✝️ “Pardon Me,” — Part V
A Brief History of Impunity
How kings, emperors, popes, governors, and presidents have all tried to bend mercy into a weapon — and what history teaches about the collapse that follows.
“Your rulers are rebels,
companions of thieves.
Everyone loves a bribe
and chases after gifts.”
— Isaiah 1:23
There is a strange comfort, however bitter, in realizing that the crisis of American clemency is not new. History has seen this pattern many times: the concentration of forgiveness in the hands of the powerful, the selling of absolution, the quiet suffocation of justice beneath the velvet cloak of mercy. Nations have walked this path before — and the wreckage they left behind now reads like prophecy.
The modern pardon spree — transactional, politicized, monetized — belongs to an ancient lineage. It echoes the indulgence markets of medieval Europe, the royal immunities of absolutist France, the colonial governors who pardoned pirates for a share of the loot, and the Jim Crow sheriffs whose “mercy” could be purchased in cash or votes or silence.
Each era believed its corruption was unique.
Each era believed its exceptions would endure.
Each era was wrong.
This is the story of what happens when forgiveness becomes the privilege of the powerful and accountability becomes the burden of the poor.
I. The King’s Mercy
Long before America existed, kings understood the political usefulness of mercy. In medieval England, clemency was not an act of compassion — it was a tool of control. A king could pardon a murderer to weaken a rival noble, or forgive a corrupt official to maintain loyalty. The pardon became a currency in a patronage economy.
Mercy floated upward.
Consequences floated downward.
The pattern was so predictable that by the thirteenth century, English jurists complained that royal pardons had become “the mother of all corruption.” When Henry VIII wanted to secure loyalty among the gentry ahead of a succession crisis, he issued sweeping clemency — forgiving crimes that would keep powerful allies indebted to him. Those without status, land, or usefulness received nothing.
The theologians of that age called it a sin against truth.
The prophets called it injustice.
The people called it tyranny.
II. The Indulgence Market
If monarchy corrupted mercy by concentrating it, the medieval Church corrupted it by monetizing it. Few historical analogies map as closely to the present crisis as the indulgence trade — the sale of spiritual forgiveness in exchange for money.
Popes promised absolution for coin.
Bishops auctioned pardons to finance cathedrals.
Merchants purchased immunity for sins they never confessed.
What was lost was not only moral clarity but moral memory. When forgiveness can be bought, repentance becomes unnecessary. When repentance disappears, truth becomes optional. When truth becomes optional, power fills the vacuum.
Martin Luther’s outrage was theological — but it was also social. He saw what indulgences did to the poor, who mortgaged possessions to purchase a forgiveness that the powerful received effortlessly. He saw how mercy had been inverted, turned into a commodity that worsened the suffering of those already oppressed.
Today’s pardon economy echoes that inversion with uncanny precision. A billionaire can erase a million-dollar judgment with a signature. A low-wage worker waits decades for the government to acknowledge their petition.
History is blunt:
when mercy is for sale, the poor pay twice.
III. Governors, Sheriffs, and the Price of Silence
In early American history, clemency was a frontier currency. Governors in the 19th century routinely used pardons to reward allies, punish enemies, or secure political silence. A sheriff could arrange a commutation for a local businessman in exchange for campaign support. A legislator could barter freedom for endorsements. It was a crude form of political alchemy — turning authority into loyalty.
But the darkest form emerged under Jim Crow. In many states, Black prisoners who had been unjustly convicted or sentenced could only access mercy through political brokers, ministers, or white patrons whose influence with the governor could be leveraged. Mercy became contingent on usefulness, obedience, or the willingness to disappear.
The historian Mary Ellen Curtin once wrote that under Jim Crow:
“Clemency functioned not as justice, but as a leash.”
The echoes today are unmistakable: a system where the powerless follow the rules and wait in silence, while the powerful move through private channels and emerge redeemed.
IV. The Presidential Turn
When the American Constitution granted presidents the pardon power, the Founders saw it as a stabilizing force — a failsafe against excessive punishment or civil unrest. George Washington used it to forgive participants in the Whiskey Rebellion to prevent national fracture.
But even early presidents slid toward selective mercy:
Andrew Jackson used clemency to protect allies involved in illegal land speculation.
Andrew Johnson pardoned thousands of Confederates in an attempt to reconstitute white political power in the South.
Warren Harding pardoned the oilmen implicated in Teapot Dome, the greatest corruption scandal of his era.
Each time, the pattern reasserted itself: mercy serves power unless constrained by conscience.
The 20th century brought reform, professionalism, and guardrails — yet even then, presidents occasionally used clemency to reward friends or donors. But never on anything near the scale or brazenness now seen.
What is new about this era is not corruption — but its consolidation.
The bypassing of process.
The abandonment of truth.
The concentration of clemency into an inner circle.
The erasure of restitution on a wholesale level.
The use of mercy to nullify democratic accountability itself.
History calls this not simply corruption.
It calls it decadence — the final stage before collapse.
V. The Fallacy of the Untouchable
Every system that corrupted mercy believed it had discovered a loophole in justice — a way to maintain power indefinitely, insulated from consequence.
The kings believed it.
The popes believed it.
The colonial governors believed it.
The segregationist sheriffs believed it.
The oligarchs of modern Russia believe it still.
But history’s verdict is clear: when forgiveness is distorted to protect the powerful, the system eventually consumes itself. Every empire that tried to exempt its elites from justice reached a breaking point — because impunity erodes the moral authority upon which power depends.
Rome collapsed not only from barbarian invasion but from imperial immunity.
France fell not only from economic crisis but from aristocratic exemption.
The Church fractured not only from doctrinal conflict but from purchased absolution.
America, too, has its warning signs.
We are living in a moment where a president uses mercy not to heal the nation but to shield himself from the moral consequences of his own actions — forgiving co-conspirators, rewarding loyalists, erasing debts owed to victims, and transforming the pardon power into a sanctuary for the powerful.
This is not mercy.
It is the fear of a man who knows that justice, if allowed to speak, will name him.
VI. The Prophetic Counter-Narrative
Against this long arc of impunity stands a different tradition — one as old as Isaiah, as fierce as Amos, as tender as Jesus’ own teaching.
Biblical mercy is not the abolition of consequence.
It is the restoration of relationship.
It requires truth, repentance, restitution, and a return to justice.
It sides with the oppressed, not the oppressor.
It lifts the lowly, not the lofty.
It frees the guilty only when they acknowledge the truth.
The prophets condemned leaders who offered false absolution:
“You heal the wounds of my people lightly,
saying ‘Peace, peace,’ when there is no peace.”
— Jeremiah 6:14
False mercy hides wounds instead of healing them.
True mercy cleans them.
The historical record aligns with the prophetic one:
systems that pervert mercy decay.
Systems that practice mercy truthfully endure.
VII. The Lesson of History
From medieval kings to modern presidents, the story is the same:
mercy without truth is not mercy.
Forgiveness without repentance is not forgiveness.
Clemency without justice is not healing — it is harm disguised as grace.
And every nation that embraced such harm eventually paid the price.
History whispers this warning:
when a leader believes he can forgive his own sins by forgiving those who commit them for him,
the collapse has already begun.
The prophets whisper another:
there is always a remnant who remembers what mercy was meant to be.
Endnotes
U.S. House Judiciary Committee Democrats, “Clemency and Restitution Analysis,” June 2025.
Ibid.
FiveThirtyEight, “How Trump Used His Pardon Power,” 2024–2025.
Mary Ellen Curtin, Black Prisoners and Their World, 2000.
J.G.A. Pocock, The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law, 1957.
Charles Taylor, A Secular Age, 2007 (on the moral fracture of late-modern impunity).
