The radical Muslim terrorists are continuing to define themselves by their brutality and disregard for human dignity and our common humanity. It is time for the United States to recognize the role of ideas in foreign policy and the court of world opinion.
In 2007, 88% of the executions worldwide occurred in China, Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and the United States. This is the company that we keep, and they are quick to point to the United States to justify their use of coercive power and the death penalty.
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Kirsten Powers Conservative Death Penalty Column
Last weeks Road to Majority conservative confab had an unlikely exhibitor in the conference hall: opponents of the death penalty.
The activists were in the right place because their opposition stems from conservative principles.
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Reconsidering the Death Penalty in Ohio
A major unacknowledged but obvious important conflict in international affairs, for example, is between moderate and radical Muslims, with the radical Muslims being defined as those who are willing to use lethal force based on religion as a means to their ends. This has included stoning women to death for infidelity, honor killings, assassinations for “blasphemy”, executions by the Taliban and al-Qaeda of farmers and journalists for political control, suicide bombings and terrorist attacks. As usual, the ends are used to justify the means. The means, however, define any group as much as the ends, and the means often come to distort the ends. We should do everything we can to focus world opinion on such issues. Abolishing the death penalty in Ohio and then our nation would help to do so. It would also help us understand and convey that the primary moral values in our constitutional democracy include equality understood as a respect for human dignity and our common humanity in addition to freedom.
