Oh, so you suspended a kid from school and charged her with ‘stalking’ because she predicted on her Facebook page bad karma for whoever keyed her car. Your karma is going to be a whole lot worse than that.
Via Tampa Bay Fox (H/T Scott Greenfield):
A Pinellas County teenager says she was suspended from school and charged with a crime just for posting a karma comment on her Facebook page.
Allie Scott is a junior at Osceola High School. The 16 year old says it all started in the school parking lot last month when she parked her brother’s car in another girl’s spot. She was asked to move it, and when she did at the end of the day, the car had been scratched up with a key.
Without naming who she thought did it, she posted this comment on her Facebook page: “Oh, so you keyed my car. Your karma is going to be a whole lot worse than that.”
In light of this story, I fully expect to be arrested and charged criminally any day now for writing this recent blog post, especially since the target of my prayer for Justice was not (as was Ms. Scott’s) some unnamed private citizen but unnamed agents of the State. (Presumably, the only person whose feelings could have been hurt by Ms. Scott’s Facebook comment would have been the criminal actually guilty of keying her car. The same limitation is true of my blog post, which was directed only at those, whoever they are, and they are many, who are “responsible for innocent men and women sitting in prison this Christmas.” If the shoe fits, wear it.) But can you blame the State for wishing to nip in the bud even the mere desire of people for Justice by punishing its expression, even if that expression explicitly leaves Justice to God (or to karma)? After all, if enough people hope bad things happen to bad people, that hope could eventually lead them to become impatient with God and to make bad things happen to bad people, a class which includes a disproportionately high number of State employees. Marie Antoinette, among others, discovered how dangerous such impatience can be.
For the record, although the State itself has no qualms whatsoever with actually visiting evil upon those it deems evil or a threat to its interests, and although there is something to be said for wanting the evil of the bad man to be to him what it is to everybody else, I recognize, in spite of the blog post I refer to above, that wishing evil upon anyone, or laughing and rejoicing at suffering which befalls those who’ve inflicted unjustified suffering on others, falls short of the Christian ideals I profess: “Avenge not yourselves, for it is written, Vengeance is mine, I Will repay, saith the Lord.”
But those who wield and live by the sword of the State are in no position to judge.
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