So much for the legal issues. Let's get to the moral. Since Cho murdered 32 people, Psalm 32 seems like as good place to start as any.
Blessed is he
whose transgressions are forgiven,
whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man
whose sin the Lord does not count against him
and in whose spirit is no deceit...
Think about the idea of your sin "not counting" against you. It's like morally fucking up but getting a full refund of Godpoints. Religion says your actions are justified, or dictated, by a power outside yourself. The outside power determines whether your actions are good or bad, forgiven or unforgiven. And as the above Bible excerpt illustrates, not only can man have his immorality evaporated away by God, he is actually blessed (made holy) by it. In Christianity, you can get a black mark on your moral soul before you even take your lips off your mother's breast (original sin).
I can see sending a kid to Hell if he's a teething, little bastard and extracts blood, but I still tend to give moral slack to people who haven't yet learned to wipe their own asses.
Instead of God, the nonreligious blame sins on environment or genes, disagreeing about whether the intelligent force directing the individual resides inside or outside the body, but agreeing that it does not reside inside the human skull. The human will is nonexistent, according to most nonbelievers, what exists are only biological components and external forces. How do they know this? Presumably, because their genes or environment required them to know it.
The religious believe in free will, but they advocate its use only for the purpose of adhering to a mindlessly accepted creed of behavior. I.e., you know you used your will to its potential if you've suppressed it sufficiently to obey (the virtue of faith). The typical nonreligious denies free will, because he can't chop it out and put it in a test tube, and because he equates the part (genes, cells) with the whole (the human mind as a functioning whole). These are both one, big masquerade of pretending to understand and seek causes for human behavior, but in reality escaping the self-evident fact that the mind is free. If you don't believe your mind is free, then I will politely excuse you from any discussion.
Cho Seung Hui's environment never gave him enough hugs. That's the moral of the story as many people see it. "What could we have done to prevent this?" they ask. The emphasis is on "we", the public (not "we, the cops"), and the implication is that it's the fault of somebody other than Cho Seung Hui why this poor, abused, pussy pulled the trigger 30-something times. F him. And F his moral excusers.
If there's one thing that lies at the bottom of the lowest layer of scum in our society, it's our sympathy for the devil. It's why devils like Cho Seung Hui demand our sympathy. By now, they have the right to expect it.
"Do you know what it feels like to be spit on your face, and have trash shoved down your throat? Do you know what it feels like to dig your own grave? Do you know what it feels like to have your throat slashed from ear to ear? Do you know what it feels like to be torched alive? Do you know what it feels like to be humiliated and be impaled upon on [sic] a cross, and left to bleed to death for your amusement? You have never felt a single ounce of pain in your whole life."
This is a man who blamed his victims in advance for his own evil. His pain, our lack of sympathy for his pain, is the intractable force directing his behavior. It sounds like a rough draft of The Who's Behind Blue Eyes. These lines could have come straight from Cho Seung Hui's manifesto:
No one knows what its like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes...
No one knows what its like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you...
When my fist clenches, crack it open
Before I use it and lose my cool...
If I swallow anything evil
Put your finger down my throat
If I shiver, please give me a blanket
Keep me warm, let me wear your coat...
We live in a culture that pities, excuses, and reveres the sinner. We ought to learn that if we do it loudly and often enough, sometimes the sinner also gets the message.
