A Christian Liberal is NOT an oxymoron.

Posted by XT on January 16th, 2009 in Progressive Faith

My life has been relatively untouched by violence. At least, the deadly kind. To my knowledge, no family member has ever been murdered. We’ve never been victimized by terrorists. I can’t imagine – and don’t want to – what it would be like to have someone I love torn out of life by someone else’s hatred. While it’s a poor comparison, I did lose my father when I was thirteen – but I don’t think I can bring suit against Phillip-Morris, Coors Brewing Co., and the Vietnam War for hastening his demise. But his loss was sudden and, in some ways that only become clear as time passes, tragic. It’s a poor comparison, I know, but ultimately, a death is a death, and the timeliness of it is always difficult to take.

Joseph Connor is, understandably, still angry about his father’s death. I want to be clear that nothing justifies terrorism and, no matter what FALN claims, it was an evil deed to plant bombs aimed at harming civilians. Aiding and abetting that evil is its own kind of evil. So I have no problem with the fact that the members of FALN were sent to prison, and if they had served out their sentences, I wouldn’t protest it as excessive.

But Connor’s anger at Eric Holder is misplaced. First of all, he apparently doesn’t even understand what happened. Bill Clinton did not pardon any members of FALN. He did grant them clemency – which is basically “time off for good behavior.” A pardon wipes away the conviction. Clemency just allows someone to leave prison. It’s a significant difference. Someone who is granted clemency is placed on parole/probation and must agree to have their behavior monitored to ensure that they are not returning to their criminal ways. Someone who is pardoned is simply released onto the streets and can do whatever they damn well please.

Second, as Connor admits, no one that was granted clemency by Clinton was ever tied to the bombing that killed his father. While it might feel good to have someone sitting in prison and rotting, it isn’t justice to hold them for a crime they did not commit. It isn’t justice.

Connor writes:

Holder said at his confirmation hearing Thursday that he thought Clinton’s decision to pardon the FALN members was “reasonable.” But they were bad people.

Undoubtedly they were willing to do bad things. Perhaps they were even “bad people” – though that phrase to me sounds too much like the pained nine-year-old still crying out for his father. But clemency isn’t handed out to good people – that’s what pardons are supposed to be for. Clemency is handed out to bad people who have agreed to change their ways – bad people who are at least trying to turn into good people. The threats they made in their youth really don’t figure into the clemency determination, other than to offer an example of what they have turned from.

Connor continues: “From the FALN, my family learned about the inexplicable randomness of terrorism.” This is surely true. Just as my family learned of the randomness of life and death when my father died only days after he turned forty-two. One day he was laughing and loving his family and the next he just wasn’t. Death is random, regardless of whether you can fix the blame on an individual or not. Perhaps not having anyone specific to hate over my father’s death has made it easier for me to move on.

Or maybe it’s just that hating comes natural and we have to learn to forgive. When I was eighteen, I was in a fairly severe car wreck. I still have scars from it, and will until the day I die. That’s just the way it is. But I don’t bear any ill will towards the motorist that caused it. Even at the time it happened, I didn’t.

Holder’s connection is that he worked as Assistant Attorney General for Bill Clinton when the clemency review was conducted. Supposedly he ordered his staff to change their recommendation and refused to talk to families of FALN’s victims. That certainly shows that he was concerned with approving the clemency more than having a thorough discussion about it. Perhaps he was ordered to do so. Perhaps it was his decision. Perhaps it was politically motivated – some have said that Hillary Clinton gained support from the Puerto Rican community in NYC over it. Perhaps it was not. The ultimate decision was Clinton’s, though, not Holder’s. I think it is worth discussing with Holder, but not necessarily worth hating him or derailing his career.

Conor concludes by saying that we, as Americans, cannot tolerate officials who put our lives at risk by releasing terrorists. But he has nothing to show us as proof that we are any more at risk from the FALN members who were granted clemency than we were while they were locked up. The attempted tie-in to the 9/11 attacks falls short of being convincing. FALN, you see, wasn’t involved in that attack and it would have happened even if these people remained in prison. Dylcia Pagan has turned to making documentaries. At best, these handful of people teeter at the edge of being forgotten.

Of course, not by the peope who were hurt by FALN. As I said, that is understandable. But the desire to punish people who are not directly responsible for the injury of people is simply misplaced. The desire to use that hatred to justify that indefinite incarceration of unknown others is even further removed from justice. We simply cannot hate everyone who might wish us ill or wish to help those that wish us ill. With well over three billion people on earth, the numbers are simply against us.

No, we cannot simply sit back and forgive and forget everything. There are options between the extremes. “If everyone lives by an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, we will all be hungry and blind.” We have to learn to have mercy on someone, somewhere. Perhaps it is too much to ask those who have been injured to forgive the members of FALN. But sure it is not too much to ask them to forgive Eric Holder.

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