Scott Richert and Richard Spencer have been debating the murder of George Tiller. It will hardly come as a surprise that I entirely agree with Scott on this question, which will make some of what I have to say a bit redundant, but Richard has erred in his most recent post on something quite important that needs to be addressed more directly. Answering Scott’s remarks on regicide, Richard writes:

Were he [Tiller], however, performing abortions while holding the title of Baron of Wichita, then his murder would be just. Ditto if he were a soldier in an invading army performing abortions. Though I’m not sure where this leaves the status of Kathleen Sebelius and Barack Obama, two sovereigns who in their respective territories use the power of the state to engage in something Richert considers murder. Furthermore, would Richert like to argue that Bonhoeffer and Stauffenberg were justified because they attacked Hitler while he was head of state, but then would have sinned greatly if they, say, shot down a man who was operating a concentration camp?

There is a lot that Richard gets wrong here. Despite his complaints that Scott has misread his earlier remarks about just war, which would be easier not to misread if Richard stopped talking about pacifism, Richard keeps conflating conditions of war and peace, the status of combatants and non-combatants, the difference between members of the military and civilians, and those in power and those subject to it. Tiller was not a cog in some machinery of coercion and mass murder; he was not a soldier or agent of a government engaged in mass murder.

Were Tiller someone in authority and he was using the apparatus of the government in the commission of murders, his authority would be de-legitimized and would no longer be deserving of respect or obedience, and for the common good and the restoration of peace violence might justifiably be used against him. As an act of self-defense for the polity against illegitimate and abusive government, it might then be permissible to kill, so long as there were no peaceful remedy that could be used hold such a person accountable. Like war, this would have to be a last resort, especially considering the potential consequences for civil strife and disorder that could follow. What is important to remember about this is that such an action would be exceptional and would have to be in response to extreme circumstances. The obligation to submit to civil authority, even a negligent one, is not one that can or should be lightly tossed aside.

Likewise, the command not to murder is absolute, and for killing to be anything other than murder it has to be done under very specific circumstances by lawful authority. Killing is rarely justified, and we should be striving to raise barriers to make it harder to do this or to rationalize it rather than seek out loopholes that permit us to find more and more excuses for it. What has to remain foremost in our minds is that respecting the sanctity of life means that we as private citizens cannot presume to decide who deserves to live or die. This is the role appointed to those in authority, who legitimately wield power in order to restrain and punish the wicked, and even then only under certain circumstances. Their failure to restrain and punish does not give us license to take over for them and to shed blood, because we are not permitted to shed blood except in defense of ourselves, our family and our neighbors.