Godless: The Church of Liberalism

by Ann Coulter

  These preening revolutionaries, secure behind the guns of a civilian police force in a democratic society—and in many cases, doorman buildings, private security forces, bodyguards, and gated communities—make a sport of demanding that the guilty be set free. To do the maximum damage to civil society, liberals love to claim that there is some larger social context to the alleged frame-up, exposing the ugly underbelly of American society—preferably discrimination against minorities. Sacco and Vanzetti were framed because they were poor Italian immigrants. The Rosenbergs were framed because they were Jews. Leonard Peltier was framed because he’s an Indian, not because he shot and killed two FBI agents in the seventies.

  Poor David Berkowitz (the Son of Sam killer) missed the liberal myth of wild anti-Jewish hysteria in America by about three decades, so there were no liberals to claim that he was innocent. Timothy McVeigh’s Aryan features ensured that no liberals would weep for him. In fact, McVeigh’s swift trial and execution illustrate how all death penalty cases might proceed in this country if we could just get rid of the liberals. Today, the favorite liberal template about America’s corrupt criminal justice system is that the system is racist. So if you’re a cold-blooded murderer, you want to be black to attract white liberals to your cause. (Who values the lives of black victims more now?)

  In 2005, when Stanley “Tookie” Williams, a founder of the violent Grips gang, was finally getting the punishment he deserved for four brutal murders he had committed twenty-six years earlier, he nearly surpassed Bill Clinton in popularity with liberals. His life story had been made into a movie, he had been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, and the usual array of Hollywood zombies were somberly discussing his “contributions to society.” He was like the Lance Arm-strong of deranged shotgun killers.

  Despite Tookie’s overwhelming popularity with white liberals, California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declined to pardon him, on the grounds that he had killed a lot of people, started one of the most violent gangs in America, and refused to admit his crimes, much less apologize for them. Schwarzenegger’s Austria was so disgusted with their native son for refusing to grant Tookie clemency, they immediately stripped Schwarzenegger’s name from a mammoth soccer stadium. Austrian politicians began proposing new names for the stadium, such as “Tookie Williams Stadium,” “Grips Stadium,” or perhaps the elegant “Quadruple Murderdome.” (I made up only the last one.)

  It’s one thing to simply oppose the death penalty in all cases—and I mean all cases, including Timothy McVeigh—but with the death row paparazzi, it never ends with that. They develop relationships with the killers, clubs, newsletters, and fanzines. They turn themselves into overeager PR agents, helping ensure that no murderer’s philosophical musings will be lost to the world. It is a religious obsession—except, because it’s a false religion, there’s no joy in it.

  Instead of allowing fallen men like Tookie Williams to confess, re-pent, and ask God for mercy, liberal busybodies rush in and lock the men into a lie, damning their souls forever. They are like a Bizarroworld version of Christian missionaries, promoting eternal damnation. Surrounded by earnest “Innocence Project” groupies, the guilty will never confess, never repent, never get right with God. No! No! Don’t repent! Tell a lie right before you die, Tookie!

  Among the most unusual displays of affection for a killer concerns convicted child-murderer Dennis Dechaine in Maine. The fact that Dechaine is manifestly guilty is not what makes the case unique. What’s strange is that Dechaine is white and therefore his conviction permits of no larger indictment of American society. There will be no “Free Dennis” rallies in Paris. His supporters would have preferred a founder of the Grips, but alas, they live in Maine. At least his crime was vile.

  The case began in 1988, when Jennifer Henkel returned to her home in Bowdoin, Maine, to find her baby alone and her twelve-year-old babysitter Sarah Cherry missing. Henkel found a notebook and a car repair receipt with Dechaine’s name on it in the driveway. While searching for Cherry in the nearby woods, the police came across the very same Dennis Dechaine, who claimed he had been fishing and got lost, but oddly had no fishing pole. (Dechaine was not only one of the world’s most depraved criminals but also among the stupidest.) When asked to explain how his notebook and car receipt had turned up in the driveway of the house whence Cherry had apparently been abducted, Dechaine initially denied the papers were his. Realizing that this explanation was preposterous, he said whoever abducted the girl must have stolen the papers from his pickup truck and placed them in the driveway to frame him. But when the truck was later located—near where Cherry’s body would be found—it was locked. Further raising suspicions before they found Dechaine’s truck, he had tried to hide the keys to his pickup under the car seat of a police cruiser—indicating that Dechaine knew his truck was locked and he had the keys even as he was claiming his papers had been stolen from it.

  The tire tracks in the Henkels’ driveway were later found to be consistent with Dechaine’s pickup.

  Still, the police hadn’t found Cherry, so they released Dechaine.

  Whether or not it is admissible evidence, consider this fact: Be-fore anyone knew what had happened to Cherry—even whether she was still alive—Dechaine’s attorney told three government attorneys that Cherry was dead and that the police were looking for her body in the right place.

  The police later found Cherry’s body where Dechaine’s lawyer indicated they would—in the woods where Dechaine had been fishing without a fishing pole. The little girl had been bound and gagged, raped anally and vaginally with sticks that were still protruding from her. She had been stabbed repeatedly in the throat and head, and strangled with a scarf. The rope used to bind Cherry was later demonstrated to be part of the same rope that was found in Dechaine’s truck. The knife Dechaine had once kept on his key chain was about the size of Cherry’s knife wounds, but after Cherry’s murder, it disappeared from the key chain. Various witnesses placed Dechaine, someone dressed like Dechaine, or someone driving a red pickup truck that matched Dechaine’s at the Henkel home or walking to and from the woods where Cherry’s body was found. Before the police found Dechaine, for example, he had stopped at one couple’s home and asked to use their garden hose to wash himself off, which he did while they watched.

  When the police picked up Dechaine after finding Cherry’s body, Dechaine made a series of confessions. He said, “I can’t believe I could do such a thing. The real me is not like that. I know me. I couldn’t do anything like that. It must be somebody else inside of me.” On three separate occasions throughout his arrest, booking, and arraignment, Dechaine made similar statements to four police officers, often emotional and crying, saying, “Oh my God, it should never have happened…. Why did I do this?”

  After Dechaine’s conviction, aging baby boomers in Maine with peculiar obsessions like camping and establishing a single global currency started a group dedicated to denying his guilt. Along with a few Democrats in the Maine legislature, they insist Dechaine is innocent, based on such arguments as that he is “nice.” As one Dechaine supporter explained, “I could never imagine him doing anything like that because he’s such a nice guy.”

  The liberal busybodies supporting child-killer Dechaine now number more than one thousand. They ritualistically engage in ceremonial letter-writing, protesting, petition-circulating, fundraising, book-and songwriting in tribute to their icon, child-killer Dechaine. (The book that purports to vindicate Dechaine by systematically ignoring all incriminating evidence was written by a former member of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Perhaps his next project could be figuring out who killed all those kids at Waco.) They have bake sales and car washes—though a proposal for a no-pole fishing tournament was rejected on the grounds that it was “too soon.” They try to enter floats in local parades. There is a website, Trial and Error Dennis, to spread Dechaine’s lies on the Internet and draw in more advocates for the child-murderer.

  They pore over the evide
nce like grim devotees of Court TV, savoring the jargon and legal minutiae they have not the slightest chance of ever comprehending. There was DNA on Cherry’s fingernails that wasn’t Dechaine’s! Even if true—and the claim is questionable because of chain-of-custody issues—this proves: There was DNA on Cherry’s fingernails that wasn’t Dechaine’s. It doesn’t prove Dechaine didn’t murder Cherry. The world is fairly bristling with human DNA. If Cherry bought candy, read a magazine, or played with friends before arriving at her babysitting job that day, she might have picked up human DNA from any number of people. Only in the case of rape is DNA capable of excluding a suspect—and even then only if the victim was not sexually active and there was only a single rapist. In virtually all other cases, DNA can only include suspects; it can’t exclude suspects.

  And yet a Democrat in the Maine legislature, Rosaire Paradis, a longtime supporter of Dechaine’s, has sponsored a bill that would essentially spring him from prison based on this utterly meaningless DNA evidence. The Democrat’s bill would allow new trials for all convicted criminals in Maine if their defense lawyers can produce some DNA from the general vicinity of the crime scene that does not belong to the convict. Maine already allows a new trial based on DNA evidence—but only if the DNA is material to the convict’s identity as the perpetrator. Under Paradis’s bill, any DNA from the crime scene area—”including but not limited to” that found on any household item—that does not belong to the convict will generally warrant a new trial. This is a get-out-of-jail-free card for all child-molesters and murderers in Maine who, like Dechaine, were convicted many years ago because it is virtually impossible to reconvict defendants in old cases, after witnesses have died or moved out of state and memories have faded. In Dechaine’s case, one of the main witnesses against him was his own lawyer, who has since died.

  With missionary zeal, the Dennis believers are utterly devoted to a child-killer. They are too busy being impressed with their own virtue to worry about torturing Cherry’s parents with endless appeals on be-half of the man who murdered their daughter. The Dennis believers don’t care. Self-righteousness is like a drug, creating the warm sensation that you are more moral, more compassionate, more sensitive than anyone else in the universe. Once you’ve done it, you have to do it again and again and again. Dechaine supporter Peggy Blanchard explained her commitment to Dechaine this way: “It’s a gut feeling. I have looked into his eyes. I can tell he’s not the man who killed that poor little girl.” Really? How about looking into my eyes and telling me tomorrow’s winning Lotto numbers? Never mind that Dechaine told his lawyer where her body was buried before the police found it. How about looking into his eyes and saying, “Confess, repent, Jesus loves you?”

  Compare the Dennis groupies to ordinary Christian Ashley Smith. In March 2005, Smith was taken at gunpoint at her Duluth, Georgia, home and forced into her apartment by rape suspect Brian Nichols, who had killed four people in the previous forty-eight hours during his escape from an Atlanta courthouse. At some point during her abduction, Smith began reading to Nichols from the Christian book The Purpose-Driven Life—in direct violation of his constitutional right never to hear any reference to God, in public or private, for any purpose, ever, ever, ever! (For more on this right, go to the People For the American Way website.) Smith read a paragraph to Nichols about serving God by serving others, and Nichols asked her to read it again. He listened intently and told Smith he was already dead, saying, “Look at my eyes.” But Smith looked into his eyes and told him God had a purpose for him, perhaps to minister to other lost souls in prison. Smith read some more, both from the Purpose book and from another popular book—the New Testament. (In the Hollywood version, Smith will be reading from the Koran and playing Kanye West CDs.) Nichols told Smith she was “an angel sent from God,” calling her “his sister” and himself her “brother in Christ.” He said he must have come to Smith’s home for a reason—in Smith’s words, that “he was lost and God led him right to me to tell him that he had hurt a lot of people.” The next morning, Nichols surrendered without incident, an utterly transformed human being.

  Most people have trouble seeing the divine spark in people who take our parking spots. Smith could see God’s hand in a multiple murderer holding her hostage. By showing Nichols genuine Christian love, Smith turned him from a beast to a fellow sinner, still deserving of punishment, but also of forgiveness. This phenomenon, utterly unknown to liberals, is what’s known as a “miracle.” That’s how a real religion responds to rapists and murderers. In the liberal religion, there is no grace, only lies and death, some of it everlasting.

  3

  THE MARTYR: WILLIE HORTON

  The martyrdom of Willie Horton will go down in history as the beginning of the Democrats’ official rejection of democracy. In 1988, the Democratic presidential candidate was Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, card-carrying member of the ACLU. He was running against Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush. Most people knew the election was over at the very beginning of the first presidential debate, when 6‘2” Bush shook hands with Dukakis, who claims to be 5‘8” (i.e., around 5‘3”). Any remaining doubts were resolved during the second presidential debate, when CNN’s Bernie Shaw asked Dukakis, an avid opponent of the death penalty, if he thought he would change his mind about the death penalty if his wife was raped and murdered.

  DUKAKIS [bloodless, technocratic voice]: No, I don’t, Bernard. And I think you know that I’ve opposed the death penalty during all of my life. I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent, and I think there are better and more effective ways to deal with violent crime. We’ve done so in my own state. And it’s one of the reasons why we have had the biggest drop in crime of any industrial state….

  zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz [Notice how the Radio Shack model seems eerily to imitate a real human being!]

  But when the inevitable happened and Dukakis did lose the election, Democrats went to work creating a myth that the Bush campaign had won the election with a racist ad campaign about a black criminal named Willie Horton. Apart from what this suggests liberals think of the American people, since that election, without fail, liberals have refused to accept the results of any election that doesn’t go their way. Democrats attribute their consistent inability to get a majority of Americans to vote for them to the machinations of evil, conspiratorial forces, such as the Supreme Court or the Diebold corporation—all beginning with the myth of the racist Willie Horton ad.

  Liberals have an unparalleled capacity to create a myth when the truth will destroy them. The Willie Horton ad provoked hysteria from the Democrats because Horton’s release exposed their obsessive fetish with releasing violent criminals. Horton is like Horst Wessel, the semi-retarded stormtrooper whose death in a bar fight with Communists was glorified in a song that became the official Nazi Party anthem. In liberal mythology, Horton is a martyr, but instead of shed-ding his own blood, he spilled other people’s blood. Today the only way you will hear about Horton is as an example of how race is used in an ugly way in American politics. That’s the only apparent relevance of Willie Horton.

  In fact, Horton is the full explanation for why someone like Michael Dukakis should never be allowed near any government job—although there are ample other reasons. Horton was a career violent criminal who had been convicted for murder and duly sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. That should have been the end of the story. But while serving his life sentence, Horton was released on “furlough” by Dukakis. Shocking penology experts at the ACLU, Horton struck again, viciously.

  The crime that put Horton in prison—before Dukakis released him—was an act of wanton violence. After robbing a convenience store, Horton sliced up Joey Fournier, the seventeen-year-old kid be-hind the cash register, stabbing him nineteen times and then stuffing his mutilated body into a garbage can. It wasn’t chance-medley, shots fired, and in the confusion someone ended up dead. It would not have made a fun segment on COPS. Fournier had al
ready handed over all the money from the cash register when Horton savagely murdered him. This wasn’t Horton’s first run-in with the law: He had already been convicted of attempted murder in South Carolina for repeatedly stabbing a man.

  Horton was duly convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Dukakis had vetoed the death penalty in Massachusetts, so this was the maximum sentence available. No sane person would have allowed Horton to walk the streets ever again. But under the weekend furlough program lustily promoted by Dukakis, Horton was released from prison. Despite his eleven disciplinary infractions in prison—and the fact that he had committed a brutal murder—Massachusetts prison officials concluded that Horton, I quote, “projects a quiet sense of responsibility.” It is a point of pride with liberals that Horton came back from his first nine furloughs—which I believe breaks my old record of eight consecutive furloughs without raping or killing anybody. But then there was that tenth furlough. Horton was released on a 48-hour furlough on June 6, 1986, and he never came back.

  On April 3, 1987, Maryland resident Cliff Barnes had just gotten home from work and was getting undressed when Horton burst through the bathroom door with a woman’s stocking over his head. He began beating Barnes viciously, pistol-whipping him and screaming obscenities—or, if you prefer, “projecting a loud, obscene sense of responsibility.” Fortunately, Barnes was white or at this point Horton almost certainly would have been guilty of a hate crime. Horton then dragged Barnes to the basement and bound and blindfolded him. Over the next several hours, Horton slashed Barnes’s torso with a knife dozens of times. He jammed the barrel of a gun into Barnes’s eyes and mouth, telling Barnes he planned to hang him and watch him die. As with Horton’s murder of Joey Fournier, there was no purpose to these sadistic attacks. Barnes told him where the credit cards were. Horton had broken into the house much earlier in the day; he could have cleaned the place out and left. But Horton had waited for the homeowners to return so he could torture and kill them. The legal mumbo-jumbo for this is “premeditated.”