Amnesty?

bonus atque fidus judex honestum prætulit utili

A letter written in response to the recent appeal for amnesty written by Emily Oster and published in the Atlantic.

Dear Emily,

A truly penitent sinner acknowledges his sins, sincerely requests forgiveness, and accepts the necessity for punishment. The problem is that your article does none of those things.

Instead your article reads like a disingenuous attempt to excuse your immoral behavior, duck responsibility, avoid blame, and escape punishment by rationalization, misdirection, and whataboutism. It is not clear to me that you understand the nature of the sins you committed, nor even that you acknowledge that you did anything wrong. Your crime was not in being mistaken about the facts (although perhaps that should be taken into account when assessing your intelligence and competence for any future employment). Your crime was in advocating state violence against people who peacefully disagreed with you, and simply wished to behave differently from the way you wanted them to behave. Do you understand how terrible a crime this is, even had you been utterly correct about the deadliness of the disease and the safety and efficacy of the vaccines? If you do not understand this, and are not willing to say that you will never resort to such thinking and such threats again, then I cannot forgive you, for you neither ackowledge your sins, nor repent of them.

Instead of asking for forgiveness, you are asking for amnesty. Forgiveness is inherently individual. A sinner asking for forgiveness may receive it from the one(s) he injured based on his intent, the nature of the offense, his efforts to repair any damage, the sincerity and extent of his contrition, and his willingness to accept punishment as determined by his victims. Amnesty is entirely different. It is a blanket get-out-of-jail-free card handed out to everyone irrespective of the extent and nature of their sins, any degree of contrition, and without any necessity for punishment or reparation. Amnesty excuses not only those who committed crimes that were perhaps in some degree at least understandable: the foolish or ignorant people who erroneously thought they were doing the right thing. Amnesty also excuses all those who deliberately lied, defrauded, terrorized, and murdered. Amnesty excuses those who orchestrated events and profited by trillions of dollars from their crimes and leaves them free to commit more.

Instead of accepting punishment and responsibility for repairing the damage you caused as far as you may, you are asking us all to forget that it ever happened. You point out that some people said mean things to you, and seem to believe that means we should forgive you for the consequences we were subjected to as a result of your words and actions. Would you be OK if I showed up at your house and stole all your possessions? Should I get amnesty for that act because someone else stole my wallet?

I'm afraid my sympathy for the appalling injuries you must have suffered as a result of being called a teacher-killer is limited. You see it's all used up on my brother-in-law and his family whose teenage son killed himself after spending a year without any school or any other social interaction with his peers. And my neighbor who didn't want the vaccine but whose daughter, influenced by you and people like you, demanded that he get it if he wanted to see his grandchildren, and whose cancer has now flared up again after years in remission.

I wrote this in the hope that perhaps you might read it and rethink your position. I didn't want to write it, and I certainly don't want to gloat - how dare you accuse innocent people of insignificant wrongs that they have not even committed in the same breath as demanding we ignore all the terrible wrongs you did actually commit?. What I actually wanted to do was just write two short words; I'll leave you to guess at what those words might have been.