What's Walter Williams' position on capital punishment?

Walter's recent article about how much he hates Robin Hood got me thinking. Has he ever expressed a position on capital punishment? He has to be against it, doesn't he? If he's not, wouldn't he be a huge hypocrite?

Here's my reasoning. According to Walter's personal philosophy, actions have absolute moral values assigned to them. He believes that 'stealing' is always wrong in every possible circumstance - which he claims as the moral basis for his anti-tax stance.

So the next logical question becomes: what absolute moral value can be assigned to the act of killing a human being? According to Walter's belief system, killing a human being is either completely moral or completely immoral. Since he's previously claimed to be concerned by the number of blacks killing other blacks, we can only logically conclude that he's against it. After all, if killing another person was always a moral act, why would Walter be concerned about an epidemic of it happening?

Which means he's opposed to all murder, under any circumstance. One might think that if someone committed an especially heinous act, a jury of their peers convicted them, and then a judge sentenced them to death, reasonable people might be willing to consider the morality of government-sanctioned murder as a response. Walter doesn't believe this, of course - as we recall from that tax article, no matter how many people agree that money should be used to build roads, compelling someone to pay that money is immoral theft.

The only possible conclusion we can come to is that Walter believes that all killing is immoral at all times. So, in addition to taxes, here are some more items we can add to the list of things that Walter is vehemently opposed to: capital punishment, the United States army, police officers carrying guns.

I look forward to Walter soon coming out in favor of utter pacifism as a key facet of his libertarian faith.

Unless, of course, Walter was lying about his moral framework, and he just wants to make sure that no one gets to play with his toys but him.

But that couldn't be true, could it?

Walter Williams hates Robin Hood with an almost unimaginable fury.

A few weeks ago Walter Williams decided it was time to lay out the central defining principle of his personal philosophy. What do we learn from this? That Walter Williams really needs to spend time thinking through his beliefs. Although the man's already closer to 100 than 1 - if this is as far as he's gotten with a lifetime of thought, I'm not optimistic that he can be turned around in what time he's got left. So what are the things that Walter believes in? Thought experiments! Poorly-conceived ones, at that!

"Suppose I saw an elderly woman painfully huddled on a heating grate in the dead of winter. She's hungry and in need of shelter and medical attention. To help the woman, I walk up to you using intimidation and threats and demand that you give me $200. Having taken your money, I then purchase food, shelter and medical assistance for the woman. Would I be guilty of a crime? A moral person would answer in the affirmative. I've committed theft by taking the property of one person to give to another."

Okay Walter, first thing - morality and law are two separate things. So don't go making them interchangeable by saying a 'moral person' would answer that a crime had been committed. Whether or not a 'crime' has occurred is a matter for a legal analysis, not a moral one. So let's just cut your conclusion entirely, since you've tried to trick us into accepting what you imagine is a 'moral' framework, when you're actually talking about a legal one.

Let's say, for example, that you took the money from me - that's me, personally, not some hypothetical person like the one you were dealing with - to help out the starving old lady. Would you have committed a crime? Maybe - but would you have acted immorally? I can't really say that you have. After all, the old lady obviously needs the money more than I do - I'm not the one freezing to death. In this hypothetical situation the most I could ask was that you, Walter Williams, also put up an equal 200 dollars to help the old lady out, so that at least we were dealing with a fair situation, and I could be sure that you really wanted to help the woman, and weren't asking for the money simply because you had a problem with me.

That's a concept we call 'shared sacrifice', Walter - you and I both put up money so that an old lady doesn't die. What could possibly be immoral about that?

Let's find out what Walter thinks is immoral about that!

"Most Americans would agree that it would be theft regardless of what I did with the money."

Theft, perhaps - although I don't know if I'd agree with 'most'. Maybe in the strictest '50% +1' definition, but even then.... there are more people in danger of becoming an old lady on a grate than in danger of becoming you, Walter.. And again, while it might be theft, it's certainly not morally wrong? God no. And hell, you haven't even considered who the money might be taken from. What if you were taking the money from Jamie Dimon, who makes an absurd amount of money by stealing from people? Then it wouldn't even be a little wrong. Sorry for interrupting, you were saying?

"Would it still be theft if I were able to get three people to agree that I should take your money? What if I got 100 people to agree -- 100,000 or 200 million people? What if instead of personally taking your money to assist the woman, I got together with other Americans and asked Congress to use Internal Revenue Service agents to take your money? In other words, does an act that's clearly immoral and illegal when done privately become moral when it is done legally and collectively?"

There you go again, Walter, trying to use 'immoral' and 'illegal' interchangeably. Since I've never agreed to your central idea that being pressured to help a dying woman is 'immoral', why would I think that forcing millions of people to help other millions of starving people was immoral? Illegality is a question of what a government says it is - immorality transcends such simple classification. Hell - I'm a little shocked by your example, since being compelled to help the downtrodden is basically the definition of new testament biblical morality.

Of course, it's possible that you didn't know that, Walter - are you not a Christian? I honestly don't know, but I feel like that's something which would have come up by now...

"Put another way, does legality establish morality? Before you answer, keep in mind that slavery was legal; apartheid was legal; the Nazi's Nuremberg Laws were legal; and the Stalinist and Maoist purges were legal. Legality alone cannot be the guide for moral people. The moral question is whether it's right to take what belongs to one person to give to another to whom it does not belong."

No, legality doesn't establish morality. Which is why taking that money to help that old lady - while illegal - was never immoral in the first place. The weird part is that by bringing up Nuremberg laws it almost seems like Walter's close to understanding that helping an old lady is good, and worth some sacrifice to accomplish, but then he spins back and decides that the baseline of what he calls 'morality' is "What's mine is mine, and nobody can touch it but me!"

The moral philosopher that Water is basing his theories on, by the way, is 'Any random 3-year-old'.

"Don't get me wrong. I personally believe that assisting one's fellow man in need by reaching into one's own pockets is praiseworthy and laudable. Doing the same by reaching into another's pockets is despicable, dishonest and worthy of condemnation."

I don't think you do believe helping people is praiseworthy, though. I think you that on the rare occasions in which you deign to offer your largesse, you do it because you enjoy the feeling of superiority you get from looking down on someone less fortunate than you. If you ever see anyone else giving to charity/a poor person, I don't think you feel anything at all.

"Some people call governmental handouts charity, but charity and legalized theft are entirely two different things. But as far as charity is concerned, James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, said, "Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government." To my knowledge, the Constitution has not been amended to include charity as a legislative duty of Congress."

No one calls government handouts 'Charity' unless they're trying to insult the people who receive those handouts. Hell, no one calls government support 'handouts' unless they're trying to insult the people who receive the support. Honestly, Walter, there are so many layers of contempt for the lower classes here that it's hard to cut through them and find your point.

Also, I thought we were discussing morality here? Why are you talking about James Madison? In addition to hating charity, here are some things that Madison approved of: slavery, deportation of free blacks, screwing over natives, and invading Canada. He's not exactly a paragon of moral authority - even among the founding fathers.

"Our current economic crisis, as well as that of Europe, is a direct result of immoral conduct. Roughly two-thirds to three-quarters of our federal budget can be described as Congress' taking the property of one American and giving it to another."

You've now expanded the word 'immoral' to the point where it becomes meaningless. You consider social security (keeping old people from dying frozen in a ditch - which we already established was moral) and medicaid (keeping children from dying from the measles) as 'immoral' because everyone in America pools their money to make sure those results are achieved. That's not what immorality is, Walter. It never has been, and it never will be.

"In the face of our looming financial calamity, what are we debating about? It's not about the reduction or elimination of the immoral conduct that's delivered us to where we are. It's about how we pay for it -- namely, taxing the rich, not realizing that even if Congress imposed a 100 percent tax on earnings higher than $250,000 per year, it would keep the government running for only 141 days."

There's something about those numbers that seems like a lie - maybe it's just that Walter is using statistics to prove a point, and he's almost always lying when he does that... Maybe he's not taking corporate taxes into account? Or estate taxes? That could be it...

"Ayn Rand, in her novel "Atlas Shrugged," reminded us that "when you have made evil the means of survival, do not expect men to remain good.""

Which is why, Walter, we can never allow people to reach a point where the means of survival is for everyone to hoard all their money in a giant safe while the majority of Americans die of starvation and the flu.

Oh, wait, what she thought was 'evil' was taking a small portion of her money to ensure a clean water supply and sturdy bridges? Huh... why did anyone ever take this woman seriously? And how can anyone look at people who devote their lives to her gospel with anything approaching a straight face?

And for the record, Walter - you taking my money to help an old lady wouldn't be immoral. Me taking your money for any reason at all? Completely morally neutral. Because you sure as hell didn't earn it in a moral way, so you don't deserve to have it any more than I do. I don't expect you to understand this concept Walter - after all, Robin Hood would no doubt make your top-5 list of fiction's greatest villains.

Walter Williams is still pissed at Trayvon Martin for being inconsiderate enough to get shot to death.

Walter begins this article with some statistics about the number of black people suffering violent crimes in America. Surprising no one, it turns out that they're more likely to be victimized than any other race of people - and their victimizers are more likely to be of the same race than another. Of course, people are always more likely to be victimized by people of their own race, since that's who people generally tend to associate with. If you live in a community that's 90 percent white, there's a 90 percent chance that any criminal you meet is going to be white. The same is true in black communities. Yes, the crime numbers are shockingly high in black communities, but so are the poverty numbers - which tend to have a direct causal link to the crime numbers, and which Walter steadfastly refuses to mention. I wonder why?

Things don't get really dumb, though, until the second paragraph. In it he starts with the number that about 7000 black people are murdered every year, then compares that to the number of black people killed in wars since Korea (18,515) and claims to be shocked by the disparity in numbers. Of course, far more white people have been murdered in America than killed in foreign wars since Korea as well, but admitting that would reveal Walter's point to be a trick of math created by the fact that there haven't actually been that many America war casualties since Korea. When you do a large amount of your war-fighting by dropping bombs on countries that don't have planes, the casualty counts tend to get pretty lopsided. Still, Walter wants to draw a conclusion from the numbers-

"It's a tragic commentary to be able to say that young black males have a greater chance of reaching maturity on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan than on the streets of Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, Oakland, Newark and other cities."

Or, it would be a tragic commentary, were it true. Like most things Walter says, however, it isn't. Yes, the raw numbers bear out the concept - 7000 blacks dead in America/year against 120 blacks dead in Afghanistan or Iraq/year, but raw numbers hide the fact that there are considerably more black Americans in America than there are in Afghanistan or Iraq. In any given year there are roughly 40 million black people living in America. According to Walter's numbers, that means each one of those people has a roughly 0.017% chance of being murdered. By comparison, any random black person in the military has roughly 0.025% chance of being killed in Afghanistan or Iraq.

Is it shocking that you're only a little better off being a regular American black person than one in the military? Absolutely - shocking enough that you'd think Walter could avoid lying in order to make his argument.

Then, naturally, Walter wastes a decent point by lying some more, while unfairly inferring intention:

"A much larger issue is how might we interpret the deafening silence about the day-to-day murder in black communities compared with the national uproar over the killing of Trayvon Martin. Such a response by politicians, civil rights organizations and the mainstream news media could easily be interpreted as "blacks killing other blacks is of little concern, but it's unacceptable for a white to kill a black person."

Walter claims a 'deafening silence' about Black on Black crime. But simply look at any Black advocacy group, and you'll find that they talk about the problem of Black on Black crime literally all the time. There are marches, speeches, fundraisers, and a number of major groups taking positive action on the subject. Yet Walter wants to believe that because people are upset about the Martin shooting that this means there's no concern for Black on Black violence, but he offers no evidence to back his theory up. All Walter has is the anecdotal observation that Black people seem pretty angry about the Martin shooting - and when Walter sees angry Black people, he knows that it can only ever be a racial thing.

Somehow it has yet to occur to Walter that the Martin shooting was a cause celebre not simply because of the races of the people involved, but because an armed man hunted down and shot an unarmed teen and was then neither arrested nor charged by the police. Injustice sells papers, which you'd think Walter - a newspaper columnist - would know. Although how could he have missed this one? This article of Walter's was published at the end of May - did he not notice that coverage of the Martin case fell off a cliff after Zimmerman was charged in April? Once the perceived injustice (man being released without charges after questionable shooting) had taken steps towards being resolved, the media moved on.

It seems that in Walter's desperation to find a racial issue to get angry about, he's hooked his wagon to something a little more complex than he'd imagined. It seems that the Martin coverage had less to do with people pushing the myth of a rash of white on black crime, and more with people wanting to see justice done. So Walter got this one wrong. Not exactly a shock, but let's move on-

To Walter's revelation of the real problem: Black on white crime!

"Not only is there silence about black-on-black crime; there's silence and concealment about black racist attacks on whites -- for example, the recent attacks on two Virginian-Pilot newspaper reporters set upon and beaten by a mob of young blacks. The story wasn't even covered by their own newspaper. In March, a black mob assaulted, knocked unconscious, disrobed and robbed a white tourist in downtown Baltimore. Black mobs have roamed the streets of Denver, Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Cleveland, Washington, Los Angeles and other cities, making unprovoked attacks on whites and running off with their belongings."

Here Walter makes his case that the media doesn't care about blacks doing bad things to white people. Except for the fact that by virtue of the fact that Walter is here talking about them, they must have been covered in the media. The Virginian-Pilot story has been extensively covered - even turning up on O'Reilly's show - and the fact that it's an assault where no one was seriously injured suggests that it probably doesn't have legs as a national news story. The Baltimore tourist attack was extensively covered for weeks - I live in Canada, and I heard about it. As for Walter's generalization about groups of muggers mugging people, I can't believe that I have to explain to a grown man that people looking to rob other people tend to try and rob those who have more money than they do. Or is Walter so afraid of entering the economic arena that he won't even admit that black criminals tend to be far worse off financially than their white victims?

Then Walt caps the whole thing off with a favorite talking point of Thomas Sowell's - the 'epidemic' of Black on Asian violence, and the media's complete failure in covering it. Again - I'm not sure that Walter hangs out with a lot of Asian teens, and if the media's not covering it, how is he hearing about all these kids being called 'Dragon ball'?

"But that kind of bullying, unlike the bullying of homosexuals, goes unreported and unpunished."

God, Walt, how many times do I have to remind you of this? You're AGAINST anti-bullying measures. You can't say that bullying against gays shouldn't be thought of as a problem and then turn around and complain that bullying against Asians isn't thought of as a bigger problem. Is even a basic amount of consistency impossible for you to deliver?

The truly stunning part of all this is how incredibly disingenuous this entire article is. Walter claims to be pointing out the media's hypocrisy about not covering black on black violence, but the irony is that no one is more against addressing Black on Black violence than Walter himself. He likes to use the fact that blacks are shooting each other as a cudgel to defeat charges of anti-black racism, as if he can simply say 'hey, when you stop killing each other, then you can complain about institutional racism, but unless you stop acting like animals, you won't get treated like people' and that will be the end of it. The possible linkages between institutional racism and black on black violence either completely escape Walter, or are being purposefully overlooked by him so that he can paint an entire race of people as alien and constitutionally unsuited for self-determination.

Whenever people take actually steps to address black on black crime - decriminalization that would take money and violence out of the equation and turn drugs into a public health issue, real gun control laws that would actually address the obscenely large number of handguns that are easily available in America - Walter and people like him get up in arms and rally against progressive steps. The Supreme Court forced Washington DC to allow hanguns on its streets - why didn't Walter write an indignant article about that? Why, it's almost as if he'd like the epidemic of black on black crime to keep right on chugging along. After all, if black people weren't killing each other, and instead worked together to secure their rights and a better future for their children, how would people like Walter marginalize and dismiss them?

The article ends with a baffling/horrifying quote that Walter finds apropos:

"Racial demagoguery from the president on down is not in our nation's best interests, plus it's dangerous. As my colleague Thomas Sowell recently put it, "if there is anything worse than a one-sided race war, it is a two-sided race war, especially when one of the races outnumbers the other several times over.""

Am I reading this wrong, or is Walter saying that if Black people don't stop complaining about racism, the Whites of America will show them what real racism looks like? Because that's what it seems like Sowell is threatening.

Why would Walter ever republish this quote? Is he trying to send out a secret message so that we'll rescue him from the right-wing white people holding him hostage? This almost reads like a cry for help or a pleading mea culpa for his sins. After all, how could Walter be blamed for all of his racist nonsense when all he's trying to do is make sure that Black people stay in their place so that White people don't start taking steps to solve the 'Negro Problem'. He's just trying to help you, Black people, why can't you see that?!

But no. It's the other people who are stoking racial resentment and threatening racial violence. Not Walter and his crowd. Never.