Eliding moral distinctions …

… Sentimentalizing Serial Murder by Theodore Dalrymple - City Journal. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

By now, reading this, I felt slightly sick, as if I had eaten too many chocolates. One would not expect a person who talks so much of forgiving herself to have anything valuable to say about forgiveness. She does not consider the possibility that incontinent forgiveness, deemed good in itself regardless of the act to be forgiven or the attitude of the person to be forgiven, means that no human behavior is beyond the pale, that nothing is unforgivable. This is to turn forgiveness into a kind of inalienable human right of the wrongdoer (a profoundly un-Christian view, incidentally).