The unemployed high school drop out thug punk of a racist scumbag

[Igel]

13. Depends on what you think forgiveness is and if there's a need for it.

If you make a pretense at Xianity, the rule is that "if you have anything against your brother" you have to forgive him. If not now, then later; there's no real immediate enforcement mechanism.

A lot of people have "something" against Roof, and for good reason. He killed 9 people who'd done nothing especially worthy of death, and that's an outrage against morality and principle. For some, it's more personal: The problem is he killed 9 people like themselves in some way meaningful to them--Americans, African-American, Democrats, Xians.... Or others, it's even more personal: An attack on one of their race or ethnic group is an attack against the entire race or ethnic group, something some are conditioned and trained into believing must be true. (In some cultures that would provoke a feud, with the need to kill 9 of his group to even the score, possibly with more as punishment.)

Forgiveness at the personal level, however, does not mean no law enforcement at the institutional level. (That's my particular way of squaring the circle, of connecting classical population movements with current physical and social culture.)