Posted on 06/22/2011 1:07:19 PM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
So, the United States is One Nation, as the Pledge of Allegiance has it?
I sometimes wonder how that can possibly be so.
Yesterday, lawmakers here in New York were on the verge of making gay marriage legal.
Although the issue is controversial, it's a sign that the state is civilized and considerate, understanding that people should be allowed to love each other whatever their sexual orientation.
At the same time the state of Texas executed a mentally handicapped man by lethal injection.
How can one country produce such wildly differing moral landscapes?
How can one state prepare to take a massive step into the 21st century, while not 1,000 miles away another part of the same country travels back in time to the dark ages?
To be fair, the executed man, Milton Mathis, is not exactly the sort you'd want your daughter bringing home. He shot dead two people in a Houston crack house, and left a 15-year-old girl paralyzed.
But he had an IQ of 62. Psychologists routinely regard any adult with an IQ under 70 as being mentally handicapped. Mathis could not perform some of the most basic functions, such as dressing himself.
It was like executing a five year old child, and his death is an indelible stain on the state of Texas.
To those who say Mathis was smart enough to pull the trigger, there is a reason that there is an age of criminal responsibility. Elsewhere, children and those are children in an adult's body, are deemed to be unaware of the consequences of their actions and therefore not liable to the criminal law.
Mathis should have been detained for a very long time in a secure mental hospital, and he should have received treatment or therapy for his disability before, if and when it was deemed fit and proper, he was released into the community.
That would have been the civilized thing to do.
Instead, Governor Rick Perry, who vetoed state legislation ten years ago that would have outlawed executing the mentally disabled, gave the go ahead for the monsters to ram home the plunger on Tuesday night.
Perry, incidentally, is many people's tip as GOP candidate for the presidency in 2012.
If you live in one a state such as New York or Massachussetts, where they outlaw the death penalty, or in New Jersey where it has not been used since 1976, or even in Pennsylvania, which has resorted to it only three times since 1976, and if you are tempted to back Perry for President, remember Milton Mathis.
And just consider what electing Rick Perry's brand of medieval populism would say about the United States.
Little Tony sounds like he routinely gets a penile implant.
Instead of running for president of the failed USA, Perry should be investigating the documents annexing Texas in 1845 to see if any loopholes can be found that would free us from the coming financial fate of this country.
Texas has everything but chocolate, coffee and tea. We could trade our natural gas, oil, and super-abundance of agricultural products for those little items.
What a great day when we would no longer have to bear the shame of being yoked with the ungodly of both coasts, who are calling down the judgment of God upon our land.
That's only wrong when Christians do it. /s
After reading what his final words were he sure knew what he was doing.
The writer is trying his best to put one word after the other. He might be ineligible for the death penalty if he killed someone in TX under our mental disability laws regarding such.
Leftists nationwide live in abject fear and rage that someone is going to do something outside of their control that they don’t approve of.
Right. Couldn’t dress himself, but could find a way to get a gun, learn how to use it, and learn how to navigate his way to a crack house. I guess when he was on death row, somebody had to dress him every day.
Milton Mathis was sentenced to death for the murder of Travis Brown III, 24, and Daniel Hibbard, 31. The two men were shot to death in their home in Houston, Texas. Mathis was 19 at the time. The victims were shot in the head with a .45 calibre pistol. Police believed the motive for the shootings was robbery.
On December 15, 1998, at approximately 8:00 or 8:30 a.m., a woman and her 15-year old daughter went to the home of a man named Chris. Chris rented rooms in his home to Brown and Hibbard. Travis Brown and Milton Mathis were in Travis’s room. While the woman, her daughter and Hibbard sat in Chris’s room, Chris went into the kitchen. Shortly thereafter, Chris heard gunshots from Travis’s room and turned to see Mathis exiting the room with a gun in his hand. Mathis claimed that Travis had just shot himself. Chris told Mathis to put the gun down, however Mathis ordered Chris and the other three back into Chris’s room where he walked up to the girl and shot her in the head, leaving her alive but paralyzed from the neck down. Mathis then shot Daniel Hibbard in the head, killing him.
Mathis was subsequently tried by a jury and convicted of capital murder. The jury then returned answers to special issues submitted under the Texas Criminal Code, which required imposition of the death penalty. On September 21, 1999, the trial court entered the judgment and sentence of death. On February 13, 2002, the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the conviction.
I second your motion..!!
I second your motion..!!
That’s really what it comes down to -
the god of this age, the prince of the air, and all his followers in this world
vs
the Prince of Peace.
In a civilized society, he wouldn’t have murdered two people.
The people Mathis murdered in cold blood didn’t get free food, housing, clothing, or healthcare. They’re dead.
God judges, we don’t. We just arrange the meeting.
Can you believe that!?
"You were at the wrong place at the wrong time."
http://blog.chron.com/thepeacepastor/2011/06/where-was-jesus-in-huntsville/
The “peace pastor” wonders where Jesus was during the execution.
My answer was simple - Jesus was busy taking care of the people Mathis murdered.
SO true.
They’re fleeing NY by the bus load.
This is a very important point. In my own (Catholic) Church it is possible to be "civilly" married but not considered married by the Church. In fact, it is quite common.
Throughout Western history "church" marriage and "civil" marriage were either legally the same, or so closely equivalent that most people THOUGHT that they were legally the same. Many still hold this to be true but in fact it is not.
So that a considerable amount of energy is spent on protecting "civil" marriage from incompatibility with "church" marriage. I'm not saying this is a bad thing necessarily, it may in fact be a good thing.
But the larger point, I think, is that "civil" society in general is accelerating away from "church" society at a very rapid rate and has been for some time. Marriage is just the latest symptom of this separation. Abortion, common public indecency, public homosexuality were yesterday's battlefields.
My own take is that we are approaching a new phase of history in the West, in which Christianity, once the very essence of commonly held values in the dominant culture, is increasingly alien to it. This is akin to the place of Christianity in the pre-Christian Roman Empire.
I am thinking that neither we Christians, nor society in general, will much like what results from this separation.
Yes, unfortunately I can. Read a book on death row inmates. That seemed to be a constant among them.
The Gods of the Copybook Headings
-Rudyard Kipling
AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.
We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.
With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.
When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "Stick to the Devil you know."
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "The Wages of Sin is Death."
In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: "If you don't work you die."
Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.
As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool's bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.