Mainstream Europe and the Execution

Mark Steyn weighs in on the execution and the reaction:

The execution of Saddam Hussein provided a useful study in contrasting pathologies. In Europe, the dictator's hanging was deplored. "The death penalty," sniffed The Guardian, "is an unacceptably cruel and unusual punishment, even in Iraq." Really? Whether or not it was unacceptably cruel, under Saddam it certainly wasn't unusual.

By contrast, Tim Hames, of the London Times, supported toppling the butcher but not killing him. "Mainstream middle-class sentiment in Europe," he wrote, "now regards the death penalty as being as ethically tainted as the crimes that produced the sentence."

"Mainstream middle-class sentiment" translates into English as: "People I meet at dinner parties."

Read the entire article here.