The Angry Exile: Where to draw the line.

The Hangman

Into our town the Hangman came,
Smelling of gold and blood and flame.
And he paced our bricks with a diffident air,
And built his frame in the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
Only as wide as the door was wide;
A frame as tall, or little more,
Than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered, whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal, what the crime
That the Hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were, with dread,
We passed those eyes of buckshot lead --
Till one cried: "Hangman, who is he
For whom you raised the gallows-tree?"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
And he gave us a riddle instead of reply:
"He who serves me best," said he,
"Shall earn the rope of the gallows-tree."
And he stepped down, and laid his hand
On a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for another's grief
At the Hangman's hand was our relief
And the gallows-frame on the courthouse lawn
By tomorrow's sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way, and no one spoke,
Out of respect for his Hangman's cloak.
The next day's sun looked mildly down
On roof and street in our quiet town,
And stark and black in the morning air
Was the gallows-tree in the courthouse square.
And the Hangman stood at his usual stand
With the yellow hemp in his busy hand;
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike
And his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, "Hangman, have you not done
Yesterday, with the foreign one?"
Then we fell silent, and stood amazed,
"Oh, not for him was the gallows raised."
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us:
"Did you think I'd gone to all this fuss
To hang one man? That's a thing I do
To stretch a rope when the rope is new."
Then one cried "Murder!" and one cried "Shame!"
And into our midst the Hangman came
To that man's place. "Do you hold," said he,
"with him that was meant for the gallows-tree?"
And he laid his hand on that one's arm.
And we shrank back in quick alarm!
And we gave him way, and no one spoke
Out of fear of his Hangman's cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
The Hangman's scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
The gallows-tree had taken root;
Now as wide, or a little more,
Than the steps that led to the courthouse door,
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
Halfway up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took -- we had all heard tell --
Was a usurer, and an infidel.
"What," said the Hangman "have you to do
With the gallows-bound, and he a Jew?"
And we cried out, "Is this one he
Who has served you well and faithfully?"
The Hangman smiled: "It's a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows-beam."
The fourth man's dark, accusing song
Had scratched our comfort hard and long;
"And what concern," he gave us back.
"Have you for the doomed -- the doomed and Black?"
The fifth. The sixth. And we cried again,
"Hangman, Hangman, is this the man?"
"It's a trick," he said. "that we hangmen know
For easing the trap when the trap springs slow."
And so we ceased, and asked no more,
As the Hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night,
The gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
Till they covered the square from side to side;
And the monster cross-beam, looking down,
Cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the Hangman came,
Through the empty streets, and called my name --
And I looked at the gallows soaring tall,
And thought, "There is no one left at all
For hanging, and so he calls to me
To help pull down the gallows-tree."
So I went out with right good hope
To the Hangman's tree and the Hangman's rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
To the courthouse square through the silent town.
And supple and stretched in his busy hand
Was the yellow twist of the hempen strand.
And he whistled his tune as he tried the trap,
And it sprang down with a ready snap --
And then with a smile of awful command
He laid his hand upon my hand.
"You tricked me. Hangman!," I shouted then,
"That your scaffold was built for other men...
And I no henchman of yours," I cried,
"You lied to me, Hangman. Foully lied!"
Then a twinkle grew in the buckshot eye,
"Lied to you? Tricked you?" he said. "Not I.
For I answered straight and I told you true --
The scaffold was raised for none but you.
For who has served me more faithfully
Then you with your coward's hope?" said he,
"And where are the others who might have stood
Side by your side in the common good?"
"Dead," I whispered. And amiably
"Murdered," the Hangman corrected me:
"First the foreigner, then the Jew...
I did no more than you let me do."
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
None had stood so alone as I.
The Hangman noosed me, and no voice there
Cried "Stop!" for me in the empty square.

Maurice Ogden

Friday 24 September 2010

Where to draw the line.

The other thing I wanted to post just before I unplug myself from the blog for the weekend relates to another round of the interminable debate on capital punishment between me, JuliaM and some of the other commenters that hang around the Ambush Predator's cave. As usual Julia and others take the view that sometimes capital punishment is justified because the world has got some proper fucking scumbags in it, while others oppose for various reasons while conceding that there are indeed some scumbags, but it's the fact that the state itself is the biggest bullying scumbag of them all that is the reason why I'm personally against putting that power back into its hands. I was going to copy and paste the arguments I made at Julia's and edit them a little to make a quick post on it here but really there's nothing much I didn't say in this blog back in May last year. In short, the state has a habit of granting itself powers and abusing them before you can even say, 'Hey, I'm just a photographer, leave me alo-aaargh,' and with that in mind how can we trust that the same mission creep would never be applied to capital punishment? Even if you trust the current crop of politicians you can never be certain that will always be the case. As I said at Julia's, the Weimar Republic were happy to keep capital punishment on the books just for murder and probably never envisaged a deranged demagogue being democratically elected and going on to pass Enabling Acts so the law could be changed to suit his regime. The handful of murderers the Weimar Republic executed became 40,000 under the Nazis, many of whom were guilty of nothing more than speaking out against the state.

And where is Britain now? Populist leaders democratically elected recently, check - Thatcher on one side, Blair on the other. Enabling Acts, check - Blair and Brown passed lots of mini-Enabling Acts that add up to a great deal of executive power and which, rather worryingly, the Cobbletion doesn't seem at all interested in repealing. They probably wouldn't but there's not much to stop a future fucknuts PM as it is. Still, like Sophie Scholl they can only cut off your head for it once, eh?

But it doesn't even need that to happen for death sentence mission creep to occur. All it needs is a government under some pressure to save a few quid and look tough for the tabloids.

Minister: Can we release a few more of the minor criminals early?
Advisor: Sorry Minister, that's political suicide.
Minister: Alright, what about speeding up the death penalty procedures and executing more of the worst criminals? Surely that would be popular?
Advisor: Well, we could certainly streamline the process a little more.
Minister: Only a little?
Advisor: To be honest Minister, after removing the right to a final appeal for clemency to the Queen there's not that much scope left beyond processing the paperwork more quickly.
Minister: Right, do that then. Anything else? Could we extend execution to other serious crimes?
Advisor: Such as, Minister?
Minister: Well, what have we got now? Murder, obviously.
Advisor: Yes, and terrorism, rape and sexual assault of minors.
Minister: Okay, then we just need to know what the papers are baying for blood over at the moment. You take The Daily Shriek and I'll look through the Gnash Of The Teeth.
.........
Advisor: People seem very concerned about drugs again, Minister.
Minister: Okay, shall we say any second offence of dealing Class A?
Advisor: I can draft it this afternoon, Minister.

First offence? You'll probably get off with crucifixion.

So without rehashing the case against capital punishment any further I'd like to expand this whole argument into a simple principle of restraint on the power of the state. A golden rule on limiting executive power, if you will. Simply put it is this:

Never give your government any power that you wouldn't also be comfortable
entrusting to a genocidal dictator.

Now I'm definitely off. Enjoy your weekend.

5 comments:

Oldrightie said...: "Yes, and terrorism, rape and sexual assault of minors." Add treason back into the mix, with particular emphasis on political traitors and we're cooking on gas. Your argument assumes there is no law or regulation. Whatever, if mob rule is brought about, academic niceties are quickly tossed aside and no one is safe from execution through innuendo. Like all "human rights", the right to life, when behaving horrifically should be forfeit. Lastly, your argument pre-supposes a Pol Pot or Stalin is always likely to be in charge. I think not. Well, unless such an ogre is allowed to remain at large through early release.; 24 September 2010 at 18:35
Angry Exile said...: Treason? Why stop there? Why not sedition? How's your blog, Oldrightie? Been a little too critical of the beneficent state lately or would it be happy with what you've said? Not an issue under the 2010 Cobbleition, sure, but the Prime Ministers of 2020 or 2030... we simply have no idea what they will be like and absolutely no guarantee that they will not be so monstrous as to make Gordon Brown look like St Francis of Assisi.

"Your argument assumes there is no law or regulation."
On the contrary, my argument assumes the very same legal and regulatory environment the United Kingdom operates under today, i.e. vast and largely unchecked executive power and the ability of government to alter laws without referring to Parliament, much less citizens. No law or regulation would imply a complete absence of government and therefore nobody to carry out a death penalty and no means to pass the law enabling anyone to do so anyway.

No laws or regulations would also remove the restrictions the state has put on citizens making use of the most effective means of defending themselves. I don't have a problem with crims being killed in their line of 'work' by honest citizens using deadly force to defend themselves. Them's the breaks - tough shit. What I have a problem with is giving a state that nobody trusts the power to kill its own citizens because there is simply no guarantee that it won't turn on them too, and far from no laws and regulations that requires so many laws and regulations that it's impossible for experts, much less the layman, to keep track of them all and not inadvertently break the law. Sound familiar? Sound at all like a certain island nation off the west coast of Europe?

"Lastly, your argument pre-supposes a Pol Pot or Stalin is always likely to be in charge. I think not."
Again, not so. My argument does not pre-suppose that a monster is always in charge. In fact it begins with supposing that people like Cameramong and Cleggy are in charge, followed by a Milibanana or an Abbott or even a Balls. I'd say they're all tools but I wouldn't say they're monsters. But however harmless any of them may be there is nothing at all, not a single thing, to prevent the next one being a monster. It may be fifty wonderful years of peaceful and enlightened government, or but there's no guarantee it won't be whips, chains and firing squads next Wednesday week.; 24 September 2010 at 19:33
Angry Exile said...: Treason? Why stop there? Why not sedition? How's your blog, Oldrightie? Been a little too critical of the beneficent state lately or would it be happy with what you've said? Not an issue under the 2010 Cobbleition, sure, but the Prime Ministers of 2020 or 2030... we simply have no idea what they will be like and absolutely no guarantee that they will not be so monstrous as to make Gordon Brown look like St Francis of Assisi.

"Your argument assumes there is no law or regulation."
On the contrary, my argument assumes the very same legal and regulatory environment the United Kingdom operates under today, i.e. vast and largely unchecked executive power and the ability of government to alter laws without referring to Parliament, much less citizens. No law or regulation would imply a complete absence of government and therefore nobody to carry out a death penalty and no means to pass the law enabling anyone to do so anyway.

No laws or regulations would also remove the restrictions the state has put on citizens making use of the most effective means of defending themselves. I don't have a problem with crims being killed in their line of 'work' by honest citizens using deadly force to defend themselves. Them's the breaks - tough shit. What I have a problem with is giving a state that nobody trusts the power to kill its own citizens because there is simply no guarantee that it won't turn on them too, and far from no laws and regulations that requires so many laws and regulations that it's impossible for experts, much less the layman, to keep track of them all and not inadvertently break the law. Sound familiar? Sound at all like a certain island nation off the west coast of Europe?

"Lastly, your argument pre-supposes a Pol Pot or Stalin is always likely to be in charge. I think not."
Again, not so. My argument does not pre-suppose that a monster is always in charge. In fact it begins with supposing that people like Cameramong and Cleggy are in charge, followed by a Milibanana or an Abbott or even a Balls. I'd say they're all tools but I wouldn't say they're monsters. But however harmless any of them may be there is nothing at all, not a single thing, to prevent the next one being a monster. It may be fifty wonderful years of peaceful and enlightened government, or but there's no guarantee it won't be whips, chains and firing squads next Wednesday week.; 24 September 2010 at 19:34
JuliaM said...: Treason?

I'm not sure we'd need that, with the terrorism laws we seem to have dropping out of our backsides.; 25 September 2010 at 14:56
JuliaM said...: "...but there's no guarantee it won't be whips, chains and firing squads next Wednesday week."

If only the government was that efficient!

Enjoy the break :); 25 September 2010 at 14:57