Fear & Loathing
As Dan suggests, George Tiller’s killing is bound to prompt a barrage of overblown paranoia about the Religious Right. Here’s a classic piece of sanctimonious fear-peddling from Cristina Page.
For those who would like to think today’s murder in church of Dr. George Tiller, an abortion provider, is an isolated incident, here’s the horrifying news: You are wrong.
Be afraid! The crazy pro-lifers are coming to get you! What’s most unfair about Page’s response — and the responses of others — is the near-explicit contempt and mistrust towards the many pro-lifers who have denounced the killing. As Page writes,
Anti-abortion groups will put out carefully worded press statements condemning the murder of Dr. Tiller, as became routine for them during the Clinton years. But unless the rhetoric they choose from now on becomes careful too — they may be the enablers of murder and terror.
You’ve got to love the bit about “carefully worded press releases.” How snide.
In a similar vein, Jacob Sullum, trying perhaps too hard to be clever, asks “Why Is Killing Abortionists Wrong?”
If you honestly believe abortion is the murder of helpless children, it’s hard to see why using deadly force against those who carry it out is immoral, especially since the government refuses to act.
He may have a point about the loudmouths who call abortion “murder.” Indeed, most sane abortion opponents avoid using that word, as it suggests the abortionist is fully conscious that he or she is wrongly snuffing out a human life, which — let us hope — he or she is not.
Yet Sullum casts his critical net wider. He accuses “less-militant anti-abortion groups,” such as National Right to Life, of suffering from the same “contradiction” in their condemnations of Tiller’s killer.
Killing abortionists may be contrary to [their] goal for tactical reasons. But how is it possible to believe that fetuses are people with a right to life yet also believe that using deadly force to defend that right is wrong?
What a bad rhetorical question. Sullum seems to be saying, in effect, that if one is mad enough to believe that abortion is wrong, then why should one not be mad enough to believe that killing an abortionist is right?
If, however, we jump out of Sullum’s utilitarian circle for a moment and try to comprehend the idea — central to nearly all abortion opposition — that killing human beings is intrinsically wrong, then it becomes entirely possible to see why people can abhor the life-work of George Tiller while condemning his murder. Yet Sullum, from his willfully narrow teleological perspective, might not accept that.
There is an analogue to this familiar argument that acts of domestic terrorism (for clinic bombings and assassinations are nothing less) delegitimize the case against abortion–the process of taking acts of Islamic terrorism as proof of the illegitimacy of their professed causes–the plight of the Palestinians, Iraqi sovereignty, etc.
In each the charge becomes that any who’ve made the case, for example, that abortion is murder or the Israeli occupation a war crime, are complicit in the violence. One who defends against this charge is then accused of “justifying terrorism” by deeming it “understandable.”
But “understandable” has nothing to do with it, provided one agrees that violence will not be condoned under any circumstances (and, arguably, the Left has failed in this regard as a result of their sixties-era romanticizing of violent action, even when the antics of such as the Weathermen did not contribute to ending the Vietnam war but to hardening support); the violence is a fact that should not distract us from the moral question at hand.
If I thought that the Iraq war was necessary for our existence, or the occupation of Gaza and the West Bank were unequivocal necessities (of the US as well as Israel, as some seem to think), Islamic terrorism would not dissuade from supporting them. Likewise, terrorism can’t be allowed to dissuade me from my conviction that they are not.
It is not only logically consistent but necessary to condemn violence in any form while defending a broad right to speech. Once we accept that violence works backward to delegitimize whatever cause to which its attached, there’s no telling where it will stop. The opportunistic won’t be content to let it lie; this process is ongoing in any number of debates right now. Witness the charge that opposition to “immigration reform” is tantamount to violence.
We find that freedom of expression rests largely on this principle of a hard distinction between action and word. Anything less not only limits speech, it infantilizes our discourse and the individual by declaring us incapable of making the distinction.
I happened to catch a few moments of Keith Olbermann tonight, and he was very sanctimonious in his outrage. All that Fox news did in this case (I never thought I’d say this) was tell the truth, and Olbermann’s attempt at portraying them as a culpable party in a murder for that reason fell quite short, in my mind.
I think that the fact that O’Reilly could persuade someone to react violently to abortion says a lot more about abortion than it does about O’Reilly.
Mr. Dale is quite right. On the one hand there is no reason not to use the term murder for abortion, wars of aggression, acts of terrorism, etc. But anyone who really wants to advance the culture of life must uproot from his or her own life any practice or advocacy of violence.
[...] Freddy Gray, responding to Sullum and others. [...]
Great article here for many reasons.
The liberal left is feeling confident these days on these issues.
They want to stop opposition to abortion since its powerful and threatening their will.
So they have had enough of people like me saying abortion kills a human being.
If i may bring up a old saying from WW11. “NUTS”.
This abortion “provider’ killed children. At stages most people agree kills a child. its outlawed.
Yes it was murder to kill this person because he probably doesn’t believe he kills kids. So he is innocent of murder.
I believe the murderer of this person should be executed.
Yet it comes down to the equation.
It is against the moral laws of God and man to kill innocent life.
Does abortion do this.
Yes say pro-lifers. No say pro-choicers.
Therefore the contention can not end till one side admits its error.
Until then there is nothing morally to stop a pro-lifer saying loudly abortion kills children and abortionists kill children.
If this affected people to kill abortionists then it would be a death list already longer then the Iraq list.
All pro-life leaders should accuse the pro-choice establishment, media etc of manipulating this murder for the intent to silence or retard the great moral roar against abortion.
The media etc is picking sides.
The media would never say pro-life speech is the problem without saying first abortion ia also the problem.
I think they are biased and have a agenda.