As most people know, the Sovereign Nation of Texas executed Jose Medellin.  What a tough, macho group they are, beloved of football, cheerleaders and killing people.  When even their favorite son, George W. Bush asked them not to do it, they still killed Medellin.  It must have been very important for them to ignore Bush. 

Scott Henson at Grits for Breakfast wrote a very thoughtful and moving postscript to the execution of Medellin.

I hope Medellin’s death will bring the victims’ family closure – whatever that means. But since his execution cannot bring back their lost loved ones, I doubt seriously those painful memories are “closed” for the victims’ family and friends any more this morning than at this time yesterday.

The legal debate over Medellin may end here for now, waiting to be renewed the first time some American is held incommunicado overseas and our government complains their Vienna rights were violated.

You can almost hear future officials from some corrupt government telling the United States “I’m sorry Mr. Ambassador … local authorities made the decision to violate your citizens’ rights, so even though we have a treaty saying she could speak to the consulate, they didn’t tell her she could do so and we have to abide by their decision. Our hands are tied.”

How extraordinary that all the fine people involved in the Texas decision to put one man to death ignored the implications for so many other Americans.  As Scott notes, we can only hope that this act is not ultimately proven worthless as well as foolish, and we hope that the victim’s family wakes up this morning feeling better.  Experience is otherwise, but each family is different and perhaps this one will find closure.

But the sad reality is that the United States has once again sent a curious message to the rest of the world, from petty dictators to emerging democracies, that only our rules count, not theirs.  Nothing binds the United States to the rest of the world, and we need not adhere to the same set of rules that we demand others apply.  It’s an unfair game, and America must always win.

After the Medellin execution, I received a comment to an earlier post on the case.

The president cannot make law: nor can he enter into an agreement with other countries that trumps the law enacted by voters in California or Texas. To put it in a way you might appreciate, Bush cannot enter into an anti-abortion treaty and then insist it trumps Roe. get it?

Oh..and the big “danger to US citizens abroad.” I am not going to let some politically unaccountable “world court” decide how people are tried here. I am sure our citizens get fair treatment in mos places. If you decide to travel to those thatd on’t, don’t do crimes.

Aside from all that, there is no suggestion that he was innocent or that intervention would have changed a thing. Typical law professor bs.

My guess is that this comment is a fair example of the thought processes of those Texans supporting the Medellin execution.  While it wallows in ignorance from the outset, that’s not the biggest problem.  People are allowed to be ignorant.  It’s the American way, even when applied to the Sovereign Nation of Texas.

It’s the second paragraph that embodies the most dangerous flaw.  The abject jingoistic myopia is stunning.  My reaction to this comment was, as Joel Rosenberg J-dog likes to call me, “prickly”.  There is no explaining to someone so fundamentally ignorant why it’s not all about him and whatever feels good to him at any given moment.  This mindset has its advantages, of course, because ignorance knows no constraint by facts or consistency of reasoning. 

When some American is nabbed in the country of Absurdia, he will be the first to scream that we should invade it and protect our American citizen from some tin-horn despot.  How dare some petty government challenge the great and powerful US of A.  We can just send in a few bombers and blow them to smithereens.  Problem solved.

Perhaps this is “typical law professor bs,” even though I’m no lawprof.  Perhaps rational thinking, foresight and a naive hope for international relations built on reason, fairness and consistency is just some Ivory Tower notion.  But the alternative is the world this commenter urges, one where might makes right and the United States can do whatever it pleases.  As long as we remain the toughest hombre on the planet, we don’t need to suffer the limits of reason. 

For the sake of the next American to be seized in some foreign country, I hope that the people of other countries don’t think like this fellow.  But I feel confident that this fellow won’t lose any sleep worrying about the problem.

Update:  The Blind Guy has pointed out that this may all fall on the shoulders of Salmon P. Chase, a former Treasury Secretary under Lincoln during the Civil War, for having wrongly decided Texas v. White in 1869.  After all, if Lysander Spooner rejected the Court’s reasoning, who are we to disagree?