Last week saw a wide reaching discussion of public execution that started with this post from the Volokh Conspiracy. The short version is that Iran staged a public execution of a serial child molester/murderer, even including the victims’ family members in the flogging and hanging. Volokh—now, with some qualifications—approves of this.

I’d never had strong feelings one way or the other about the death penalty until the father of an OKC bombing victim spoke at my church. His very personal case against the death penalty was that killing Tim McVeigh would not bring his daughter back and that it would eliminate the chance of getting to understand Tim and why he did it. This OKC native started to share his sense of loss upon loss, and when Tim was killed I felt no glee.

But the prospect of a public execution seems to change the equation. Foucault demonstrated in Discipline and Punish that the value of a public execution (whether you share that value or not) is that it reaffirms that the State, and nothing else, has the authority to maim and kill. If Tim had been executed, say, on the memorial grounds (the former bombing site), I would have still shared that father’s sense of loss upon loss. But I probably would have been there too, to unite with all the other friends and family of his victims. And I would have left feeling a new, shared sense of closure, even if I wouldn’t be sure myself that justice was done that day. Right or wrong, “the bombing” would finally be finished. And we’d know it because we all saw each other there.

I find arguments that the death penalty violates our shared humanity to be either naive or spoiled. (Strange Doctrines seems to talk himself out of that argument even as he makes it here.) I suppose I share Foucault’s “post humanistic humanism.” Because I’ve never met a “humanity,” only people, I’m skeptical that there is such an animal. If that’s a liberal heresy, count me among the heretics.

The human condition, or human nature if you prefer, is something I feel I have observed, that I have seen in the flesh. It’s nasty, brutish, and short, and also faithful, hopeful, and loving. Picking one side of the balance over the other smells like a political statement, and if you’re intent on keeping that up, I might have to get up and leave the room.

Of course, we should all be more faithful, more hopeful, more loving. But hiding the nasty and brutish and short, whether in hidden execution chambers or lofty ideals, won’t get us there any quicker. We must acknowledge, perhaps even befriend, the Shadow if we are to control him.