Tuesday, June 20, 2023

Part I

---

What Punishment Fits the Crime? The Pittsburgh Tree of Life Shooter Found Guilty of Horrific Crimes, Raising Debate Over Capital Punishment

Crime and punishment is not only the title of one of the most famous novels of modern times, it is also one of the oldest dramas of human experience. Crime and punishment brings out all the deepest questions of morality, of the essence of truth and the knowability of right and wrong. And of course, going back to another artifact of the modern world, it has to do with the relationship between crime and punishment. As in the words of the Mikado, the punishment should fit the crime, the punishment should always fit the crime, but that’s where we get to some very contested issues in the modern age.

All that comes to light in a decision handed out just in recent days in a Pennsylvania courtroom where in a US district court last week, a gunman who had killed 11 worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue was found guilty and he was found guilty on 63 federal counts. 11 of those counts were tantamount to murder. And the fact that this was in a federal district court rather than in a local Pennsylvania state jurisdiction, that turns out to be very important. And one of the issues that underlines that importance is the death penalty.

A similar situation has come up in other prosecutions where you have a state that either doesn’t have the death penalty any longer or practically will not apply the death penalty any longer. And then you have federal authorities who say, “Let us try the case. We should try the case because of the stakes in this case of the moral importance of this case and the fact that the death penalty must be on the table.”

In the case of Robert Bowers found guilty of the 63 counts including premeditated murder, walking into a Jewish synagogue in order to kill as many of the people gathered there as possible. You’re looking at the intersection of so many horrifying criminal motivations, and of course, the fact that this man not only planned and demonstrated the motivation to carry out such a horrifying crime, he actually carried it out. And indeed the testimony revealed such things as the fact that Robert Bowers had to reload his gun at least twice. He did so and he only surrendered after he ran out of ammunition.

We’re looking at a situation that is now described as the most deadly anti-Semitic attack in all of American history. There’s no question that this was homicidal in intent. There’s no question that this crime was directed at those who were Jewish gathered in a synagogue on a Saturday. There is no question what happened here. And I say that even emphasizing the point that his own defense attorneys never even tried to make the case that Robert Bowers did not commit these crimes, they basically conceded that he committed the crimes.

It is expected that at some point after the sentencing, they will try for some kind of appeal or mitigating legal action based upon what they will describe as the individual’s mental state. But there’s no question that he was found to have been competent, able to make moral decisions. He was in possession of his faculties when he entered the synagogue and carried out what could only be described as mass murder, mass murder against a specific group. In this case, Jewish worshipers gathered together in a synagogue.

The fact that Robert Bowers had carried out this horrifying crime, as I said, wasn’t even contested by his defense attorneys. Indeed, the defendant had tried to make a deal with the federal prosecutors and the defendant offered to plead guilty if the federal government would take the death penalty off the table. That is what the federal prosecutors would not do, and that’s what raises the issue for us today in considering on The Briefing what it means that here you had federal authorities say that the only penalty that could possibly meet the circumstances of this crime, it could not undo the crime, but given the moral gravity of the crime, the only sentence that would fit is a sentence that means death.

And the fact that the federal government is itself conflicted on this issue, all of this points to the fact that we are in a very confused age and at least Christians need to try to undo a bit of that confusion and achieve at least some kind of clarity. The report in the New York Times on the conviction simply states this, “After five hours of deliberations over two days, the jury found the gunman, Robert Bowers guilty on all 63 counts, including 25 firearms related offenses and 11 charges of obstructing the free exercise of religious beliefs.”

But then here’s the big issue out before us. Beginning on the 26th of this month, the court is going to reconvene for the penalty phase and that’s where the death penalty is very much on the table. The federal prosecutors, you recall, would not make a deal that would’ve circumvented the entire trial with a guilty plea because they did not want to take the death penalty off the table. And the reason for that is simple. You are looking at a horrifying crime again, often described as the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in American history.

And the question is, well then what would be the punishment that would fit the crime? And here’s a situation in which the limitations of human justice simply don’t go beyond the power of the state to execute a criminal. But if there’s any one issue that demonstrates two things simultaneously in our rage, it is this. And the two things are number one, the fact that many people have lost confidence in the justice system and they’ve lost confidence in the rightness of the death penalty. And then second, the fact that in our moral constitution there is still a sense. Even among people who say they’re not for the death penalty, that they’re actually not for the death penalty until they are. Because when you’re looking at a horrifying homicidal attack like this, the limitations of human justice, even short of the death penalty or capital punishment become well, extremely obvious.

USA Today reported the summary of what took place just in recent days by telling us, “Jurors returned a guilty verdict after several hours of deliberating the case. They must next decide if Robert Bower’s fate will be death row or life in prison in what is expected to be a lengthy penalty phase.” It’s expected to be a lengthy penalty phase precisely because a lot of the arguments that his defense attorneys are likely to try to bring in that phase were not applicable to the first major phase of the trial, which was to establish whether or not Robert Bowers would be found guilty of the crimes. He was comprehensively as everyone expected.

Why is it that at least in the political and legal sphere, so many people involved in the courts and in the making of the laws have evidently decided against using the death penalty, decided to move on? Why is it at the same time that so many people in the American populace have asked, would the death penalty be applicable in this case, say no, but in another case say yes. There’s a lot of confusion out there. Here’s where we need to understand that that confusion is deeply rooted in a secularizing condition and it is not separate from confusion on so many other moral issues. Why would we think that there would be clarity when it comes to this particular question, when we’ve confused marriage, we’ve confused the family? I mean, at this point, we’re even confusing boy and girl.

We shouldn’t be surprised that when it comes to, just to give an example, coming up with the right criminal penalty against someone found guilty of this kind of mass murder. Well, you’re looking at a great deal of moral confusion in the culture. Christians need to step back and say, “Where did the death penalty come from?” And those who are simply operating from a secular worldview say, well, this is just something the human beings have invented as a way of making very clear the fact that they wanted to deter people from certain crimes and they wanted to reflect the fact that certain crimes seemed to cry out for this kind of ultimate or extreme punishment.

But then they will often say, you look at the emergence of the modern age and there you have a greater understanding of the legal complications that might be at play. You have a greater understanding for the sociological context in which a crime might have taken place. We have a greater understanding of the complexity of the human psyche, and furthermore, we’re not exactly sure how we should define this crime in terms of its moral essence.

You can describe homicide as the killing of a human being or even intentional homicide or premeditated murder. You can define that in terms of the act, but in a secular age, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to define it in moral terms. So Christians should go back to first principles. And by the way, this means going back to the first book of the Bible.

This means going back to Genesis and understanding that in the Noahic Covenant, that is the covenant that God gave to Noah, that’s where we find the death penalty in Scripture. And it becomes very clear in Genesis 9, just consider verses 5 and 6 where God says to Noah, “And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image.”

Now, Genesis makes very clear that’s God speaking, and here we have God the creator saying, “I made human beings in my image. And that’s why human beings are to be separate in moral consideration from every other creature, from every other being because there’s only one creature made in my image. And because an attack on my image is an attack upon me, the death penalty is thus rightly applied when there is a premeditated murder by one human being of another,” or in this case, of 11 others.

Now at this point, I want to say that the Bible’s also incredibly clear about the evidentiary burden that is born by those who would prosecuted a case, and especially what would be defined as a capital case. In the Old Testament, for example, there are situations in which only a living eyewitness can give testimony. If there is no living eyewitness that can give testimony or who can give testimony, then the situation simply cannot lead to a lawful execution.

But there’s also the understanding that even as we live in a fallen world, we have to operate on the basis of law and the procedures and structures of the rule of law. And this is where when you move to the modern age, things get really confused. One of the catalysts of that confusion is the fact that there have been cases in which it has become clear the death penalty has wrongly been assigned.

Now, we have to be careful how we describe these because at least in some of these cases we’re just talking about legal procedures that are at stake. There are other cases, thankfully not all that many, but we would take every single one of them with great moral seriousness in which there is a very legitimate question as to whether or not the person was actually guilty of the crime.

The entire structure of the rule of law, the way laws are enforced, the way that police act and operate, the way that cases are prosecuted and the way that judges maintain order in a courtroom, all of this means… And by the way, you’d have to extend that to legislators making the right laws and voters writing for the right legislators. All of that has to work in order to have an operational society. But from a biblical perspective, a society that says, we will not carry out the death penalty ever because we’ve become the kind of society that is just too advanced to have the death penalty. That runs up against the fact that when you are looking at a crime like this, even many people who say, “I don’t believe in the death penalty,” all of a sudden, they begin to back off of that commitment. No, in this case, maybe the death penalty would be appropriate. Indeed, maybe in this case the death penalty should be virtually necessary.

This is where Christians just have to cut through the confusion and say, we don’t get to make these decisions on the basis of our emotional response, but it is very telling that what you see when you have a lot of people say, “I’m not for the death penalty, but in a case like that, I’ve got to rethink this.” Or, “I’m not for the death penalty until you get to an extreme case.” You have to recognize we are here looking at an extreme case and thus on trial is not just this man who was guilty of all of these murders, but an entire justice system that now bears the responsibility to deal rightly with the crime and the punishment.

I’m sure you can find some anti-death penalty absolutist who would say, “I don’t believe there are any situations whatsoever in which the death penalty would be right.” But then you look at that and you recognize it must be extremely hard to make that argument, especially when you’re looking at cases such as Anders Behring Breivik who was found guilty in 2011 of mass murder carried out in Norway, at least two attacks that had 77 total deaths, dozens of them teenagers at a summer camp.

So again, we’re talking about mass murder on a massive scale. And in this case, Anders Behring Breivik was found guilty and he was not even sentenced to life in prison because the Norwegian legal system doesn’t even have a penalty of life in prison. Not to mention the fact it doesn’t have the death penalty.

A later journalistic report indicated that he was found in a very comfortable prison where he had a cell that featured a widescreen television. I think most moral people would look at that and say, “That is insane.” I think it’s still true according to most polling and survey data that the vast majority of Americans would say, “That’s crazy.” But we are living in a highly secularized age where one symptom of that secularization is the loss of confidence in the legal system, even when it comes to, or maybe especially when it comes to carrying out the ultimate punishment. At the same time, even in a secularizing society, most people are not exactly comfortable with that.

And I think this is where Christians just have to understand that there’s a deep moral impulse within us that I think goes all the way back to Genesis. It goes all the way back to the imago Dei. It goes all the way back to the Noahic Covenant, where people simply have the knowledge that a crime like this calls for an extreme punishment.

But then I have to note that I just returned to Kentucky from a recent trip to New Orleans. And there, the front page of the New Orleans major paper The Times-Picayune had a front page headline article, “Death row inmates ask Edwards to spare lives.” The subhead, “Governor recently said he opposes the death penalty.” So here you have John Bel Edwards, the Democratic governor of the state of Louisiana. The state of Louisiana does have the death penalty on the books, but now you have the governor say that he doesn’t really believe in the death penalty.

James Finn, the staff writer for The Times-Picayune, reported the story just days ago this way, “Nearly all of the 57 people on Louisiana’s death row have asked Gov. John Bel Edwards to spare their lives, a historic request made after Edwards broke his silence on how he views capital punishment and pushed lawmakers to outlaw the practice.” We’re told, “A total of 51 clemency applications filed Tuesday morning,” that will be last week, “with the Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole do not ask Edwards to free all of those death row prisoners. Instead, the documents ask him to soften their sentences to life-in-prison, the only commutation available to people sentenced to die.”

Now in moral terms, it’s going to be really interesting to watch the situation in Louisiana where you have the governor make this announcement. By the way, that puts him in a very interesting position because he sworn to uphold the laws of the state of Louisiana. The death penalty is a part of the law. These convictions were handed down, the penalties were handed down in an appropriate legal context. So there are a lot of issues at stake here. It’s going to be interesting to see how the people of Louisiana respond to their governor’s declaration. We already know how the prisoners have responded.

But the bottom line for Christians in terms of the Christian worldview here is that the death penalty is a biblical issue. It is a horrifying issue. It is thus reserved for the most horrifying of crimes, in particular homicide, and specifically intentional premeditated homicide. And the stakes are just higher when you consider in this case that it is not simply murder, it is simply mass murder.

Part II

---

To Censor or Not to Censor Explicit Material of Children on Social Media? — That is the Question Advocates and Allies of the LGBTQ Revolution Are Reluctant to Answer

Next, the main flagship newspaper for the LGBTQ revolution, otherwise known as USA Today, yesterday ran yet another article during June, which is declared as Pride Month, LGBTQ Pride Month, that simply does demand our attention. The headline is this: “Bill could curb more than child sex abuse material.” The subhead: “LGBTQ+ groups complain the Earn It Act poses risks.” Ella Lee is the reporter in this USA Today’s story, and what we are told about is the fact that legislators in Congress, in particular two members of the United States Senate, have reintroduced an effort to try to pass what is known as the Earn It Act, which though originally introduced in 2020, “would make it easier to prosecute social media companies for child sexual abuse material, that’s known as CSAM, on their platforms, the goal being to motivate platforms to target that material more forcefully.”

Now let me just ask you a question. Who could possibly be against that? Who could possibly be against a bill that would say that social media platforms must be far more serious and far more effective about removing material linked to the abuse of children, the sexual abuse of children? Who could possibly be against that? Well, the headline in USA Today told us, “LGBTQ+ groups complain that the act ‘poses risks.'”

Now, that just raises a host of fascinating and inescapable questions. Here you have something that’s pretty astounding when you think about it. You have a bill that is calling upon social media platforms to take this action and actually comes with coercive power to make the social media platforms actually carry out this kind of policy to protect children and specifically to make certain that their platforms do not include material that would feature child sexual abuse, would not be involved in that.

You ask a question again, who could possibly be against that? Well, you might have some people who are absolute social media libertarian purists who would be against it because they don’t want any rules. But you’re noticing that that’s not the argument that’s being made here. The argument is not here, that there should be no rules when it comes to the internet and social media, but what you do have is the argument that if this law is put in place to protect children from those who would exploit them, there might be collateral damage. Now, what might be the risk of this collateral damage? It would be to the interest of LGBTQ+ groups, and it turns out another group as well identified in the USA Today article as sex workers.

The USA Today article actually goes further, and it’s just specific in citing the issue here. We don’t want to miss this. “It,” meaning the bill, “was reintroduced in April by Senators Richard Blumenthal, Democratic Connecticut, and Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina.” So there you have a liberal Democrat and a conservative Republican who are introducing this bill, or in this case reintroducing this bill together. That tells you something about a bipartisan approach. And USA Today tells us that the senators, “said at the time that tech companies need to ‘take responsibility’ for the material or be held accountable.” Then USA Today writes this, “But the bill, while well-intentioned, could have dangerous ramifications for freedom of expression, leaving LGBTQ+ online communities as collateral damage.”

Jenna Leventoff, identified as senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, said, “This bill is intended to fight child sexual abuse online, and I don’t think that’s a goal that anyone wants to hamper. But this bill,” she said, “wouldn’t actually do that. What it does do is lead to more internet censorship.”

We just need to recognize that there is not a sane, rational society on earth that does not exercise some form of censorship. The word censorship… Well, we’re rightly concerned about that word. We’re rightly troubled when we hear that word, but we’re even more troubled if that word never applies. When you are talking about, for instance, child pornography, every sane person should say that we should exercise censorship so that those images are not put on the internet, they’re not available anywhere.

There’s a reason why such actions are criminalized. There’s a reason why courts take these issues with such seriousness. So you can’t have it both ways. You can’t say, “I do believe there’s some material that simply shouldn’t be on the internet.” And then say you’re an absolutist and there should absolutely be no censorship. But that also means that Christians need to be aware that the word censorship is used very often in our society as a way of avoiding moral questions on the one hand, and on the other hand, crying wolf.

The article makes specific its concerns and that’s why it’s so important. We’re told that LGBTQ+ content is at risk if this act were to be made law: “Faced with heightened risk of prosecution for child sexual images, ‘platforms will likely move to take more aggressive measures to block content that could fall within one state’s parameters for that same objectionable material.’ Legally protected LGBTQ+ content could be swept into those filtering effects targeted because of ‘long-running societal biases and misconceptions that being queer is inherently more sexual than being straight.'”

Let me just back up and say that’s a direct quote, but what it means is that if you identify as LGBTQ+, then you are basically saying there’s going to be a lot of highly sexualized material because that’s just the essence of LGBTQ+. But then in the very same section of the article, the other issue comes up, and that is those who are euphemistically called sex workers, were told, “The pair of laws made conditions less safe for sex workers who relied on digital communities for screening clients and connecting with others in the industry.”

So just notice what’s going on here. In moral terms, we just can’t pass over this. Now you have sex workers as they are defined, further defined as an industry, an industry that might be endangered if this law protecting children were put in place. I’m simply going to let this go at this point, but I think you get the point. We’re becoming an insane society, and what makes it even more troubling is that you have major media and others who are rushing to put this kind of argument on the front page. Just understand, that is not an accident.

Part III

---

You Can’t Make This Up: Anheuser-Busch Accepts Lead Marketing Award at Cannes Event After Trans Marketing Disaster

But next and finally, speaking of things we can’t avoid talking about, here’s something that indicates the insanity of the age, but it also tells us about something very current in our headlines. The Wall Street Journal report a story from Cannes in France, and it’s telling us about a big event. It’s a very big event when it comes to the marketing and advertising world, it’s something like the Academy Awards of the advertising and marketing world. It is called the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It is by shorthand simply known as Cannes Lions.

And you are not going to believe this. Guess what company was chosen for the second year in a row? That’s never even happened before. For the second year in a row, the company identified globally at the most elite advertising and marketing event, the company honored for the second year as creative marketer of the year is Anheuser-Busch InBev. Seriously, Anheuser-Busch.

The Wall Street Journal, the most influential financial paper in the world could not miss the point when its article began this way, “Marketing gone awry recently cost Bud Light its long-held crown as America’s bestselling beer. But the brand’s owner,” we’re told, “Anheuser-Busch InBev, was here at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, a lavish annual gathering in the south of France, often called the Oscars of the ad industry, collecting one of the event’s highest honors: Creative Marketer of the Year.”

The very next paragraph in the Wall Street Journal is this, don’t miss it. “A collision this spring between Bud Light’s marketing hub in Manhattan and many of its loyal drinkers across middle America resulted in a case study in how not to market through the culture wars. A consumer and celebrity backlash against a Bud Light social-media promotion with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney snowballed into a boycott and plummeting sales. The uproar prompted AB InBev to put on leave two marketing executives who oversaw the promotion, leading to more criticism.”

So get this, the marketing geniuses at Anheuser-Busch created one of the biggest controversies in recent corporate history. The controversy led to a backlash on the part of American consumers that led to the fact that Bud Light lost its lead position among beers sold in America. The company’s stock plummeted. As the Wall Street Journal said, this was one of the stupidest ideas in all of advertising history, and yet the geniuses at the most elite advertising and marketing conference in the world decided to choose that company for the second year, as its creative marketer of the year. We’ll simply say that evidently that’s redefining creative, how to tank your brand, how to lower the stock value of your company, how to end up in a situation like this, and yet, hey, you can still go to the French Riviera and pick up an award for creative marketer of the year.

I guess we have to note as we speak about backlash, there was a backlash from at least some of the festival who said that the only decent thing for Anheuser-Busch InBev to do is to take the award and then give it right back. Evidently, this is the kind of world we are living in where things evidently are turned upside down and the world’s gone insane. By the way, let me let you in on a secret. I think I’m about to be awarded the Heisman Trophy.

But next and finally, speaking of things we can’t avoid talking about, here’s something that indicates the insanity of the age, but it also tells us about something very current in our headlines. The Wall Street Journal report a story from Cannes in France, and it’s telling us about a big event. It’s a very big event when it comes to the marketing and advertising world, it’s something like the Academy Awards of the advertising and marketing world. It is called the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. It is by shorthand simply known as Cannes Lions.

And you are not going to believe this. Guess what company was chosen for the second year in a row? That’s never even happened before. For the second year in a row, the company identified globally at the most elite advertising and marketing event, the company honored for the second year as creative marketer of the year is Anheuser-Busch InBev. Seriously, Anheuser-Busch.

The Wall Street Journal, the most influential financial paper in the world could not miss the point when its article began this way, “Marketing gone awry recently cost Bud Light its long-held crown as America’s bestselling beer. But the brand’s owner,” we’re told, “Anheuser-Busch InBev, was here at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, a lavish annual gathering in the south of France, often called the Oscars of the ad industry, collecting one of the event’s highest honors: Creative Marketer of the Year.”

The very next paragraph in the Wall Street Journal is this, don’t miss it. “A collision this spring between Bud Light’s marketing hub in Manhattan and many of its loyal drinkers across middle America resulted in a case study in how not to market through the culture wars. A consumer and celebrity backlash against a Bud Light social-media promotion with the transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney snowballed into a boycott and plummeting sales. The uproar prompted AB InBev to put on leave two marketing executives who oversaw the promotion, leading to more criticism.”

So get this, the marketing geniuses at Anheuser-Busch created one of the biggest controversies in recent corporate history. The controversy led to a backlash on the part of American consumers that led to the fact that Bud Light lost its lead position among beers sold in America. The company’s stock plummeted. As the Wall Street Journal said, this was one of the stupidest ideas in all of advertising history, and yet the geniuses at the most elite advertising and marketing conference in the world decided to choose that company for the second year, as its creative marketer of the year. We’ll simply say that evidently that’s redefining creative, how to tank your brand, how to lower the stock value of your company, how to end up in a situation like this, and yet, hey, you can still go to the French Riviera and pick up an award for creative marketer of the year.

I guess we have to note as we speak about backlash, there was a backlash from at least some of the festival who said that the only decent thing for Anheuser-Busch InBev to do is to take the award and then give it right back. Evidently, this is the kind of world we are living in where things evidently are turned upside down and the world’s gone insane. By the way, let me let you in on a secret. I think I’m about to be awarded the Heisman Trophy.