Death Not Right Punishment for McVeigh
For a cruel man like Timothy McVeigh, killing children is a way to drive home his perverse message of getting back at a corrupt government. His actions now are causing the very same government to kill him. This is just another step in proving that the government can also be a partner in murder. This is his diabolic scheme. His unrepentant statements of "I have no sympathy for them" treating the suffering of hundreds of people, alive or dead, as pawns in a chess game, is awful.
Mr. McVeigh needs us to think that we feel his sick message of terrorism against the government. Perhaps, in a perverse manner, he would like groups of white supremists to recognize his sacrifice as collateral damage during an act of freedom. His execution will make his a martyr and give license for more mayhem.
He can show the law abiding people that wish to see his execution that they too are inhuman. Just as he kills people, they kill people! Victims and executioners turn into the very same people that they rid the world of. How ghastly are his wishes to rob us all of sanity. His very perverse message of ridding the world of our government is carried further and further.
Why does the Bible execute people? One reason given by the rabbis is to set an example. When a life is taken in a premeditated fashion then lawlessness breaks out. If we want civilization to continue then murderers must be punished. Others will learn not to kill. A second reason for executing a murderer is to give the murderer a chance to be forgiven - his death is his execution. Therefore, before an execution takes place, the murderer must confess his crime.
Now there is a law in the Bible where we are forbidden to hand over some of our offspring to the idol known, in Biblical times, at Molech. And thou shalt not give any of thy seed to set them apart to Molech.(Lev. XVIII, 21.)
This form of idolatry, as explained in the Talmud, seventh chapter of Sanhedrin, consisted of kindling a fire and fanning its flame, whereupon the father would take some of his offspring and hand them over to the priest engaged in the service of that idol, and then cause them to pass through the fire from one side to the other.
One who willfully violates this prohibition is liable to death by stoning.
The law stipulates that one who causes all his offspring to pass through fire in the worship of Molech is not guilty under the terms of this Commandment. Rabbi Moses of Coucy (French Rabbi of the thirteenth century) explains that he who gives all his offspring to Molech commits such a heinous crime that no human punishment "the function of which, according to Jewish religious thought, is primarily expiatory" could be sufficient for him (Sefer Mitzvoth ha-Godol, Neg. Comm. 40).
Accordingly, it seems that as McVeigh will not confess, therefore his death gives him no forgiveness. No human punishment can be sufficient. More so, McVeigh wants to use his death as a platform to further his sick and perverted message.
When I think of punishment an execution I think of Rudolph Hess, the German leader second to Adolph Hitler. During World War II he flew to England and tried to have England surrender to the Germans. He was put into prison and later sentenced to solitary confinement in the Berlin government prison under Soviet rule. There he remained from 1947 to 1988. His sentence ended when Hess committed suicide. His long prison sentence and inoble death marked the end of a hateful man's life.
I know that dungeons are not kept anymore and that longtime prison sentences are expensive, however, it maybe wiser for us to stress the need to punish McVeigh quietly. His deeds are cruel and we need to not allow him the opportunity to hurt us again by a public execution. By preventing the publicizing of the execution we put closure to the victims' families.