That last paragraph put me in the mind of two sayings:

"Be careful what you ask for. You might get it."

and

"Justice without Mercy is Horror."

Given the morally-bankrupt morass Canada is becoming, they may well be getting what they're asking for. I only hope that God does at some point have mercy on them.

I think you might have meant to write "Mercy without Justice is Horror." That's what this looks like to me.

I think you're putting your tongue in your cheek, John, but if you're being serious, I'll quote a fragment of an e-mail I received the other day:

"Justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is NOT getting what you deserve. Grace is getting what you don't deserve."

If the Canadians as a nation have become so squishy at their core that they're more interested in "justice" and moral superiority than in the old virtues, then their decline is truly justice-- they're getting what they deserve. I hope their children and grandchildren see better days, though-- they don't deserve the low state Canada is headed for.

Geez, I'm getting cranky these days. :)

But he isn't getting what he deserves, at least if Canada won't extradite him. Lots of people prate about 'justice," when they really mean "letting the guilty escape punishment." That's something that bugs me. It's a perversion of the language.

If someone's on trial for murder, and the evidence is strong, but not "beyond a reasonable doubt," we aquit them. That's good, and the right thing to do, but we shouldn't call it "justice," since the likelihood is that injustice has been done.

I realize its a foreign concept to conservatives today, where grabbing and holding power at all costs has become the reason to exist, but there actually are some people and places that have principles and values (remember that word? you guys used to use it a lot before Bush), and one of those is a absolute opposition to the death penalty.
So, they make it simple. If another nation wants a criminal back, they must first promise they will take the death penalty off the table. Now you make not agree, may not like it, but its pure whining that I'm reading here from you guys. Canada has a position, they've stuck with it. I mean, come on, its not such a hard concept. Heck, you guys were claiming it was a trait of flippity-flopper Dubya less than a year ago. Have you forgotten what it means to stand by your principles so quickly? (hahahaha....like you ever had any!!! hahhahaha)

Lefties need a sort of keyboard script or macro, to save time. "It's because of our deeply-held principles that we are supporting [chose one: dictator; genocide; concentration camp; concessions; nonintervention; terrorist; appeasement; suicide-bomber; UN corruption; pornography; anti-Americanism; anti-semitism; euthanasia; racial quotas; socialism; communism; inertia; appeasement; pacifism; and/or appeasement]

Hello, Zoomie,

There's an old saying:

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds."

Also, the great Christian apologist of the 20th Century, C. S. Lewis, wrote (I think it was in "Mere Christianity") that it's a bad idea to set one virtue or another up as a moral lodestar, as the one thing to follow at all costs, with no reference to any other virtue or human value.

For example (and it's a fairly obvious one), if one were to select honesty as the one virtue to follow at all costs, one would very quickly become a rather unpleasant fellow. Not only is it required to be to some degree dishonest to get along in society without causing undue (and unnecessary) offense, one could become an unthinking accomplice to murder: only a morally brain-dead person would point out to a wild-eyed axe-wielding man which way his panicked shrieking victim had run a minute or so before.

One would think that love for one's fellow human being would be safe enough, but even that too would cause problems. Does one, in the name of love, help a friend or lover rob a bank? Or does one do the honest thing and report him or her to the police?

I too have my doubts about the death penalty. Human justice is not infallible, and it's hard to grant clemency or to pardon and set free a person whose death sentence has been carried out.

Yet, it may be unjust to refuse to extradite a person because the prosecuting jurisdiction insists on applying the death penalty to the fugitive if he or she is found guilty. What if the fugitive is in fact guilty of the crime he or she is accused of? How just is it to the fugitive's victims to deprive them of the justice which their society's laws entitle them? If the crime is pickpocketing, I would think twice about extradition, too, Zoomie. But if the crime is murder, I'm not sure that stroking my sense of moral superiority by denying extradition is fair or just to my fellow human beings, the fugitive's victims, on the other side of the border.

And that, Zoomie, seems to be the trap Canada (and too many Canadians) have fallen into-- they're so busy stroking themselves that they've forgotten things like justice and fairness. Yes, they ARE consistent. They're also foolish. And they're becoming hobgoblins in human form.