The Government Can't Do Anything Right (Except When It Comes to Taking Life)

As a general matter, Richard Cohen's columns tend to be more cute than analytically rigorous, but he's still worth reading because occasionally he manages to say something particularly insightful. He did just that in his column the other day discussing the death penalty. In the column, Cohen pointed out that there is a rather large disconnect between conservative attitudes regarding the government's taking of private property (as evidenced by the hysteria surrounding the Kelo decision) and the government's taking of human life. Cohen quite correctly states that "the most awesome and, historically, most worrisome power of government is not to take property but to take life." It truly is bizarre that the same people who have no faith in the government's ability to do anything right, who think, as Reagan famously said, that "government IS the problem," trust that the government is able to determine innocence and guilt with perfect clarity. In retrospect, this bit of cognitive dissonance seems so obvious, but I must confess that it never occurred to me before reading Cohen's column. Referring to death row inmates who may have been executed for crimes they did not commit, Cohen laments "[i]f they were buildings, more people would care." Well put.