Europe and the Williams Execution: What a Bunch of Airheads!

An Associated Press dispatch on how “Europe” responded to the execution of “Tookie” Williams for the brutal murder of four people.

Of course, “Europe” here means the elite activists. Public opinion polls in Europe often show majorities favoring the death penalty.

Some of the especially stupid comments:

In Graz, Schwarzenegger’s hometown, local Greens said they would file a petition to remove the California governor’s name from the city’s Arnold Schwarzenegger Stadium. A Christian political group suggested it be renamed for Williams.

“Mr. Williams had converted and, unlike Mr. Schwarzenegger, opposed every form of violence,” said Richard Schadauer, chairman of the Association of Christianity and Social Democracy.

[...]

At the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI’s top official for justice matters denounced the execution.

“We know the death penalty doesn’t resolve anything,” said Cardinal Renato Martino. “Even a criminal is worthy of respect because he is a human being. The death penalty is a negation of human dignity.”

Most of the outcry in Europe came from opposition political parties, city leaders, human rights groups and churches, with national leaders remaining silent.

“Schwarzenegger has a lot of muscles, but apparently not much heart,” French Socialist Party spokesman Julien Dray told RTL radio.

In Italy, Franco Danieli, vice president of the Senate’s Foreign Affairs Committee, criticized executions as an act of “dehumanization.”

“The execution of Tookie Williams is even more intolerable exactly because he had managed to transform the negative into the positive, violence into nonviolence,” Danieli said.

Much of this appears to be the result of European activists simply being ill-informed. The notion that Williams really was rehabilitated is belied by the fact that he refused to confess to the murders he obviously did, and the fact that he refused to cooperate with the police by giving them information they can use to fight gang violence.

But then, the ignorance is willful ignorance.

This indignation and claim to moral superiority is farcical coming from nations that have a history of Nazi or Fascist regimes, or a history of sympathy toward fascism or appeasement of Naziism.

If they weren’t so insecure about their own sordid past, they would approach the issue in a more rational way.