So you know, I am a veteran of the first Gulf war, US Navy. I served in Bosnia/Herzegovina, Mogadishu, Somalia. My father is a Vietnam Veteran and a retired police officer. I spent my youth listening to his spare police radio during the 1980 riots, when a police officer was hurt they would rattle off the badge number roll call. The whole family listened at times just to see if Dad was going to come home, or if we were going to the hospital. Dad used to wear T-Shirts that said “How do you like your justice, regular or extra crispy” as a caption to a picture of “old sparky”.

True of all wine, I taste of my grapes.

I only admitted that I was going through a period of doubt and self examination. I asked other people here in this venue (Ms Barber and I don’t always see eye to eye but I have a great amount of respect for her and the environment she has fostered here) what their feelings were on the matter.

So no. No hidden agendas. I asked a question, and I am listening.

Your argument, though cogent, did not address the seeds of my doubts. My doubts are not based in whether or not murder is murder because it is condoned by the laws of man, or even because I think that the world is a better place without such scum.

No, my doubts are based in whether or not killing the man is aligned with God’s will. I am no spiritual scholar, I honestly don’t know, hence the questions.

…after all, I support our actions in the Middle East and believe that the world is going to be a safer place when it is all said and done. There was an awful lot of “murder” going on there, committed by both sides. If I was firmly on the other side of the fence, as you suspected, I would have a *big* problem with that. I don’t. I think that the price we are paying for the birth of freedom is well worth it.

From a spiritual perspective, is this hypocritical of me?

Anyway. The reason I asked *this* particular venue was because I was more interested in the spiritual perspective, not my own or the government’s.

What do the faithful here think of the issue?

Thanks for the give and take.

Mike M, Rudolph is a terrorist – there is no other way to describe him. Here’s one definition from Wiki: use of violence for the purpose of creating fear in order to achieve a political, religious, or ideological goal. If he was Palestinian, Iraqi, or a Basque separatist, what would he be called? A Terrorist.

I am beginning to doubt you are a fence sitter on capital punishment. Those who have made up their minds and are in the ‘recruiting’ mode purposely misuse this word to confuse…uh, I mean convince, others.

There WASN’T much attention about this guy in the media. To say this guy is simply an “angry White man” is an understatement and implies something I doubt you care to imply – ie., lumping the many southern white men who vote Republican into the same extreme camp as Rudolph. If it is in fact true that the “vast resources of the Federal Government” were diverted toward finding this guy, why has it taken 9 years to find and prosecute him? But digressing from these points, thank you for identifying Rudolph as a “serious terrorist”, a title which I feel is fitting and one that I have not yet heard used in the so-called “liberal” media. Terrorists are terrorists whether they be extremist Christian fundamentalists, extreme Zionists, or the terrorists that carry out acts in the name of Islam.

Thank you for allowing me, a liberal Christian, to post on your site, La Shawn. God bless.

Thanks for your blog. I enjoy reading it. Always helpful to get another viewpoint.

Still, your argument is based on the discretionary judgment of man. I don’t want to get into a judgment debate; that’s a morass of emotional swill with no clear victor save LaShawn, and that’s only because this is her Blog.

Emotionally, I’m with you.

I’m just saying, the older I get, the more I begin to question the decisions that I know are built from a purely emotional or purely rational foundation. There is a spiritual component that needs to be involved, and I think that this is the part of me that feels greasy afterwards; this is the part of me that knows that it is not my place to make that decision.

I’m not saying I have the answer either, and I’m no Quaker or Conscientious Objector. The man’s freedom is a threat to society; it brought evil into this world and set it loose. There need to be clear and profound consequences.

I’m just saying that it feels greasy to condone his murder – righteous, justified, state sanctioned, lawful, popular or not.

Abortion = killing the most innocent
Death Penalty = killing the most guilty