and believe they can move ahead through hard work. Overall, 78 percent of Muslims in the United States report that they are either happy or very happy. A very recent new Gallup poll found that, among all religious groups, Muslim Americans are the most optimistic about their future.
Not only do these studies confirm, contrary to stereotype, that Muslims in the West are mainstream, involved in their communities, and good neighbors, but these studies show again the vital importance of faith for building strong communities and instilling healthy values in the next generation. As I read these reports about Muslims in Great Britain and the United States, it's hard not to think of the same being true of Catholics and Catholic communities in the United States in decades past.
We as legal scholars and political commentators are apt to think that our law reform and public policy efforts are important and hold the answers to our social problems. But I continue to think that our parishes and parish schools are likely to be making a bigger difference for our communities and our future. As our Muslim neighbors are showing us, we should not be waiting for government and new social programs to fill the hole in the soul of our community. We need to renew our own commitments to our parishes and Catholic schools, which are teaching our children how to thrive and how to build satisfying lives grounded in Catholic faith and moral values. God/Allah bless our Muslim neighbors for reminding us of these first principles.
Greg Sisk
Monday, August 15, 2011
Kevin Lee's post, quoting another blog, attributes the recent London riots to the disparity in wealth between the rich and poor in capitalist societies, warning that the same could occur here.
Others see the London riots as teaching rather a different message. Herewith a couple examples:
First, from the Land Down Under, this excerpt from an editorial in The Australian:
What we have on the streets of London and elsewhere are welfare-state mobs. The youth who are shattering their own communities represent a generation that has been suckled by the state more than any generation before it. They live in urban territories where the sharp-elbowed intrusion of the welfare state during the past 30 years has pushed aside older ideals of self-reliance and community spirit. The march of the welfare state into every aspect of urban, less well-off people's existences, from their financial wellbeing to their child-rearing habits and even into their emotional lives, with the rise of therapeutic welfarism designed to ensure that the poor remain "mentally fit", has undermined individual resourcefulness and social bonding. The antisocial youthful rioters are the end-product of this antisocial system of state intervention. * * *
Nurtured in large part by the welfare state, financially, physically and educationally, socialised more by the agents of welfarism than by their own neighbours or local representatives, these youth have little moral or emotional attachment to their communities. Their rioting reveals not that Britain is in a time warp in 1981 or 1985 with politically motivated riots against the police, but that the tentacle-like spread of the welfare state into every area of people's lives has utterly zapped old social bonds, the relationship of sharing and solidarity that once existed in working-class communities.
Second, from Theodore Dalrymple writing in the City Journal of the Manhattan Institute:
The riots are the apotheosis of the welfare state and popular culture in their British form. A population thinks (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class) that it is entitled to a high standard of consumption, irrespective of its personal efforts; and therefore it regards the fact that it does not receive that high standard, by comparison with the rest of society, as a sign of injustice. It believes itself deprived (because it has often been told so by intellectuals and the political class), even though each member of it has received an education costing $80,000, toward which neither he nor—quite likely—any member of his family has made much of a contribution; indeed, he may well have lived his entire life at others’ expense, such that every mouthful of food he has ever eaten, every shirt he has ever worn, every television he has ever watched, has been provided by others. Even if he were to recognize this, he would not be grateful, for dependency does not promote gratitude.
Third, from Shaun Bailey writing in the Guardian:
The biggest problem our country has faced over the last two decades is that everyone thinks the government should do everything. Personal responsibility and community responsibility have been replaced by state responsibility. If the riots have shown us anything, it is that this approach does not work.
While Catholic social thinkers traditionally have been drawn to class warfare themes, tending to see antisocial behavior as rooted in economic injustice, is that really likely to have played a meaningful role in the opportunistic thievery and wanton destruction of their own neighborhoods exhibited by the London rioters? Or might it be the case that at least some of the fault may be placed with the overly government-centric approach of liberal social experiments, which has bequeathed European welfare states with multiple generations of welfare dependency and the ever-expanding state, with the inevitable withering away of personal responsibility, neighborhood solidarity, and community (including faith-based) charity?
Greg Sisk
Wednesday, July 27, 2011
The former chair of the board of Catholic Relief Services, Archbishop Timothy Dolan, once summed up its work by saying: "“At Catholic Relief Services, we don’t just help people who are Catholic; we help people because we are Catholic.” When Jesus taught the disciples about the Kingdom of Heaven, the very first virtue that He ascribes to the blessed was that "I was hungry and you gave me something to eat." Matthew 25:34.
Millions are at risk in Somalia from the famine, especially the children. In the Minneapolis Star-Tribune yesterday, a photograph of a small Somali boy taken by Schalk Van Zuydam of the Associated Press is printed at this link. It is hard to look at this image, but please do look and do not go on with your day without taking some step to help these children.
The causes of the tragedy unfolding in Somalia are multiple; the blame falls on many for this catastrophe, beyond the weather; the long-term solution in an area of anarchy is hard to envision. But the need of the moment is dire. Take a moment to contribute to immediate relief for the starving; and clicking here is one easy way to do it.
