According to one view of gov’t perhaps, but another view would hold that moral agency of a government is different from that of any particular individual, in so far as the government holds a certain authority with respect to the community that the individual does not.

Is this good or evil? Before you decide too quickly, do not even the most apparently pacifistic pro-lifers really want to assassinate abortionists by proxy (i.e. they would condemn killing up to the point Roe v. Wade is overturned and people with badges are the ones who attack clinics and do violence to abortionists).

Government violence can only be good or evil as an organized and validated (through a judicial procedure) extension of what an ordinary person would do – good or evil. Evil cannot be made good by proxy (Having religious orders take guns and rob v.s. lobbying for taxation?). Nor is good altered by the actor – natural law determines the morality.

Something a bit more poetic, like ‘vanish from the pages of time’.

There is no wording in Arabic that equates to ‘wipe off the map’.

I think you mean Farsi.

They’re lying about what he’s saying to make him more enemy-like.

That’s true in general, but I don’t think so in this particular case. It seems the error originated in an English translation published by the Iranians.

‘ The ‘wiped off the map’ line seems to be a mistranslation.’

Not a mistranslation, a misrepresentation. The direct translation is ‘ the occupying regime must end’. There is no wording in Arabic that equates to ‘wipe off the map’. That comes from someone wanting to scare you by twisting words into myriad pretzel shapes. They’re lying about what he’s saying to make him more enemy-like. They’re building an Emanuel Goldstein for the base to rally against.

Rick Warren’s religious conservatism, not Daniel Larison’s, is well-represented in today’s GOP.

However I can’t help but think that its ridiculous to base one’s thinking and/or morality on the bible or any religion or religious text. I hope no one needs to interpret a 2000 year old book correctly in order to find their moral compass and to determine assassination is wrong.

It includes execution as a possibility, again regarding the practice of the Roman Empire.

It’s not clear what Hannity means by ‘take him out’. He might mean occupying Iran and deposing its government, with or without executions.

I doubt he really meant either. He just wanted to say something that sounded ‘tough’.

Of course, Ahmadinejad isn’t really the ‘dictator’ of Iran. I meant to include that in my list of ‘propaganda points’ in the last comment.

Of course, as Matt Duss’s commenter points out, one might also infer that the rulers of Iran are ‘ordained of God’ and not to be resisted.

I think it’s more important to note that Hannity is repeating a standard set of propaganda points about Ahmadinejad. The ‘wiped off the map’ line seems to be a mistranslation. In any case, Iran’s position is that the Israel/Palestine conflict should be resolved peacefully with a one-state solution, but Iran would support a two-state solution if the Palestinians agreed to it. The Iranians have never ‘threatened’ to impose their preferred solution.

So what sort of arrogance or parsing of the Scriptures would one use to say that a Chavez or Ahmedinajad is a real “evildoer” worthy of assassination. What is the gauge or benchmark? Chavez is obnoxious but he’s just a populist demagogue, and has Ahmedinajad done anything (as opposed to talking about doing things)? One could say that various American presidents, from Truman to today have caused through their policies the death of many more people (whatever their motives and intentions were) than your usual third world despot. And what about abortion? How many children (or fetuses) have been extinguished in the USA since Roe V. Wade? If “evil cannot be negotiated with,” then what would be the stance of Christians towards governments which have either allowed or encouraged this “evil?” “Daft exegesis” is too kind – looney and bizarre, and dumb, is more like it.