-Caveat Lector- >From TheNewAustralian http://www.newaus.com.au/news136romei2.html {{<Begin>}} Murdoch's Australian slags Bush and the US on capital punishment The Legalist No. 136, 4 -10 October 1999 Stephen Romei My idol Thomas Jefferson believed totally in freedom of the press. His attitude was that "polluted vehicles" would sink under their own iniquity. The public would find out lying publications, and thereby be inoculated against deception. He opposed migration of the common law of defamation to American shores, and hence the great and continuing debate about "prior restraint" in American media law. Of course, Jefferson himself has recently been subjected to a foul defamatory attack1 over his relationship with a servant girl, the obvious motive of the attack being to blunt objections to the loose sexual morals of William Jefferson Clinton. There is also the famous paradox in the Book of Proverbs, which George Orwell used to preface his book Homage to Catalonia, which exposed for all time the Stalinist manipulation of the Spanish Republican cause for which he had fought. It goes something like this (my Bible and my copy of Homage not immediately to hand): Speak not to a fool, lest thou become like him; Speak to a fool, lest he be wise in his own conceit. In other words, do you lower yourself by answering an unfair or untrue allegation made by some ratbag, or do you stay true to your own standards and ignore it? Well, my editor Gerry Jackson has made it repeatedly clear that when it comes to the Left it is necessary to get down in the dirt and fight: just as Orwell deemed it necessary to expose the Comintern's internecine war against the Spanish democrats, even though this meant discrediting the Republican cause in the eyes of many and playing into the hands of Phalangist sympathisers. All of which prologomena brings me to Stephen Romei's article on capital punishment in Rupert Murdoch's Australian (Some killers die, others win votes, 29/9). It was a truly foul little piece, and not worthy of attention except as indicating the continuing need for a clean-up of The Australian's act at least its reportage and editorial pages, while its business section continues to be quite good. Romei's piece purports to be written in deprecation of capital punishment, reproducing the cliched Left-liberal responses, "judicial murder", etc. In fact it is another rabid attack on the leading Republican Presidential contender, George Bush Jr. Romei acknowledges that capital punishment is popular in the U.S. He does not pause to consider why. That it may have something to do with the popular demand for law and order, especially from the poor who are most vulnerable, eludes his passionate concern. His thrust is of course that Bush is playing the populist, pandering to the mob. Likewise of course, he makes no mention of the executions regularly sanctioned by Democrat Governors, notably Bill Clinton when in office in Arkansas. Romei also omits to mention that the execution of the multiple murderess was ordered not by Governor Bush himself but by the Lieutenant-Governor, a Democrat. But such qualifications and nuances are wasted on a Leftie in full cry. By the way we at The New Australian are not extreme Tory hangers and floggers. On the contrary we can envisage long periods of civil tranquillity when capital punishment falls into abeyance. But a state which wilfully abn egates it as a last recourse fails an essential function. Murders of police in the course of their duties are especially heinous, putting civil government in peril. Why are journalists palliative of any act of indecency by the Left, and yet twist themselves into knots attacking Right-wing figures? My answer is careerism: Many of them carry a general's baton in their knapsack, looking forward to a top Government job (like Ambassador Strobe Talbot ex-of Time, or down here Ambassador Bruce Grant ex-of The Age). Even a fairy-floss controversialist like John Pilger would probably welcome a secondment to U NESCO. My editor, however, disagrees: in his opinion they are motivated by pure ideology. To the extent that Romei makes a case, this publication has already dealt with the subject. (See Privatizing Capital Punishment in the archives.) We view capital punishment existentially rather than morally given the laps ed nature of humanity people will go on killing each other for all kinds of motives. What the Government can and must do is restrict and rationalize the act of human retribution. A jury trial ensures that the right murder er is identified, and removes the matter "from the streets". The act of capital punishment itself, after all the legal procedures, guarantees the reality of the sanction. Not to exercise the sanction when legally indicate d is to abdicate, to hand back retribution to the streets, to the gangs, to the warlords, to fraternities within the police force covering for each other; to (in summary) the endless cycle of familial or tribal vengeance as, for instance, so graphically depicted in the Icelandic Sagas. These are not easy arguments, and not easily made. Churchill and Eden opposed British participation in the War Crimes trials of German military leaders, saying it would be more just (especially given the co-participation of Stalin's "jurists") to shoot these human horrors by firing squad out of hand. Yet Lord Wright and Justice Jackson made the case that the atrocities committed transcended retribution by the normal "mopping up operations " characteristic of total war. They needed formal treatment, to stand as a grotesque historical monument, as a reminder and rebuke. >From the sublime, or serious, to the ridiculous and pathetic: Romei argues, >heart-on-sleeve, that it would be better to gaol the Texan racist murderers for life, >in the hope that fellow inmates would kill them in the show er-block. This sick little argument really refutes itself what an abdication of justice! It nevertheless says something about the mentality of the journalistic Left. (Romei makes another suggestion for retribution too nau seating to repeat. What a perverse mixture of vengeful blood-lust and histrionic compassion!) Texas is an interesting subject to a lawyer. It was once an Independent Republic, before that a state of Mexico. It still has its own 'Secretary of State', unlike any other U.S. State. Sam Houston tried to keep it out of the Civil War; it had no black slavery. (The Confederacy was in tacit alliance with Mexico.) The historical relationship with Mexico and the conflict-of-laws (especially land law and irredentist claims) is fascinating following the cession of "Coahuila-y-Tejas" and the Treaty of Hidalgo-Guadeloupe. Of course, we are as likely to get an intelligent understanding of Texan history and law from The Australian under its current management as we are to get unbiased reporting of the Presidential contest. 1trashing jefferson Visit The Media Wall of Shame and see scores of articles exposing media dishonesty and hypocrisy. Return to The New Australian {{<End>}} A<>E<>R ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. -Marcel Proust + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it, no matter if I have said it, unless it agrees with your own reason and your common sense." --Buddha + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + A merely fallen enemy may rise again, but the reconciled one is truly vanquished. -Johann Christoph Schiller, German Writer (1759-1805) + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + It is preoccupation with possessions, more than anything else, that prevents us from living freely and nobly. -Bertrand Russell + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + "Everyone has the right...to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers." 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