News wires: McVeigh executed. The government Timothy McVeigh so despised executed him by chemical injection Monday, taking his life in exchange for the 168 lives lost when he blew up the Oklahoma City federal building six years ago.
Why do we say “the government” when we mean us? For better or worse we, the people, are the government of the United States and the various states where we live and vote.
So we are the ones who executed him today.
McVeigh committed some of the most foul crimes anyone could imagine. He slaughtered defenseless children along with the supposed political targets he was aiming at — and none of them deserved what happened to them. If anyone deserved the death penalty, it was McVeigh.
Maybe some people deserve it. But we shouldn’t do it. The death penalty does not deter murder, according to the studies. It is irrevocable, so when we make mistakes there’s no fixing them. It is, like much of the criminal-justice system, biased against people of color.
Most important, it makes us all a little more brutal — it makes us all killers, too. It’s just wrong.