Wow, time flies!
It's been a bit over a month since my last post, wow! Time flies when you're having fun. In the meantime though, there have been a variety of crises. ISIS is marauding, the Ukraine is shakily stabilizing, Gaza/Israel is so last-week. Ferguson is a bit trigger happy. I'm being irreverent toward these events because... isn't this just par for the course by now? Aren't we all just completely used to this? Devastation is like the thin black kids we see on the TV with flies buzzing around them. I think I used to be moved by it. It's been so long, I can't even remember.
Closer to home, the BCTF and the government finally came to an "agreement". All the kids are back in school now, more or less a month late. Cheques are going out to the parents for every day their kids missed. All I see is weakness, missed opportunity, a squandering of resources. Why aren't we restructuring our classes? Why aren't we making the teachers teach? Why is every action seemingly impossible? I need to know what the source is of this paralyzing venom that keeps us from moving. It feels like if I look back in history, these problems would have been dealt with swiftly. Efficiently. Why does it seem like every yesterday we could do more, and in every tomorrow we can do less?
I think it's the Spirit of Law.
At first glance I think it's the constitution. It seems like every time I see an infuriating decision, "constitutional rights" are being referenced. What is wrong with our laws? When I look at them though, I find that many of them are consistent with the things I believe and the values I have. I want people to prosper and have equal opportunities. Looking deeper I find laws tacked on that inhibit us, or arbitrary judicial decisions that strike out the hard work of our politicians. How many millions of dollars worth of study and work have been struck down by the decision of a single man or woman in robes? How many voices have been silenced by that individual political leaning?
The problem isn't the law, really. The problem is the spirit of law. There is a universal standard we all feel inside ourselves that demands justice. Are we being served justice? I feel as though we're all being shackled to the pet projects of a few meddlesome bleeding hearts. Serena Vermeersch died recently. Wait, no, that's not right. "Serena Vermeersch died recently." is stupid. She didn't just die, she was murdered by a psychopathic repeat sexual offender. I never met her, I can hardly remember her last name it's so hard to spell. I'm not going to feign outrage about some personal slight or offense against me, but I will honestly say that her story made me generally angry. Raymond Lee Caissie alone is not responsible for her death. The blood isn't on just his hands. It's on those who freed him, on those who fought for him to have freedom, for every person that chipped away at his prison, that filed away at his bars, that took the teeth out of our justice system and left us all vulnerable. The law exists to serve us and instead we're serving it!
We need to sharpen the sword of justice.
It has grown dull. It urgently requires our attention. However, we must not lose sight of our true goal - to protect the innocent and punish the guilty. We cannot allow ourselves to succumb to bloodlust, to be drowned in petty vengeance. Justice is meant to be impartial and unforgiving, a system we rally around, something greater than our immediate emotions. It must be greater than revenge, but it must also be greater than weakness or sympathy. Raymond Lee Caissie does not deserve to live amongst us, and executing him will not bring Serena Vermeersch back to life, but the scales of justice can be balanced. If we restore the power of justice fully, bring back capital punishment, we can prevent these disasters.
There's a largely untold story that is left to the side because it didn't end in a physical death, which is the fact that he was convicted of raping a woman and leveraging extreme sexual violence against her. That alone should have been enough, would have been enough in a common sense world of real justice, for him to either be killed or locked away never to be seen again. Not out of revenge, not with excessive ceremony or millions in repeat appeals. With simple, swift action. He is no better than any other predator in the wild that seeks to kill you, he just wears a different sort of camouflage when he stalks his prey. This kind of assessment of him is politically incorrect, but my interest isn't in being "politically correct" - it's in serving the needs of the people. He needs to be stopped once and for all, needs to have been stopped with that prior crime, or even before it.
And here we are again, time's flying by.
Wow, just look at the time I'm wasting on a man - no, an insect that wants to pretend to be a man. I'm talking about justice and virtue in the same space of someone who can't even scratch its surface. His story is really only the most recent and noticeable one. There are thousands of examples, probably as many or more untold stories and unknown victims of people like him. We all know that if anyone reads this, it's going to be met with condemnation. We're going to see a surge of people coming out in his defense, worrying about what might happen if we "violate his constitutional rights". I'm going to say this once, to settle my position on it and save us all some time...
I'm not worried about what could happen. I'm worried about what did happen. The needs of our nation aren't served by bowing our heads or staying our hand because of paralyzing fear of what could happen. Our needs aren't served by the whim of a few weak willed individuals who weren't voted into power and who don't represent the will of the living breathing people of the nation.
We need justice. We demand it.
