Dennis Prager Radioshow Listeners Germany

Yes, everybody can  see - the group is slowly growing … Annette left the country for sunny California, but the four of us remaining here resisted the rain and met in Munich in a restaurant and beer garden (the beer garden was closed because of the weather) “Parkcafé”

The Parkcafé was full of soccer fanatics - The opening of the European championship 2008 was broadcasted on huge screens. Füchsin was probably the only guest sitting with her back to the screen…

Finally we decided to change the place and walked to nearby Schwabing, a quarter with lots of students, small cafés, shops and restaurants. At Karolinenplatz we came across the “Amerikahaus” and prepared to take a photo of us:

… here it is:

Finally we went to Deeba, a small Pakistani restaurant with fine food and enjoyed:

Next time we’re going to meet in Nürnberg!

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Among other issues we were talking about where we disagree with Dennis. Two of the four of us stated, that they oppose the death penalty. Nevertheless we all agreed: if one of us happened to be the President of the United States among all the pressing issues, the death penalty would be quite subordinate.

The two of us who spoke out against the death penalty argued, it would be only fair to kill a cruel murderer. However, we as a society do not accept violence as a means to solve private civil conflicts, thus the state, which is based and represents the society’s values should not inflict it’s own idea of a civil society cardinally banning physical violence - even if this results in an obvious injustice of a murderer surviving his victims. The value of civil non-violence should be uphold even higher than the value of just penalty for the murderer.

We all agreed that this is not the case in a war or after-war situation (e.g. the Nuremberg trial) – we agreed on applying the death penalty on cruel dictators or ideologic leaders because they embody a serious threat to any potential or actual free, civil society in itself.

One of us, who advocated capital punishment, reasoned that the state doesn’t want its citizens to take revenge on their own but to take it away from the victims in order to maximise justice by bringing it to an impartial court. If there is no capital punishment, the citizens will desperately want to punish the murderer on their own.
I think, this indeed is an excellent point. In Germany, we don’t have capital punishment. So victims of a cruel murderer will not witness justice in their life because neither the state may kill the murderer, nor the victims may kill him on their own. I remember for example Marianne Bachmeier. Her daughter was murdered by a child molester in 1980. Mrs. Bachmeier smuggled a gun into the courtroom and shot the murderer of her daughter. She knew that the state wouldn’t kill him anyway, so she did it on her own. She was sent to prison for 6 years. Another example is the former chief of police in Frankfurt Wolfgang Daschner, who offered violent torture to a child molester in order to learn about the stash where the child probably was slowly dying. Indeed, the frightened child molester revealed the stash (but unfortunately the child had already died several days before). Mr. Daschner had to pay a fine of 10800 Euro and was removed to another post. The intention fo Mrs. Bachmeier and Mr. Daschner was just, but they were convicted anyway by our justice system. I think, unfortunately, these injustices are cruel in themselves, but they are the price for upholding the value of civil physical non-violence by the state.

I think we all agree with Dennis on the oddness, blindness and somehow heartlessness of many people who fight with full compassion and solidarity with brutal murderers against capital punishment. This is a cruelty in itself - for the victims and co-victims of horrible crimes. I specially agree with Dennis that if those people would witness the whole crime and what was done to the victim, they would change their mind.

I’m mentioning this discussion because yesterday someone recommended an excellent article about the subject of violence and trust (in a society) of Jan Philipp Reemtsma in the “Süddeutsche Zeitung”, (the biggest daily newspaper in Germany in terms of numbers of subscribers, maybe comparable to the New York Times in its political standpoints). I highly recommend reading the article.

Here is a small excerpt:

“Ich komme jetzt zu einer Behauptung, die Sie vielleicht irritieren wird. Unsere Kultur der Moderne hat nicht nur ein anderes Konzept der Sortierung von erlaubter/gebotener/verbotener Gewalt, sondern ein von Grund auf anderes, nämlich das, dass Gewalt - und das heißt: nicht nur Gewalt am falschen Ort, zur falschen Zeit, gegenüber den falschen Leuten - an sich ein Problem ist.

Zunächst kann man die Frage stellen, ob das denn tatsächlich so sei. Nun, man kann eine Menge Beobachtungen zusammentragen, etwa die, dass das Werk von Thomas Hobbes das erste philosophische Werk der Geschichte gewesen ist, das sich vor allem diesem Problem gewidmet hat: Wie ist Gewalt zu begrenzen. Noch bei Machiavelli lautete die Frage: Wann ist Gewalt in welchem Maße angebracht? “

(Hervorhebungen von mir)