Granite, are you one of those who criticize us for judging peoples' actions, and then turn around and judge our hearts? By now you should be suspect your own ability to reason logically, and you should be humble enough not to set yourself up as judge of other people's heart of hearts, against the evidence.
Jeffery Dahmer was beat to death in prison. There was no national mourning, and undoubtedly many of his victims' neighbors and loved ones said: we don't condone vigilantism, but we're thankful he will never murder again, and we're even thankful that he's dead. Would you have called them liars too? Perhaps you would set yourself up as their judge and condemn them for this; I would not.
BTW, Dahmer had an extraordinary conversion to Christ and reconciliation with his earthly father prior to his death.
When a Mafia hit man gets killed I assure you there is no public grieving, and when neighbors and loved ones of his victims are thankful, I would not judge and condemn them as secretly harboring fantasies of lawlessness. In Sicily, you probably would have the same reaction as me. But here in America, you're different, because you couldn't care less that precious children are brutally hacked to death. Because you are evil.
Hersch Grynszpan killed the German diplomat Ernst von Rath on Nov. 7, 1938 in revenge for the NAZI murder of his parents. Popular German anger at this empowered Hitler to order a night of mass arrests and killing of Jews called Kristallnacht. The couple's son, named
Henry Grynszpan, was living in Paris. The boy was frantic with concern for his parents and felt that he needed to "do" something to publicize to the world what was happening to the Jews in Germany. This seventeen-year-old boy got a gun, walked to the German embassy in Paris, and shot the first man he saw- and an embassy official named Ernst Von Rath. Von Rath died. Undoubtedly, countless Jews knew this was an illegal act, and realized the retribution would be fierce, but I doubt many of them mourned, as perhaps you would do for a mass murderer, for the NAZI official. That vigilante act triggered a "spontaneous" uprising against the Jews. Of course this had been planned for quite a while, and this was just the pretext to put the plan into action.
This reminds us also of the aftermath of the the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Hitler's possible successor, although that was during the war and therefore different rules apply.
-Bob Enyart
KGOV.com