My Thoughts
C. S. Lewis, most familiar perhaps to the newer vintage for the Chronicles of Narnia, wrote often on theology and ethics. In 1949 he published an essay in 20th Century: An Australian Philosophy Quarterly, entitled “The Humanitarian Theory of Punishment,” in which he argued for what he called a more “traditional” retributive theory over one that is solely directed to the rehabilitation of criminals and/or the deterrence of potential criminals. As Lewis argued, whereas many have dismissed the concept of retribution as nothing more than a veil for vengeance and barbarism, it turns out upon analysis that it is the removal of retribution from our notion of criminal justice that truly has a dehumanizing effect.
It is only as deserved or undeserved that a sentence can be just or unjust. … There is no sense in talking about a “just deterrent” or a “just cure.” We demand of a deterrent not whether it is just but whether it will deter. We demand of a cure not whether it is just but whether it succeeds. Thus when we cease to consider what the criminal deserves and consider only what will cure him or deter others, we have tacitly removed him from the sphere of justice altogether; instead of a person, a subject of rights, we now have a mere object, a patient, a “case.”
Lewis further argued that a criminal, under such a humanitarian system of punishment will have his fate decided by psychotherapists or sociologists rather than by judges trained in jurisprudence. Instead of a definite sentence imposed by a judge, the criminal will receive an indefinite sentence that can only be lifted when the so-called experts consider him cured. Followed consistently, the humanitarian theory might impose a much more severe penalty upon a harmless but difficult-to-cure criminal than upon a murderer who is cured relatively quickly.
The humanitarian theory, in extremis, leads us inevitably to today. One can begin to see why it is practical for a murderer to avoid contracting the virus inside be freed to contract it outside. Naturally, such parole must be conditioned upon mandatory masking: enforceable outside, unenforceable inside? It makes no sense but nonsense without a lick of commonsense makes no sense at all.
Who knows when or where this will end other than a total train wreck and most can see it coming a Texas country mile away? Anyone who travels the Southern route (I-10) will swear they can see the El Paso skyline from San Antonio, 551 miles distant. The highway is straight and flat, adorned with pterodactyl soldiers in silent salute to the occasional passerby; that, in my book, is a Texas country mile.
Just my thoughts for a Tuesday, for what it is worth.
