Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
I’m not a religious man, but I’m not so blind that I can’t see the societal value of many elements of the Bible and other religious texts. If you look at the Ten Commandments as nothing but a way to build a productive society, one that keeps workers in the fields and factories instead of killing each other over various transgressions, it’s solid.
The verse I started this author’s note with is a similar such bit of Scripture. The phrase means that we’ve all done bad things. “Bad” is a relative term, of course. Have you killed a guy? Well, no, not since that incident at a Stuckey’s in ’78. (It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.) So you haven’t committed murder, but have you ever stolen? Ever? Not even a pencil in grade school? Have you ever lied? You know lying is in the Thou Shalt Nots, right? Have you ever coveted? Borne false witness?
Maybe you’ve done some of those things.
So, no, you haven’t killed a guy (Stuckey’s excluded), but odds are you’ve done something that would run afoul with the good word. Or say you live under another set of rules, one that says homosexuals must be put to death. One that says if you, woman, try to be with the man you want to be with, you can be beaten halfway to death, or maybe all the way. Maybe a set of rules that says you can’t eat at a lunch counter, sit in the front of the bus or drink out of a particular fountain. Or, maybe even a set of rules that says it’s fine to own another human being.
The point of Bag Man is that wrong is a relative term based on the society and time in which you live. Things that you do today could have gotten you ostracized, imprisoned or even killed a few centuries ago. Maybe you believe in establishing a firm set of rules for which capital punishment is valid (and maybe it is, I’m not arguing that), but the slippery slope is what happens when there’s a new sheriff in town and the crimes that merit the death penalty change; someone who’s banging the drum for the gallows to drop might find herself standing on that same platform a few months later.
Granted, the story doesn’t work if our protagonist stole a pencil in the third grade. It does work, however, if we choose a vile yet debatable crime. Should he be held accountable for something that happened at a drunken frat party some three decades earlier? Should he be punished? Possibly. Should he be executed? Well, that just depends on who is passing judgment, doesn’t it?
If it was your daughter who committed the crime and faced the punishment, what would you say?
If you were the judge, what verdict would you pass down?
In our hypothetical tale of morality, Frank McMillian finds out how the sliding scale of justice can swing his way — when the “real” criminals are gone, doesn’t the machine still need criminals?
You know what they say: if you can’t do the time, don’t do the crime.
And if justice has all the time in the world, don’t be surprised to find your feet on that gallows door.