Killing kids: It’s just plain wrong

Posted by Morbo

The recent Supreme Court ruling declaring the execution of juveniles unconstitutional is welcome and long overdue.

Still, Morbo finds himself somewhat troubled by part of the reasoning employed by the high court majority.

The court spoke of a “national consensus” against juvenile executions and noted that most other nations long ago abolished the practice.

This opens up a troubling question: Do one’s rights depend on an evolving consensus? What if the consensus never evolves? Equality for African Americans was a radical idea when first proposed. There was great resistance, and some states had to be brought around by force. The court recognized it could not keep a people in bondage while waiting for societal norms to change.

I would have resolved the matter of juvenile executions without opening the can of worms marked “national consensus.” Were I on the high court, I simply would have written, “The United States Constitution is designed to protect the fundamental human rights and human dignity of those who live under it. Executing juveniles offends both of those concepts, and thus violates the Constitution. Well, duh.” (OK, I might have left that last part off.)

I also agree with Carpetbagger that the opinion’s references to the practices of other countries just toss more raw meat to the right wing. While I’m normally all for antagonizing the kook right, it was not necessary in this case. The U.S. Constitution alone provides a complete justification for banning the execution of teens.

Perhaps the court majority felt compelled to veer into the consensus argument to make its decision more palatable in a country where capital punishment remains popular with the public. If so, I’m even more depressed because it’s more proof of one of my favorite theories these days: that Americans are increasingly unable to grasp a moral argument.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s lead opinion makes a passing reference to morals, asserting, “From a moral standpoint, it would be misguided to equate the failings of a minor with those of an adult, for a greater possibility exists that a minor’s character deficiencies will be reformed.” But most of his opinion is anchored in pragmatism.

Maybe it’s just me, but more and more arguments these days seem to rest on pragmatism — the assertion that some action should be taken (or not taken) because the end result would be something beneficial to the larger society.

An example: In a Washington Post column last Sunday, anti-poverty advocate David K. Shipler wrote powerfully about the ill effects of hunger on children’s academic skills. Shipler discussed the downward spiral that results when a child goes to school hungry and explained how chronic malnourishment can set a child back years.

Hardly anyone talks about hunger in America these days, and to me Shipler is a hero for being so dogged on the issue and writing about it so eloquently. Nothing in this post is meant to criticize him.

Yet I was saddened to see Shipler raise the argument he did: being hungry means a child will do poorly in school. Doing poorly in school sets a child back. This means he or she will not a fully productive member of society. We don’t want that, do we?

How about a simple moral argument instead: Children are the most vulnerable members of our society. Some children, in the most affluent country in the world, are going hungry. That is not acceptable. Our priorities are out of whack. What are we going to do about it?

Perhaps Shipler did not make that argument because he suspected it would fall on deaf ears. It usually does.

And that’s infuriating. Sadly, I saw the same pattern occur during the Abu Ghraib prison torture scandal. At that time, I remember reading letters to the editor where writers made arguments like this: We should not treat prisoners of war this way. If we do, other countries will think less of us and might not support our future endeavors.

It was as if some conservatives were bending over backwards to find a way to say the torture was wrong but could not bring themselves to just blast it on moral grounds.

That left them with pragmatism — what’s in it for us. Basing arguments on pragmatism alone is dangerous. In a world where many countries do in fact torture prisoners of war, one could just as easily argue that we should too. After all, we wouldn’t want other nations to think we were weak.

It’s like teaching your kids that they should not steal from others because if they do, they might get caught and put in jail. Not good enough. You don’t steal from others because they are your fellow human beings, and it offends your shared humanity to take their property. You not only violate their rights, you demean yourself.

There comes a time when a position must be backed by some moral force, or it is useless. In the case of Abu Ghraib, dammit, we just don’t treat people like that. We just don’t. Even though those Iraqis were “the enemy,” they are still humans — and it offends our shared sense of humanity to torture and humiliate them. That’s reason enough to punish those who did it and make certain it never happens again.

I knew that sooner or later we’d hear from a moron brigade that would assert that those prisoners deserved it. Sure enough, we did — we even heard that from some members of Congress, and to our nation’s ever-lasting shame, our president said nothing to repudiate it.

But the fact that some people have trouble grasping moral arguments or even reject them outright is no reason not to continue making those arguments. A nation will always have among it adults whose moral reasoning never gets beyond the level of a 10-year-old. (Tragically, they are allowed and even encouraged to vote.)

Everyone else, I must hope, is still capable of understanding an argument based on morals. I’d like to think that deep down most Americans are still decent (Ann Coulter excepted, of course) and that they have not totally accepted an “ends-justifies-the-means” philosophy. The Supreme Court had an opportunity to pitch a moral argument firmly anchored in the eloquence of our Constitution to the American people. It’s too bad they didn’t take it.