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A modern society that outlaws the death penalty does not send a message of reverence for life, but a message of moral confusion.  When we outlaw the death penalty, we tell the murderer that, no matter what he may do to innocent people in our custody and care, women, children, old people, his most treasured possession, his life, is secure.  We guarantee it – in advance.  Just as a nation that declares that nothing will make it go to war finds itself at the mercy of warlike regimes, so a society that will not put the worst of its criminals to death will find itself at the mercy of criminals who have no qualms about putting innocent people to death. - Patrick J. Buchanan, Right from the Beginning (Little, Brown)

Reader’s Digest, September 1989, page 197