This statement appears in the May 18, 2001 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.
Ashcroft's Pay-Per-View Snuff Film
by Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr.The following statement was released by Presidential Candidate Lyndon LaRouche by the candidate's campaign committee, LaRouche in 2004, on April 30, 2001.
On the subject of the disgusting public behavior of Attorney-General John Ashcroft, in his staging of the execution of Timothy McVeigh as a pay-per-view, government-produced, live snuff entertainment.
I, like most nations within globally extended modern European civilization today, continue to be morally opposed to the use of the death penalty. However, there are other issues involved, issues which should trouble the consciences of anyone, whether or not they support the idea of a death-penalty, who examines the relevant record of death-sentence convictions and executions in the U.S. today.
First, the pattern of exoneration of death-row inmates through DNA evidence, suffices to show all sane and literate adults, that we can not ignore the evidence that many innocent person have been condemned to death, and even executed, under widespread judicial practices which are often corrupted and highly fallible.
A morally qualified majority of the U.S. Supreme Court, acting under the provisions of the Preamble of our Federal Constitution, would strike down as violations of our moral law, all of those laws and procedures which deny an unfairly convicted person the right to exoneration by due process, in all cases pertinent evidence on the facts of the case, or the conduct of the prosecution, court, or jury, or denial of a competent representation in defense, indicate a morally mandatory review of the matter before any decision could be judged as final for purpose of practice.
Worse than the proposed execution as such, are the arguments which have been made publicly, either by Attorney-General Ashcroft, or on his behalf, in the case of the execution of McVeigh. There is no difference between the posture of Ashcroft and the mob howling for a pay-per-view execution, and the role of Nero and the Roman mob of "public opinion" in the ancient Colosseum's barbarous, homicidal entertainments.
Ironically, since, by all accounts in sight, McVeigh has expressed his pleasure in being placed on display in his execution, by what sado-masochistic logic does anyone construe his execution as being an edifying act of punishment?
Sometimes, as in this instance, the threatened doom of a society is pre-announced, ironically, by expressions of general moral depravity no worse than what has been shown by the Bush administration in the handling of the McVeigh case so far. It is time that a foolish so-called "popular opinion" wake up to recognize that there is a difference of some importance between "human rights" and the human rites presided over by this Attorney-General and others.
