What He Said

I'm with Dale Price on this one.

One of my co-workers, an immigrant from northern India, is a Jain. He eats no meat, including fish and any other animal. He once rescued a roach I was about to kill in the office and took it outside.

But he supports the death penalty, because although the terrorist attack in Mumbai last week were unique in scale and in happening in one of India's major financial centers, they're hardly unique in recent Indian history. I think one figure I read was that more than 4000 Indians have been killed in terrorist attacks since 2001.

When one of my American-born liberal co-workers asked him how he could be so emphatic on preserving life in all other cases, but support the death penalty he replied, "When someone comes into your village, and enters your house, and kills everyone in your family because they do not like your race, or they do not like you faith, they have crossed a line."

While I accept the wisdom of our Church's leaders that the death penalty is seldom needed in modern society -- but seldom is not never. If any of the perpetrators of last week's terror attacks in Mumbai failed to be escorted off this mortal coil by the Indian commandoes who sought to rescue their hostages, I could certainly find it in me to hope that they receive a short trial and a long rope.