The ugliness of cheering for capital punishment

Personally, I believe that if you take a life cold-bloodedly, you should have to forfeit your life. But I do not believe that the government is capable of delivering the ultimate punishment in a fair, accurate manner, 100 percent of the time. I agree with the teaching of the Catholic Church, which doesn’t flat-out condemn capital punishment, but says that if society can protect itself by bloodless means, then it should do that rather than opt for execution.

It is worth contemplating why it is that conservatives who believe the government is incompetent in most areas of its agency are willing to assent credulously to its unerring competence when it comes to exercising the ultimate power over its citizenry: killing them.