Friends, California Governor Gavin Newsom (D -- in case that wasn't obvious) recently scored a twofer. Not only did he strike a blow against the rule of law in California -- by invalidating that state's death penalty statutes at the stroke of a pen -- he also gave the middle finger to California voters, who three times in the last decade have voted either to keep the death penalty in place or to make it easier to apply capital punishment to persons on death row. But who cares what the law says, right? And who cares what the voters think? And who cares that Gavin Newsom promised NOT to block the enforcement of the death penalty? None of these things matter, because Gavin Newsom
feels that the death penalty is racist and wrong. And, at the end of the day, all that really counts in this life is liberals' feelings, right? To make a liberal shed a tear is the only true form of injustice that Newsom and his ilk recognize.
Read all about it in my latest article:
For Gavin Newsom, and Most
Democrats, the Rule of Law is a State of Mind
Just a few months
ago, Gavin Newsom, during his campaign for Governor of California,
declared that the death penalty was the law of the land, and he would
respect the clearly expressed will of California voters and would not
therefore obstruct the enforcement of the death penalty.
Now, though, the
election is over, Gavin Newsom is the Governor of our most populous
state, and he reserves the right to have a change of heart. He has,
as a matter of fact, put an indefinite halt to all executions in
California — not on procedural grounds, but due to the dictates of
his conscience. The California death penalty has been snuffed out,
because California's Governor finds it odious.
Newsom gives two
main reasons for his decision. First, he says that most of the people
on death row are black and Hispanic. He says this calls into question
the fairness of our criminal justice system. He omits to mention,
however, that most murders and other capital crimes in California are
committed by blacks and Hispanics, so their over-representation on
death row reflects their over-representation in violent crime
statistics generally. Newsom, though, would like to apply the tired
liberal logic of racial quotas to the death penalty, and, since he
can't do that, he'd rather throw out the whole system.
Newsom,
curiously, isn't troubled by the fact that the overwhelming majority
of death row inmates are men. A reflexive assumption of gender bias
seems not to apply, in this case. Imagine that.
The other reason
Newsom gives for scrapping the death penalty is its finality. The
criminal justice system makes mistakes, he points out, and once
someone has been executed by the state there is no way to make
amends. In this respect he is right, but the same logic applies to
long terms of imprisonment. Yes, a man or woman imprisoned for
decades, but suddenly and miraculously found innocent in their sunset
years, could be released, but their life, for all practical purposes,
would still have been taken from them. Gavin's argument, therefore,
could lead us to conclude that virtually any form of punishment is
unfair, because it could potentially be inflicted on the innocent.
That is no reason, however, to spare the guilty. Our legal system
employs the standard of “beyond a reasonable doubt” for excellent
reasons. Most of the time, our juries and our judges get it right.
In the end,
Newsom's rationalizations are mere fig leaves. He is blocking the
enforcement of California's death penalty because he finds the death
penalty itself immoral. Gavin Newsom, the great moral philosopher, is
substituting his own moral compass for the letter of the law, for the
lessons of decades of legal precedent, and for the judgment of the
people of California, expressed in their decision to defeat two state
propositions in the last eight years, both of which relied on the
same specious arguments that Newsom is now advancing. The sheer
egotism implicit in Newsom's position is jaw-dropping. “This is
about who I am as a human being,” said Newsom. Who murder victims
used to be, before they were murdered — that's clearly a lesser
consideration.
Newsom, sadly, is
not unique in arrogating to himself the right to decide what is just,
and therefore what is lawful. (To Democrats and liberal jurists,
there is no distinction between the two.) Democrats nationwide have
essentially declared our immigration laws null and void, as they
extend “sanctuary,” as well as legal assistance and generous
benefits programs, to illegal immigrants. The Democratic House of
Representatives practices a similarly selective standard of justice
as it seeks to work backward from the premise “All Trumps are
criminals” to discover which crimes each individual Trump may have
committed. Meanwhile, almost every lawful action taken by President
Trump is blocked by “Obama judges” and snarled in months of
litigation.
To be fair,
though, the ground was prepared for this sort of legalistic sophistry
long ago by liberals on the Supreme Court, who rewrote the
Constitution on the assumption that it was an “evolving”
document. If, therefore, the Founding Fathers failed to insert a line
in the Constitution about, say, the right to an abortion, the
liberals claimed it was only because the right was implied — or, in
a pinch, it could be conjured into existence, based on the supposedly
self-evident moral case for abortion on demand. Less and less often
was the strict wording of the Constitution itself, or the intent of
the Framers, considered relevant.
The rule of law,
in the hands of the current crop of Democratic governors, mayors,
judges, Congressmen and women, and potentially even — gasp! — a
Democratic President can by no means be considered secure. This is
because, increasingly, Democrats and liberals refuse to enforce the
laws they do not like, and they effectively rewrite (or re-imagine)
the laws and constitutional provisions that are already in place to
achieve whatever legal and social outcome they find congenial.
What is
“justice,” to Gavin Newsom and his ilk? It is a world in which
the law is a vehicle to permit liberals to reward those they like and
punish those they hate. That is, by any conventional understanding of
the rule of law in the Western tradition, the very abnegation of the
law itself.
We simply cannot
allow people who think like this to execute or interpret our nation's
laws.
Dr.
Nicholas L. Waddy is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Alfred
and blogs at: www.waddyisright.com.
He appears weekly on the Newsmaker Show on WLEA 1480.
And here's the version you'll find in the Daily Caller:
