What Ever Happened To Mercy? Did Torture Kill It?
By Al Cronkrite The Covenant News ~ December 01, 2007
Several years ago we had a neighbor whose attractive young, single daughter studied law enforcement at the local community college and became a Sheriffs Deputy. She visited us in her new uniform and I asked her what she had learned about discretion in making arrests. She stoutly declared that all who break the law are guilty and should be handcuffed and subjected to proper punishment.
My wife and I watched an old Andy Hardy movie. Judge Hardy’s daughter had a date with a young man and did not return at the usual 11:00 PM. Her brother, Andy, declared he would go looking for her because he heard a rumor that the man she was dating was a drinker and he was concerned about her reputation. He found them and sure enough the man had drunk too much and driven the car into a tree. Neither of them was hurt so Andy towed the car and brought his sister home. They sobered up the boy friend, took him home and arranged to have his car repaired. The following day the young drinker arrived at Judge Hardy’s door and apologized for his behavior indicating his willingness to receive whatever punishment the judge decided. Judge Hardy reminded the young man that he could have him arrested and jailed but in a merciful action said he had decided against it.
In our Florida town, an eighty year old man who had been stopped on the Interstate for speeding was separated from his new Cadillac, handcuffed and taken to jail for resisting a traffic ticket. This same scenario was just repeated in Utah where a taser was used on a young man who also resisted signing an assent to a speeding violation he had not committed. View a video of the Utah arrest here.
Several years ago I purchased a small motor scooter to use around town. I wrote a short description of my experience with our local police. Read it here.
United States authorities have stopped using a conciliatory, innocent until proven guilty approach to law enforcement and replaced it with a quick, cruel meting out of the most demeaning and stiffest retribution the law will allow. Handcuffs are applied to fathers in their homes in front of their children and to business executives in their offices in front of their employees. Arrogant policemen in every city, town, and village are endowed with the power to harass, intimidate, and falsely arrest almost at will. They demand instant conformance and for the slightest resistance will find a legal infraction that will cost you money or jail time. Our airports are teaming with intellectually challenged goons who thrive on demeaning citizens by ordering them to remove their shoes, searching their belonging, groping their private parts, and intimidating their persons.
Our government denies the use of torture but the procedures used against prisoners clearly fit into any sane definition of the word. Extended periods in solitary confinement, darkness, light, squalor, or a particular physical position are all forms of torture. Water boarding repeatedly brings on the agonizing panic of drowning. Unlimited, helpless imprisonment takes away all hope and is a living torture. Torture, which has become the policy of our government, might be considered an antonym for mercy.
When entire human races are publicly excoriated by a deceitful propaganda machine, people begin to hate them and are willing to support cruelty and murder. Mercy flees from their minds and they willingly overlook egregious sins. Hundreds of thousands of United States citizens who claim to follow the Prince of Peace hate and seek to kill millions of Arabs created in the image of God.
Rudy Giuliani is a front running candidate for President of the United States. He is a former Federal prosecutor whose highly publicized prosecutorial successes would have better served society had they all failed.
James Bovard in his book “Lost Rights, The Destruction of American Liberty” describes Giulinani’s raid on the financial firm Princeton/Newport. In the initial use of the RICO statute against a financial organization during the Christmas season in 1987, he sent forty federal agents with automatic weapons and bullet proof vests into Princeton/Newport’s offices where they carted off 275 boxes of documents. The indictment was for violating an “arcane” tax law. They confiscated all company assets, including the homes of the corporate officials, bankrupting the business - there was no trial and no proof of guilt. The charges were eventually dismissed but the losses to the individuals involved were never recouped. Read the rest of the story here.
Several years ago, I had an extensive internet correspondence with an Orthodox Jewish man who lives in our town. It was from this in depth interchange that I came to know the intransigent nature of Judaism and to denounce it for the insidious militant influence that undergirds it. Our association turned into a religious war. However, I still admire this man and learned an important lesson from him. He informed me that the Laws God gave to Moses were not to be administered to the letter but were to be tempered with mercy.
He did not like King David but the mercy he pointed out to me was evident in God’s dealing with the King’s crime. The crime was murder and murder requires the death penalty. This powerful King repented with the statement that he had sinned against the Lord and the prophet Nathan advised him that God had “taken way” his sin and that he would not die.
The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is a merciful God. He was merciful to King David, his chosen instrument, and He has been merciful to me and countless other Christians whom He has selected to be drawn to the propitiation of the Savior. Mercy is a characteristic of our God.
The assault on peace and order that has been perpetrated on United States society has been successful in bringing a chaos that appears to have no remedy other than police brutality. The judges in our courts have forsaken immutable legal standards and resorted to decisions involving their opinions. This malignancy has infected the highest court in our land.
Law in human hands creates chaos in society and will bring on tyranny. As justice fails, laws become less and less effective, recalcitrant citizens more and more aggressive and enforcement more and more barbarous.
While Godly eugenics call for the elimination of murder and incorrigible rebellion through capital punishment, humanistic reason seeks to allow murderers and rebels to live in jails at tax payers expense and often to return to society to father children, to kill again and produce progeny that may do the same. Victims of crimes remain victims and when the criminal is jailed they are required through taxes to contribute to his sustenance. Many citizens are aghast at the idea of the family of a murder victim being required to stone the perpetrator to death but in our humanistic system well over a decade often goes by before a murderer is executed and no longer a living mockery to the victim’s family.
The humanistic legal system being used in the United States is not only inconsistent and unfair but is the instrument of wholesale injustices throughout society.
Humanistic laws bring tyranny and death; God’s immutable Laws enforced with mercy bring justice, peace, and prosperity. The choice is between freedom under the dominion of a merciful God or tyranny under the cruelty of a humanistic regime.
“Then David said to Gad, ‘I am in great distress. Let us now fall into the hand of the Lord for His mercies are great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man’.” II Samuel 24:14