Recently, former McCain campaign spokesman Michael Goldfarb sparked a minor blogosopheric kefuffle with this blog post, in which he essentially advocated the killing of the families of terrorist leaders. Here’s the relevant portion of the post:

The fight against Islamic radicals always seems to come around to whether or not they can, in fact, be deterred, because it’s not clear that they are rational, at least not like us. But to wipe out a man’s entire family, it’s hard to imagine that doesn’t give his colleagues at least a moment’s pause. Perhaps it will make the leadership of Hamas rethink the wisdom of sparking an open confrontation with Israel under the current conditions.

This is a disturbing sentiment to come from someone who, in an alternate universe, might have been someone of consequence in the McCain Administration.

Of course, Goldfarb is hardly alone among American politicians for favoring the murder of innocent people in the name of “fighting terrorism.” John McCain himself famously joked about “bombing Iran,” while Congressman Tom Tancredo apparently seriously suggested a policy of nuclear attacks against Muslim holy sites should a nuclear device every be detonated in the United States.

These types of sentiments are hardly unique among American pundits, either. Ann Coulter, among others, is quite happy to discuss “nuking Iran” and is granted countless spots on network TV to do so. Former New York Times columnist Bill Kristol hasn’t come up with an idea for a war he didn’t like. Of course, too, the internet is replete with this type of sentiment, as well.

What never fails to impress me about the constant expression of such sentiments from the people close to or at the levers of power is the seemingly casual acceptance of killing a bunch of innocent people.

Not that casually killing a bunch of innocent people is a new thing to politics or anything. Even to American politics (see e.g. Andrew Jackson). But given the remarkable change in attitudes towards war, conquest, etc. that have dominated the West since the end of World War II, it’s baffling that people in positions of power and influence are taken seriously when they utter such nonsense. And yet, they are.

Here’s an example from a few years back. There was a rather well-publicized case in Iran in which a serial child molester was found guilty and punished by being flogged, stabbed and finally killed. The victims’ families directly participated in the execution. This met with approval with many in the pundit world, including UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volkh, who wrote at the time:

I particularly like the involvement of the victims’ relatives in the killing of the monster; I think that if he’d killed one of my relatives, I would have wanted to play a role in killing him. Also, though for many instances I would prefer less painful forms of execution, I am especially pleased that the killing — and, yes, I am happy to call it a killing, a perfectly proper term for a perfectly proper act — was a slow throttling, and was preceded by a flogging. The one thing that troubles me (besides the fact that the murderer could only be killed once) is that the accomplice was sentenced to only 15 years in prison, but perhaps there’s a good explanation.

I am being perfectly serious, by the way. I like civilization, but some forms of savagery deserve to be met not just with cold, bloodless justice but with the deliberate infliction of pain, with cruel vengeance rather than with supposed humaneness or squeamishness. I think it slights the burning injustice of the murders, and the pain of the families, to react in any other way.

While this is definitely a natural and understandable emotional reaction, the fact of the matter is that this type of thinking is, well, uncivilized. Indeed, it wasn’t too long after that Mr. Volokh realized this point himself and retracted his earlier statement.

Volokh’s primary error, he realized, was a problem of institutions. Indeed, he noted “how hard it would be for a jury system to operate when this punishment was available, and how its availability would affect gubernatorial elections, legislative elections, and who knows what else.” Of course, what he did not retract was the moral acceptability of such punishments–merely that they would be difficult, if not impossible, to institutionalize.

This casual acceptance of cruelty, torture, and murder as exemplified by the above pundits, understandable as their points may be emotionally, does much to undermine civilized discourse and, indeed, civilized behavior. It’s this legitimization of such barbaric behavior that leads to politicians ordering the torture of prisoners. It’s society’s acceptance of the idea that some people “have it coming” that leads to a justice system where prosecutors and police are held unaccountable when they try to put someone behind bars–even if that person turns out to be innocent.

This is not to say that it’s not appropriate to have honest discussions of, say, capital punishment or what levels of collateral damage are justifiable during war time. The ethics of these things are tricky and merit serious discussion.

But what shows up on our airwaves, the internet, and the floor of Congress is not an honest discussion. It’s a visceral, emotional bloodthirsty one. It’s the attitude that led the Romans to punish by crucifixion, the Spartans to develop of “coming of age” involving the murder of innocents, and al-Qaeda to brutally decapitate journalists and others.

If America is to truly maintain its position as the leader of the free world in the 21st Century, we need to, as a culture, end our casual acceptance of murder.