Gov. Perry and American Gladiators

I've had a few days to process the absolute shock I felt when I heard the audience at the Republican Debate last Wednesday break into applause when Brian Williams mentioned the huge number of executions that have taken place in Texas. If you missed it, here's a link to the video, courtesy of TPM.

I hardly remember Gov. Perry's response to the question because I was dumbfounded by the audience's uncontrollable joy at the death of 234 people. How could a group of people, no matter their political affiliation, join in such at outburst at the loss of human life, whether they understood it to be justifiable, or not? Did I somehow time travel centuries back to the Roman Colosseum? Or maybe just months back to the entire country's celebration of Osama bin Laden's death?

Bruce Reyes-Chow, in his reflections on the GOP debate, writes, "Revenge, payback and ultimate justice may work for the movies and it may indeed fall right in line with “American” triumphalism, but these are not Christian values." Perhaps the Californians were mourning their state's overwhelming debt or its overcrowded prisons, two issues not to be easily disregarded, but certainly they would not look towards Texas, a state with its own budget shortages, as an appropriate role model. It is almost impossible, though, to pinpoint the thoughts of each member of an audience, and harder to hold them accountable to a religion they may or may not follow.

However, for a candidate who has so unabashedly flaunted his faith, Gov. Perry has some explaining to do. When I looked back over transcripts of the debate, I saw someone who is not only blind to inherent flaws in capital punishment, but in the justice system as a whole. Gov. Perry called state mandated death the "ultimate justice." So I suppose Jesus' death, as ordered by the Roman empire, would be seen as ultimate justice, according to Perry? I'm sure he would disagree, but I would love to see the theological acrobatics that went into the backtracking.