I don't think anybody accepts the idea that somehow I should be punished because I actually served our country during a very difficult time post-9/11. That required me to actually be out of Arkansas for a few years.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
My argument is not that I shouldn't have been punished, but that the punishment didn't fit the crime.
If I didn't forgive the people who took me into the barracks and beat me unconscious over a period of days during the period when the British state was indicted for inhuman and degrading treatment in 1971-72, or even the guys who shot me, if you don't forgive them, you end up with unnecessary baggage.
Like it or not, the people of Arkansas sent me to Washington to represent them in this great body.
I haven't took no punishment. There's nothing cool about taking punishment.
I will not say I would not serve if the good people were imprudent enough to elect me.
I don't think I would want the responsibility for enforcing the death penalties. There's always the inevitable question of whether someone you gave the order to execute might truly have been innocent.
I can say that I have not done any culpable violation of the constitution.
I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced to death in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.
If it is a crime to love the South, its cause and its President, then I am a criminal. I would rather lie down in this prison and die than leave it owing allegiance to a government such as yours.
I sent people to the penitentiary as fast as I could, never thinking about whether they deserved it.