I know that I said that I was going to shut up and go away, but I’d like to throw in an analogy here to reinforce this point. What if Osama bin Laden came to you and said that he was really, really, really sowwy with sugar on top and begged forgiveness? Would you give it to him? Personally, I would just chuckle and pat him on the head. I would then proceed to douse him in gasoline, set him on fire, and toss him off the top of the tallest skyscraper I could find. Extreme analogy, of course. Heath’s actions are in no way comparable to those of bin Laden’s. But where do you draw the line? If a person deliberately and maliciously attempts to harm another person, or worse—an entire group of people, then that person or those people clearly have an inherent right to take protective action. It doesn’t matter if that person is mentally disordered, as Heath almost undoubtedly is. Self defense is an inherent right of all organisms. So is retaliation. It seems very likely to me that our inherent desire for revenge is partly or even largely responsible for the ascension of our species. Only a small percentage (about 2%) of the general population is classified as meeting the diagnostic criteria of
sociopathy. If and when a genetic basis of this condition is demonstrated (and I’m convinced that it eventually will be), wouldn’t that strongly suggest that our inherent thirst for revenge was responsible for eliminating the spread of the genome early in our evolutionary history? Society has the right to sanction and exclude its own harmful elements. In extreme cases, it has the inherent right to eliminate them entirely. The meek shall inherit the Earth, but it’s only a 3’ X 6’ foot plot.
OK—now I’ll go away.