Despicable murderer Eric Rudolph gets his due:
An unrepentant Eric Rudolph gave an impassioned defense of his murderous bombing of a Birmingham abortion clinic Monday as a judge sentenced him to two life sentences and victims confronted him in court for the first time.
The wife of a police officer killed in the blast and a nurse maimed in the storm of shrapnel described him as a cowardly, bumbling American terrorist.
“I faced five pounds of dynamite and hundreds of nails, yet I survived,” said the nurse, Emily Lyons. “Do I look afraid? You damaged my body, but you did not create the fear you sought.”
“In the name of faith, you hate,” said U.S. District Judge Lynwood Smith, who imposed the life terms worked out in a plea deal. “For the professed goal of saving human life, you killed. Those are riddles I cannot resolve.”
While it would be profoundly unfair to directly link Eric Rudolph to mainstream anti-abortion activism, it is important to recognize the impact the rhetoric of the anti-abortion lobby and how it may have impacted the behavior of this deranged individual. From Rudolph’s prepared statement back in April:
Abortion is murder. And when the regime in Washington l0galized, sanctioned and legitimized this practice, they forfeited their legitimacy and modal authority to govern. At various times in history men and women of good conscience have had to decide when the lawfully constituted authorities have overstepped their moral bounds and forfeited their right to rule…
Because I believe that abortion is murder, I also believe that force is justified and in an attempt to stop it…
However, if you do recognize abortion is murder and that unborn children should be protected anal you still insist that force is unjustified to stop abortion, then you can be none other than cowards standing idly by in the face of the worst massacre in human history.
There are those who would say to me that the system in Washington works. They say that the pro life forces are making progress, that eventually Rob v. Wade will be overturned, that the culture of life will ultimately win over the majority of Americans and that the horror of abortion will be outlawed…
I ask these peaceful Christian law abiding Pro Life citizens, is there any point at which all of the legal remedies will not suffice and you would fight to end the massacre of children? How many decades have to pass, how many millions have to die? Is there any point when the cries of the children will not go unanswered? I think that your inaction after three decades of slaughter is a sufficient answer to all of these questions…
Along with abortion, another assault upon the integrity of American society is the concerted effort to legitimize the practice of homosexuality. Homosexuality is an aberrant sexual behavior, and as such I have complete sympathy and understanding for those who are suffering from this condition…
This effort is commonly known as the homosexual agendas. Whether it is gay marriage, homosexual adoption, hate crimes laws including gays, or the attempt to introduce a homosexual normalizing curriculum into our schools, all of these efforts should be ruthlessly opposed…
After laying low for a year, I succeeded in making operational a command detonated focused device that would greatly reduce the risk for handing innocent civilians when carrying out these operations. Over a million human beings had died in the past year, and as the anniversary of Roe v. Wade approached, the idea was to send yet another message to the killers and those who protected them…
I had nothing personal against Lyons and Sanderson. They were targeted for what they did, not who they were as individuals…
While Rudolph’s behavior and murderous rampages were well beyond the mainstream, his language is not considered extreme when compared to the day to day rhetoric employed by those within the mainstream anti-abortion lobby.
Abortion is Murder:
Eric Rudolph, April 2005: “I believe that abortion is murder, I also believe that force is justified and in an attempt to stop it..”
Eric Rudolph, July 2005: “What they did was participate in the murder and dismemberment of upward of 50 children a week,” he said. Abortion is murder, Rudolph said, adding: “I believe that deadly force is indeed justified in an attempt to stop it.”
James Dobson, January 2003: “Abortion is murder. These are not matters of opinion.”
Randall Terry, May 2005: “ABORTION IS MURDER. It is the deliberate destruction of a judicially innocent human life in a time of peace.”
Operation Rescue, current: “We hold true to the great and historic creeds of our Christian faith: the Apostolic Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Athanasian Creed. We reject all modern heresy and apostasies, including the ?Apostolic Mantle? doctrine. Furthermore, we assert that mankind is created in the image of God Almighty. Because of this, we assert that all violent assaults upon innocent human life defy the revealed will of God. Those assaults that end an innocent human life are murder.”Judge William Pryor, 2002: “Abortion is murder, and Roe v. Wade is an abominable decision.”
And, as a truly American testament to the mainstreaming of this rhetoric, bumper stickers. Again, the belief that abortion itself is murder is not one that is problematic (from the standpoint of excessive rhetoric and the results of said speech). Millions of decent people deeply feel that abortion is murder. I, myself, do not view abortion favorably, and will do my level best to make sure I do nothing to support the practice. The problem is when the rhetoric is so pitched, so heated, that it leads to extra-legal behavior and violence. What happens when the abortion is murder rhetoric takes the next step?
Dehumanizing Abortion Providers:
Eric Rudolph, April 2005: “I had nothing personal against Lyons and Sanderson. They were targeted for what they did, not who they were as individuals…”
Paul Hill, August 2003: “It’s as though a machine gunner is taking aim on bound peasants, huddled before a mass grave, and you are forbidden to stop him. In much the same way, the abortionist’s knife is pressed to the throat of the unborn, and you are forbidden to stop him. It’s as though the police are holding a gun on you, and forcing you to submit to murder— possibly the murder of your own child or grandchild.”
Randall Terry, May 2005: “This is not killing in war. This is not an accident. This is not manslaughter. This is not self-defense. This is not the execution of a capital offender.
It is the cold, calculated murder of a human child for money by an abortionist, with forethought and malice. Abortionists are little more than hired assassins capitalizing on the distress of pregnant women.”
EAEC, current: “While those who condone the murder of innocent babies like to label themselves as “pro choice,” the FACT is, they are ‘pro murder of innocent babies.'”
Operation Save America, January 2001: “There were 12 abortion mills in Dallas in 1988 when we first began this ministry,” said Rev. Benham, “Today there are only six. The battle for the lives of little boys and girls is being won on the streets. We give all praise to God.”
Representative Chris Smith (R-NJ), 2004: “Women wounded by abortion – like actress Jennifer O’Neill, singer Melba Moore, civil rights activist Dr. Alveda King, niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, and co-founder of the National Silent No More Awareness Campaign, Georgette Forney – have called on us to listen to their heart wrenching stories and take seriously our moral duty to protect women and children from the predators who ply their lethal trade in abortion mills throughout the land.”
Eric Rudolph, April 2005: “Two attacks were carried out in the winter of 1997. The first in January was an abortion mill (Northside Family Planning). The second was a homosexual establishment (The Otherside Lounge). The abortion mill was closed that day but occasionally there was staff on hand to clean their blood-stained equipment, and these minions and the facility itself were the targets of the first device. The second device placed at the scene was designed to target agents of the Washington government.”
Greg Cunningham, CBR, 1998: “The man who organized the week-long display said he would make no apologies for the Holocaust comparison. ‘Abortion is genocide. That’s the whole point,’ said Gregg Cunningham, director of the Los Angeles-based Center for Bio-Ethical Reform [CBR].”
Again, these are just a few samples, and I really don’t need to provide more. A concerted effort has been made to dehumanize the opposition, to label abortion as genocide, and to color those who support abortion as murderers, killers, and the like. Along with the rhetoric, non-violent calls for action are made. Unfortunately, psychopaths and sociopaths do not always stay within the parameters of those non-violent calls to action, and take matters into their own hands.
Borderline and Violent Calls to Action:
Paul Hill, Why I Shot an Abortionist,”: “When I first appeared on Donahue, I asked the audience to suspend judgment as to whether the action had been wise, but I took the position that Griffin’s killing of Dr. Gunn was justified. I later realized, however, that using the force necessary to defend the unborn gives credibility, urgency, and direction to the pro-life movement which it has lacked and which it needs in order to prevail.
I realized that using force to stop abortion is the same means that God has used to stop similar atrocities throughout history. In the book of Esther, for instance, Ahasuerus, king of Persia, passed a law in 473 B.C. allowing the Persians to kill their Jewish neighbors. But the Jews did not passively submit; their uses of defensive force prevented a calamity of immense proportions.
I realized that a large number of very important things would be accomplished by my shooting another abortionist in Pensacola.
– This would put the pro-life rhetoric about defending born and unborn children equally into practice.”
Paul Hill Action Statement: We, the undersigned, declare the justice of taking all godly action necessary to defend innocent human life including the use of force. We proclaim that whatever force is legitimate to defend the life of a born child is legitimate to defend the life of an unborn child. We assert that if Michael Griffin did in fact kill David Gunn, his use of lethal force was justifiable provided it was carried out for the purpose of defending the lives of unborn children. Therefore, he ought to be acquitted of the charges against him.
Randall Terry, date unknown: “If you believe it’s murder, act like it’s murder!”
Central Illinois Right to Life, explaining Michael Griffin’s behavior: Michael Griffin may be delusional, but delusion is often born of frustration, and frustration is an inevitable by product of an increasingly Tyrannical Society that is devoid of Truth, lacking in Moral Leadership and impervious to Democratic Change.
As for pictures of mutilated babies, the victims of abortion, that’s not delusion, that’s reality!
Rev. David Trosch, head of St. John the Baptist Catholic Church, advocating the murder of abortion providers: “Michael Griffin has used a method which is unfortunate, to say the least, but I can’t go against him for doing it.”
Trosch is an intense man with a serious, unchanging expression on his face, and a man with an unchanging issue on his mind — abortion.
For the moment, Trosch says, he has no plans to kill a doctor himself. He has “only remotely” thought about it, he said.
“It’s not part of a role of a priest normally to do such a thing,” he said. “It’s not my calling, you might say. My profession is a teaching profession, essentially.”
Still, Trosch wouldn’t say with absolute certainty he’d never kill a doctor.
While Trosch said he has never told anyone else to kill a doctor, he casually acknowledged that the advertisement could have incited people to kill.
“It doesn’t bother me,” he said.
Killing a doctor is justifiable, Trosch claims, if the killer is trying to save the life of babies. That is a defensible position, he contends. It’s like killing a criminal before he kills you or your friend. Or it’s like killing people in wartime to serve a greater good.”
Rev. Trosch, on shooting pharmacists: “According to the Rev. David Trosch, even pharmacists might eventually become targets. “I would see no problem with shooting a pharmacist” who provided a “morning-after pill” to women who seek to terminate their pregnancies. Trosch, in a July 16 letter that predicted the “massive killing of abortionists and their staffs,” pointedly warned that clinic defenders and reproductive- rights activists “will be sought out and terminated as vermin are terminated.”
While there are many more quotes I could include from the fringe, you get the message. The point of this post is not to smear the millions of Americans who truly believe abortion is wrong, and who work through non-violent means to achieve their goal. The overwhelming majority of the leadership in the right-to life movement has condemned this sort of violence.
However, it is important to recognize that the careless rhetoric being bandied about by those on the pro-life side can have disastrous outcomes (here is a brief, albeit out of date, summary of violence at abortion clinics). Most recently, the rhetoric has reached a fevered pitch in certain quarters referring to any court decision as examples of ‘judicial tyranny, ‘judicial activism,’ or ‘legislating from the bench.’
Tom DeLay, the House Majority Leader, stated in regards to the Terri Schiavo case, that “the time will come for the men responsible for this to answer for their behavior, but not today.” I am not making a Clintonesque claim that right-wing radio is leading to terrorism, and I am not stating that Tom DeLay is in favor of murdering Americans. There is, however, in my opinion, a connection between the rhetoric of people who are supposed to be responsible political and spiritual leaders and the horrible deeds of delusional, misguided, and ultimately, evil individuals.
This has been a long post, but let me offer one more quote, as we come full circle back to Eric Rudolph:
“Those who attempt to save the lives of unborn children and who wish to promote a culture that respects life are now treated as fanatics, threats to American freedom,” he said.
Those like Eric Rudolph should be treated like fanatics, and those who enable lunatics like Rudolph should recognize their hand in this, however unintentional. They are not responsible for Eric Rudolph’s behavior, nore Paul Hill’s, nor Michael Griffin’s. But we can;t pretend the day-to-day rhetoric had no impact on the beliefs of these murderers. This is a lesson we should remember.
Tim F
Midnight mass, Christmas 2001. Pittsburgh’s inimitable bishop Donald Wuerl had the opportunity to bring together a shaken and angry community with a message of solidarity and hope. That’s the sort of message I imagine that you would have heard down the street at the Unitarians, or one of the Greek Orthodox churches in Aspinwall, or the Korean Baptist church in Shadyside, or a week earlier at Rodef Shalom on 5th. It’s sort of a no-brainer.
No, Wuerl used his homily to equate ob-gyn physicians with the September 11 terrorists. Transport yourself back to late 2001 and try to imagine how offensive that would feel. Needless to say my wife and I never sat in St. Paul’s again.
Jeff Medcalf
What is interesting to me is to take this case, where the Left really sees the connection between terrorism and the rhetoric of non-terrorists who support and legitimize the terrorism; and compare it to the Left’s rhetoric supporting and legitimizing the jihadi terrorists. The Left sees one of these cases as right, and one wrong; the Right sees one of these cases as right, and one wrong: they just disagree about which. It doesn’t matter that they deplore the terrorism itself; what matters is their support of the rhetoric as good while opposing equal rhetoric in a different cause as bad, without ever divining that if it leads to terrorism on the part of their opponents, it may lead to terrorism on the part of their allies.
I see them both as wrong, and that’s why I sit outside of either Party.
SoCalJustice
Eric Rudolph was also not just merely anti-Abortion.
He was a “Christian Identity” white supremacist pscyho.
JonBuck
This topic has gone far beyond any sort of reasoned debate. It’s one of the most divisive issues in our nation. No amount of scientific research can tell when an embryo becomes human. And even if it did, some people will never be convinced by the facts.
The extreme rhetoric of these anti-abortion groups worries me. Would they prosecute women who miscarry? Would they outlaw the sale of contraception? What about the life of the mother? If she is pregnant, does she have no rights over her body at all? Does she somehow stop being a person just because she’s pregnant?
Tim F
When I meet this homogenous, cartoonish Left of which Jeff speaks, I promise to do my patriotic duty and beat him up.
ppGaz
Rudolf is a terrorist. Neither more, nor less, than any terrorist. A la Tim McVeigh. A la your garden variety suicide bomber.
Personally, I don’t think Rudolf’s “philosophy” is together enough to think that his crimes revolve around the abortion issue. I think that he, like a lot of radical anti-abortion types, rally around that issue because it’s convenient fuel for their radical and sociopathic tendencies. If abortion went away, they’d be ranting about something else.
It strikes me as interesting that this full-blown terrorist gets all the available due process and representation, while terrorists of other stripes don’t. My comment is in favor of giving the latter the same treatement as Rudolph. I am not so afraid of terrorists that I feel the need to throw away the protections and process in our system.
Otto Man
Any, um, what’s that called — evidence? — to back this claim up?
Maybe I missed my daily missive from The Left about how much I’m supposed to support and legitimize the evil fucks who attacked my city on 9/11, but I really don’t have a clue what you’re insinuating here.
Zifnab
The problem with the abortion issue, in my mind, isn’t whether abortion is right or wrong, but whether abortion of the fetus is morally wrong if you never intend to care for it after birth. Is abortion any more or less morally vile than leaving your newborn baby in a dumpster? Is it any more or less morally vile than tossing your child on the street before he/she is even in his/her teens? If you don’t plan to feed the child, you don’t plan to raise and care for and educate the child, if you just want life for the sake of not having death, then are you really doing the world a favor? Are you really enacting God’s will if the life you bring into the world is doomed to misery and pain?
This isn’t an arguement for abortion, it’s an arguement for social services. You need a fully funded Medicare program, child health insurance, a fully funded public education system, and a variety of other infrastructures in place if you honestly want to persue a ‘no-more-abortions’ policy. If the state claims that all pregencies should be carried to term and delivered, the state also claims the responsibility of caring for and raising said children. We cannot live in a society that simply spits out babies into an abyss of poverty, violence, crime, and abuse. Whether we want to admit it or not, killing the child before birth is far more merciful than bringing it into the world to suffer.
Longshot
Yo Medcalf – here’s one Lefty who mustn’t have gotten that memo on supporting and legitimizing the jihadi terrorists. Maybe I couldn’t read it on 9/11, when I was shedding grief-stricken tears while watching our nation’s metropolises deal with being attacked.
I am SO SICK AND TIRED of the Right (yes, that monolithic ‘Right’ in much the same vein as the monolithic ‘Left’) thinking it has a lock on love of country. Let me know when wrapping yourself in the flag finally gets embarrassing.
ET
Not sure I am making an effective point but hopefully y’all will get what I am saying…..
Many, conservatives most especially it seems, ascribe much of today’s violence on entertainment like TV, movies, video games, music and other cultural influences. The same can be said of the rhetoric of the hard-core anti-abortion group and the end results seen in the actions of Eric Rudolph.
While there is no direct correlation between violence and entertainment there is no direct correlation between the rhetoric and the actions of one man. Saying that, both show a certain numbing of the norms, an amping up of those things that encite – at least in those people disposed to extremes.
Brian J.
Sounds like an excellent opportunity to focus attention on home-grown terrorists.
metalgrid
Jeff, could you expand on your argument please? I’m a little confused.
Just because some guy from State A decides to bomb an abortion clinic, we don’t deploy the armed forces to State A’s neighbor- State B to ‘bring them democracy’ do we? :)
If tomorrow, a bunch of fervent pro-life activists decided to blow themselves up at abortion clinics, we aren’t going to delare war on pro-lifers are we?
People need to stop sticking their noses in other people’s business, and we need to stop declaring war on stupid issues and hold individuals responsible without lumping disparate groups together just because we don’t like them.
ss
Moral outrage + narcissism + sociopathic tendencies = Eric Rudolph
Doug
I’m not sure how, as a logical matter, you can be “pro-life” and not be using force to try to stop it.
I’m pro-choice because I don’t believe a non-viable zygote, morula, blastocyst, embryo, or fetus constitutes human life with the same moral rights as the rest of us. If your philosophical beliefs run along these lines, there really aren’t any defensible grounds to think that the government ought to substitute its judgment for that of the individual woman and her doctor.
On the other hand, if you philosophically believe that human life begins at conception, I don’t see how you can regard abortion as anything other than murder such that it’s simply not defensible to sit idly by while thousands and thousands of murders are being committed in a cold-blooded fashion.
To me, those pro-lifers who honestly believe that a fully human life begins at conception are morally obligated to take action rather than allow mass murder. But, then again, I think that such a belief, honest or not, is not well founded.
Jim Dandy
That’s because of things like him, who make it easy and convenient to label that whole side based on your opinion of the extremists there.
RW
This is the part where you say that the false Newsweek story and the rhetoric therein had nothing to do with the violence that subsequently happened (and was reported as a direct result of the actions described within the story).
Blame on the clerics instead of the part that actually was credited with the info and obfuscations from the obvious parallels of rhetoric-turning-to-violence only when it meets one’s political interests beginning in 5, 4, 3…..
BinkyBoy
Just because something was reported as “Event A caused Event B” by a weekly newspaper doesn’t make it true. Most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said that the violence just happened to coincide.
Besides, there were dozens of other stories out a long time ago about the Koran being abused in various ways and there wasn’t any violence attributed to those stories, why was Newsweek different? Oh, because you want it to be! I get it now.
just me
I’m sick of all these religeous kooks trying to force their “morals” upon all of us…
GOD IS A LIE, just like santa claus and the easter bunny.
Rocky Smith
This is one of the few places that Bill Clinton and I agree nearly totally. Abortion should remain legal, but rare.
nyrev
Theoretically, it requires two basic beliefs to be pro-life. First, you must believe that a blastocyst is a human being with a soul instead of a cluster of cells with the potential to become a human being with a soul. Second, you must believe that it is inherently wrong for anyone but God to take a human life.
If a person can justify killing a nurse to save a blastocyst, then that person is not pro-life, no matter what he or she claims. That person is anti-abortion. Also anti-social.
“Pro-life” is one of those terms that has been co-opted and corrupted by both sides of the issue until it doesn’t make sense any more. I guess it can join “family values,” “liberal” and “conservative” in the misappropriated vocabulary club.
Bruce
Doug, even if you believe that abortion is murder, it is still wrong to take another life in defense of a fetus. The reason for that has to do with the rule of law. Since certain forms of abortion are entirely legal, a pro-life person’s only reasonable course of action is to press for a change in the law. Indeed, that is exactly what most (but not all) pro-life activists are trying to do… with some success, I might add.
Since the deliberate killing of a non-aborted person is entirely illegal, one would be justified in taking violent action against that crime.
The same holds true in protesting the death penalty. In this case, we have the state legally ending the life of an individual. Even if you regard this practice as grossly immoral and possibly unconstitutional (as I do) you would not be justified in murdering judges who apply the death penalty. The proper avenue is political.
Bruce
Hmmm.. that second paragraph is not as precise as I’d like. Please allow me to rephrase it:
Since the deliberate killing of a child or an adult (i.e.: one who cannot be aborted because he is already born) is entirely illegal, one would be justified in taking violent action to prevent that crime.
stinkydonkey
Here here just me! The best thing about religion is that its one of the few things that if everyone just stopped believing in it, it really would just go away (along with most of this idiocy about abortion, evolution and probably some terrorism). The death of god, ah to dream…
Simon
Simply because Rudolph and pro-lifers share the belief that abortion is murder, John Cole wishes to make a case that the two are SOMEHOW in bed together. Of course this is an abortion itself, and Cole ought to be utterly ashamed of so juvenile an argument. It is to say that because someone shares the belief with Iraqi insurgents that the United States has wrongly invaded Iraq, they are in bed with insurgents.
It is apparent to me Cole despises pro-lifers so much he will stoop to obvious irrationality to smear them. After reading the comments here I see that almost to a post not a single person has had the integrity to at least point out the profound difficulty with Cole’s position. We are dealing here not with centrists, but with rank irrational leftists deceiving themselves into thinking they are reasonable.
I think abortion is murder and that there is no logical way around it. I think this not because of any belief in God or the soul or anything else of this sort. From a purely scientifically materialistic point-of-view it can be validly argued that abortion is murder – murder with extenuating circumstances, but murder nevertheless.
Even so, it never would cross my mind to identify in any but the most superficial of ways with Eric Rudolph – certainly nothing to warrant a gigantic posting here about. I am confident Dobson and his sort think likewise. Our views do not mandate that we murder people, contrary to the myopic claims of a poster here. While abortion is murder, the fact the murdered child was in close dependence upon the accomplice in its murder must be taken into account in any reasoned deliberation of the matter.
You people do us a grave injustice by cavalierly associating us with a rank murderer like Rudolph. You do yourselves an injustice, precisely as do your “Bush as Hitler” ideological comrades.
John Cole
Simon-
A.) You are a jackass.
B.) You can’t read very well.
C.) You can’t comprehend what you can read.
D.) I voted for Bush twice. Both Bush’s a total of four times.
E.) What part of this is a smear of pro-life individuals:
F.) Since we have already estbalished you can’t read, I am not sure why I am doing this, but what part of this is a smear:
G.) You are a jackass.
John
Jackass, Jackass, Jackass. I concur!
Simon
John:
But I am not a self-debasing leftist who erroneously claims to be a “centrist.”
I read fine. I can’t parrot smallminded uncharitable leftism very well.
See above. I comprehend marvelously.
Well of course you did. Bush spends money like a leftist and now even argues ‘Amnesty’ for illegal aliens. You undoubtedly love Bush.
This: “The problem is when the rhetoric is so pitched, so heated, that it leads to extra-legal behavior and violence.”
In association with utter nonsense like this:
“Again, these are just a few samples, and I really don’t need to provide more. A concerted effort has been made to dehumanize the opposition, to label abortion as genocide, and to color those who support abortion as murderers, killers, and the like. Along with the rhetoric, non-violent calls for action are made. Unfortunately, psychopaths and sociopaths do not always stay within the parameters of those non-violent calls to action, and take matters into their own hands.”
Pro-lifers are not working in concert to dehumanize anyone. They view abortion as murder and those who cause abortions as murderers. I myself think likewise because of logical necessity. Yet you are claiming that because I think thusly and say it, I am somehow causing Eric Rudolph to go out and murder others in response. You ought to be ashamed of such fraudulence. Your statements here are no different than those who tried to blame Bush for the murders on 911. Pro-lifers didn’t cause anyone’s murder. Eric Rudolph did and you ought not be so dishonest and just plain unreasonable to try linking us to Rudolph in order to try stifling our right, indeed our duty to state the facts about abortion as we see them.
Had the despised abolitionists minority in the 1850’s not boisterously called slavery, slave-owners and slavers what they truly are, we may well have slavery in America today. Nevertheless they are not to blame for John Brown’s actions simply because they told the truth. Only John Brown is culpable – fully culpable. You are wrong, sir – purely and simply wrong.
This is just so much leftist nonsense. Pro-lifers are simply telling the truth as they see it. A reasoned mind can only expect the rhetoric to be as it is since pro-lifers see abortion as murder. One doesn’t simply sip tea and eat crumpets when speaking of the rank murder of tens of millions of our fellow humans. At a minimum one should speak out and call it precisely what it is. I think you are so insensitive to the nature of abortion, and/or so nearsightedly bound to your own narrow leftist point-of-view on the matter, you simply do not have the intellectual wherewithal to see how anyone else might have so fervent a rejection of this execrable practice that they might speak harshly against it. This is why I think we are dealing with narrow-minded leftists here and not well-reasoned, open-minded centrists. Bush is Hitler – right?
But I am not self-deceived into thinking I am something I most certainly am not. And it is a good thing because it is impossible for such people ever to make progress in their own stunted lives.
MC
Tim F:
Where is there a Greek Orthodox church in Aspinwall? As far I as remember, there is St. Scholastica – the Roman Catholic church (of Kerry and Heinz-Kerry fame as of late), the big Presbyterian Church that had the fire on Center Ave., and the Methodist Church up a block. There used to be a Lutheran church many ages ago, but it was an apartment building the last time I was there. Is there one on top of the hill?
Longshot
Wow, Simon and Randall Terry – Separated At Birth?
Though I’m glad he (indirectly) points out that we’ve gone from “Tax And Spend Democrats” in the 70’s & 80’s to “*SPEND* And Spend Republicans” in the 21st Century.
Sojourner
“I myself think likewise because of logical necessity.”
Is that the same logic you applied to gay people?
Mike S
heh
There is less and less room in the GOP for moderates. Disagree with the Terryites and people like simple Simon will lable you leftist.
John Cole
They may not be wroking in concert, but they most certainly are passing a coordinated message about those who believe differently about abortion, about those who provide abortion services, and those who have abortions. The message is abortion is murder and they are murderers. Clear and simply.
As I was even gracious enough to afford you the premise that believing abortin is murder is a legitimate and honorable position (even though killing may be more apt, as the legal definition of murder is quite solid), I am not sure where you came up with this crap:
I am not trying to blame those who are against abortion for Rudolph’s lunacy, I am stating that the heated rhetoric from certain quarters provides lunatics like Rudolph the necessary cover to believe they are doing the right thing when they murder abortion providers.
Since you have brought up 9/11 in a piss-poor analogy, let me provide the more appropriate one. When the radical fringe makes calls to action, based upon years of heated rhetoric (abortion is murder, this is a genocide), they are functioning much in the same way as the radical mullahs who for years have parroted rhetoric such as “America is the great satan” or “Death to America.” Then, when one radical mullah somewhere acts in much the same way as Rev. Trosch and Randall Terry have (in the section titled Borderline and Violent Calls to Action), they are essentially greenlighting the behavior of lunatics.
I understand this post was a difficult argument to process, as it had three whole parts, which is one more than your usual binary approach to everything. But just to review, the first part is what I would consider pretty mainstream rhetoric from the the anti-abortion (Abortion is Murder). I showed mainstream abti-abortion folks and lunatics like Rudolph employing said rhetoric.
Now, this is going to require holding two thoughts at once, but on to step two, where I chronicled an escalation of rhetoric, by not so mainstream groups and lunatics like Paul Hill and Eric Rudolph.
In step three, I show where the mainstream acceptance of rhetoric is gone, and the loonies like Torsch are running the show. It is a gradation of the rhetoric, and it gets more pitched, until there is a point of detachment from social norms and unhinged individuals, like Paul Hill, Eric Rudolph, etc., go beyond what is acceptable and behave in murderous fashion.
The point is that the rhetoric used by decent folks is easily co-opted and used to justify behavior no one, not even you, can justify.
And you can keep calling me a leftist all you want, but that sort of silly statement (along with claiming I would even think ‘Bush is Hitler=’) really says more about your political leanings than mine.
And as you are someone who is so rigidly ideological, venomous to all who disagree with the appropriate way people should live their own lives, virulently homophobic, andwilling to label those who disagree with them, and utterly unwilling to honsetly argue a premise, it is the height of hilarity to be called ‘narrow-minded’ by the likes of you. In fact, it makes my day.
Mike S
I think we’re all still waiting for a few linked examples of this.
Gary Farber
“…and that unborn children should be protected anal you still insist that force is unjustified….”
Um, John, about that cut and paste?
John Cole
Gary- Check the link- that is AS RUDOLPH typed it, mistakes and all. There are other typos, too.
Doug
Bruce said:
I disagree. If the law said it was legal to kill Jews and, in fact, thousands of Jews were being legally killed by fellow citizens every year, I think any moral person would have the obligation to rise up against the law and stop those killing Jews by whatever means necessary.
If zygotes, fetuses, and the like are fully human souls entitled to the same moral rights as other humans, it’s wrong to allow them to be murdered — even if the law allows for that murder. To me, that’s just the logic of the situation, clear and bright as day.
I, of course, don’t think those clumps of cells are fully human, so I think the government should keep out and leave the decision up to the woman and her doctor.
But those who stand by and merely attempt to influence the political process even when they are sure a blastocyst is a human soul being murdered are just as morally compromised as those who would, if the law were different, allow the slaughter of Jews simply because the law allowed it.
Simon
Firstly, it is to be expected that pro-lifers will call those who support murder murderers. That you disagree that abortion is murder is not their problem.
Secondly, your point above is completely immaterial to your claim that pro-life statements have led fanatics to murder others. They certainly have NOT led to such murders because humans are moral agents, responsible for their own actions. That a person hears expressions of belief concerning the meaning of abortion and those who support it, and then takes it into his head to murder others is no fault of those making the statements.
Your claim is leftist because it erroneously aims to mark this brand of free speech as somehow wrong because you mistakenly think it SOMEHOW leads to murder. Just because the speech offends you is no reason to employ logical fraudulence against it.
Here are a few of your statements plainly claiming pro-life speech has led to murder:
“The problem is when the rhetoric is so pitched, so heated, that it leads to extra-legal behavior and violence.”
This is no valid problem with pro-life statements. Pro-lifers have simply called abortion what it truly is – the intentional murder of an actualizing genetic human. That someone hears this fact and then goes out to murder others is a problem with the murderer – not with any pro-lifer who exercises his freedom of speech.
Here you are, once again:
“Along with the rhetoric, non-violent calls for action are made. Unfortunately, psychopaths and sociopaths do not always stay within the parameters of those non-violent calls to action, and take matters into their own hands.”
Of course this is not the least problem of pro-lifers and it is not the result of their speaking the truth as they see it. It is the problem of law-breakers. Yet you are trying to attribute the cause to those who are simply speaking their minds.
You do to pro-lifers what some on the right have done to those who have protested the Iraqi war. Merely because the protesters exercised their right to criticize a war they thought was wrong from the very beginning, they were charged with causing the deaths of American soldiers. The people to blame for killing American soldiers are the insurgents. No wrong takes place when one protests a war or calls abortion murder. You are just wrong here and you ought to have the dignity to retract your abominable statements.
When an abortionist enters a woman’s womb to deliberately halt the naturally actualizing genetic human developing there, he does nothing that is fundamentally different from when a thug halts a naturally actualizing genetic human in a dark alleyway. You simply cannot objectively distinguish between an unborn human and one that is born such that the distinction logically permits the extermination of one above the other. All humans are actualizing information proceeding along a certain common human developmental trajectory. It was for this reason that Jefferson attributed equality to all men. Should one equal human enforce his will upon another equal human such that the development of the latter human is halted, then the dead human has been killed with no logical basis other than mere nihilistic might – and this is just no basis for civilization. It is called murder.
So yes. Abortion is literal murder and of the most profound sort because the human creature being murdered is at the most innocent stage in any human’s existence. The aborted human has not even cried or done anything to provoke anyone’s wrath, except that he existed. Killing it is murder, and those who do it are murderers indeed.
Now should anyone read these statements about abortion and then go on to take the law in their own hands, I am by no means responsible and neither did my words cause the violence, contrary to your wrongheaded leftist beliefs.
I came up with it because I have sense enough to know you cannot ameliorate your sleazy tactic against pro-lifers merely by prefacing it with this false “graciousness.”
The fact that continually eludes you is that this is a deficiency of Rudolph and not of pro-lifers. Yet you wish to slime pro-lifers with a wrong that someone else has done simply because they have employed free speech to define what abortion truly is. It is quite a lot of leftist nonsense.
Ah. So in your view pro-lifers who simply define abortion and abortionists for what they are, are the same as those who command “Death to America.” I can see now there is just no hope of reasoning with you on the obvious differences between mere definitions and actual calls for death. So I won’t even try. “Moderate” indeed.
Whether the argument has three or thirty-three parts, the sum of it was designed to slime pro-life statements as somehow wrong by linking them with the objectively wrong behavior committed by Eric Rudolph. Otherwise you never would have tried to link the two. You are just being dishonest here and you ought to retract. Anyone with a modicum of decency would see the consummate unfairness of the moral abortion you have committed here and then retract it.
There is just too much dishonesty here for words. You have here claimed pro-lifers are tantamount to Islamic mullahs who call for “Death to America” and now you are claiming the pro-lifers are “decent people.”
You really ought to go ahead and admit that you are being dishonest. It is plain to see. You began your bit here with the aim of sliming pro-lifers, inserting false “graciousness” into the leftist mire as you tried to give your behavior a veneer of decency. It won’t take the most perceptive person to see that your attempt was fraudulent from word one.
I understand how you might be offended by pro-life rhetoric. It is undoubtedly hard to know in your heart that the thing you support is in fact murder and then have someone come right out and say it. But how you can be so atrocious against pro-lifers and call yourself a “moderate” quite escapes me. How any of the geniuses here can stand the clear stench of it without their integrity demanding a retraction from you I find most baffling. You folks are no “moderates.” The same tactics are employed by the loony left all the time.
The evidence you have left here speaks for itself, John. It only takes readers with integrity to see and admit it.
Well I am glad to have been of service to you. I find the dishonesty here most useless.
Simon
Well you may think this for yourself, but by what science or logic can you compel this obligation upon anyone else? It may be perfectly fine to allow Jews to be murdered, depending upon the circumstances. The same might apply to anyone else.
Do I really have an obligation to any dying person? What of the people in Sudan who are being murdered, raped and enslaved with impunity? Do we have an obligation to them – and if so, then why aren’t you warring against their oppressors, since you have the philosophies you have. And if you do not have an obligation to them, why not?
It is possible that I have few obligations to you. If you do not share my values, I may well not see any obligation to you at all, even should I witness you being slaughtered in broad daylight.
Sojourner
“It is possible that I have few obligations to you. If you do not share my values, I may well not see any obligation to you at all, even should I witness you being slaughtered in broad daylight.”
Wow!!! This is the most self-serving statement I’ve read in a long time. Do you consider youreself religious? If so, which one? This is so contrary to every ethical and religious position I know of.
CaseyL
A fertilized egg, a blastocyst, a zygote, and fetuses are not human beings. They are not “equivalent” to human beings. They are “potential” human beings, in the same way a bowl of batter is “potentially” a cake. But they’re not human beings. They lack self, consciousness of self, and – at least in the first trimester – brains to conceive of a self with.
Saying that a fertilized egg, a blastocyst, a zygote, and a fetus have the same moral and legal value as I do is dehumanizing. It’s saying I’m nothing more than an assortment of functioning cells.
It’s silly, too: if a fertility lab is on fire, and the collection of fertilized eggs is lost in the fire, have the firefighters committed negligent homicide by not “rescuing” them? Using the equivalence premise, the answer would have to be ‘yes.’
Slartibartfast
Simon is indeed a jackass. Simon, do take a little time to actually understand your host before coming to your absurd conclusions.
Or, more likely, not.
Tim F
MC,
The church that I was thinking of may be further west on Freeport road, in Blawnox. Big cathedral, just off of 28. It’s possible that it’s Roman Catholic and I mixed it up with the Serbian Orthodox church just up the hill in the North Side.
Simon
I am not religious, though I think there is likely a God. I do know this, you have no scientific basis to hold me to your religious demands and assumptions. And if you are going to hold firmly to this aspect of your religion on the basis of non-science, then on the same basis you ought to be consistent and hold to all aspects of your religion. Few religionists are consistent – very few.
Simon
When you are asleep you lack the same consciousness and yet this gives us no basis to murder sleepers. Those who are in comas are likewise unconscious and this certainly gives us no freedom to summarily murder them. Consciousness is scientifically and logically not the essential definition of a human because it is predicated upon something that is also human: the brain. But the brain is not the essential definition of a human because it is predicated upon something that is also human. Continue the thought process and you will find the ultimate thing upon which all human identity is predicated – the co-joining of genetic information from precisely one man and precisely one woman – conception. Once this occurs, the die is cast. All else, including human brains and consciousness, is merely expression that grows from this inexorable and objective human fact.
Simon
I understand him quite well. He was wrong and apparently lacks the dignity to retract his fraudulent statements.
Jay
That would be self-defence. Criminality has no play in it.
If you kill someone for a previous or anticipated act, you are acting as judge and jury. Go to jail.
Ah, the crux of the matter.
It is what you think it is. Others may disagree, but they are wrong! wrong! wrong!
(see:Catholic Church: Earth: Center of Universe)
Sojourner
Simon is the stereotype of the idiot pro-lifer. He doesn’t give a shit about anyone but those not yet born and those brain dead. Everyone else can go f*ck themselves.
But I’m sure he’s got some BS “logical” argument for his position that convinces absolutely no one but himself.
Simon
Of course this is correct, though those who disagree must have some objective, logically compelling reason upon which to base their disagreement. They do not.
Nevertheless this is not the crux of the matter. The crux here concerns whether one who thinks abortion is murder (whether it is or not) and then says it, is somehow culpable should another person upon hearing the statement go out and murder someone. Mainstream pro-lifers like James Dobson do not call for the murder of anyone – and never have. They do not call for “Death to America” and never have – not even once.
Yet Cole sleazily quotes Dobson’s simple statement defining abortion, adds false “graciousness” by claiming the problem is not with claiming “Abortion is murder” but that “when the rhetoric is so pitched, so heated, that it leads to extra-legal behavior and violence.” In other words, Dobson is fine when he says abortion is murder, but somehow commits a wrong when he says it passionately, with conviction. This is utter nonsense because passion and conviction are precisely what one would expect of those who believe tens upon tens of millions of our fellow humans have been murdered.
Then, after claiming Dobson is somehow wrong for speaking with conviction, Cole asks “What happens when the abortion is murder rhetoric takes the next step?”
Rhetoric does NOT take steps, certainly not mere rhetoric that defines and does not command. Even rhetoric that commands does not necessarily command violence. If someone hearing the rhetoric should commit violence, the blame rests upon that person and not one who simply states abortion is murder.
It is John Cole’s sort of politically correct leftist illogic that threatens our freedoms. Dobson has done no wrong and yet Cole wishes to slime him with murders perpetrated by Eric Rudolph.
It is shameful – and Cole ought to retract it.
Sojourner
“It is John Cole’s sort of politically correct leftist illogic that threatens our freedoms.”
The lefties want to restrict our freedoms while folks like Dobson don’t?
What are you smoking?
John Doppler
Enough of the Orwellian double-speak.
Unless you are in favor of killing everybody for the sake of killing everybody, you are pro-life.
Those on the religious right who are against abortion are, by definition, anti-abortion. The term “pro-life” offers no distinction between them or anyone else (other than those who fall in the pro-death camp narrowly defined above).
Those who feel that a woman’s reproductive choice is not the business of the government refer to themselves as “pro-choice” because they favor leaving this option to the individual, not the government. While this was once considered a “conservative” principle, that definition has been turned on its head in the past couple of decades. Most of these people do fall into what, as someone has already pointed out, would be called the “Keep it legal – Make it rare” camp. As such, the “pro-choice” tag is still accurate.
So please, for clarity’s sake:
Against abortion = Anti-abortion
For reproductive choice = Pro-choice
A Spade = A Spade
John Doppler
Masturbation is murder.
Simon
I have no problem with this at all. I am certainly anti-abortion and because I do not think I have any obligation to anyone’s life but my own, I don’t mind being defined as such.
But I think it inappropriate to define the religious right in this way because their emphasis is on life and protecting it by standing against abortion. That is why calling them pro-abortion is possibly yet another of myriad dishonest attempts by leftists to use trickery and the other sorts of sliminess I have seen here, to try maligning their opponents.
Against abortion to protect life = Pro-Life
For the right to abortion = Pro-abortion rights
My Spade = A True Spade
Your Spade
Simon
Well then perhaps you should consider going a bit easy on it for a minute.
Sojourner
Those who are pro-death penalty are not pro-life. They are pro-birth.
Simon
This is not necessarily true. One can be for the death penalty and also philosophically pro-life. Given a person for whom murder is a valid tool to be used against the state, one may believe the state has a right to defend itself by putting the person to death – thereby insuring to the uttermost that that person will never be able to assault the state and the lives of any other person again. Even here the pro-lifer is interested in protecting life and so can validly warrant being called a “pro-lifer.”
The only literalists in America are those who claim it is somehow wrong to be a literalist.
Sojourner
Nope. The death penalty is not the only way to prevent someone from murdering again. It’s the intentional taking of a life and not out of self-defense. So it’s not a pro-life position.
Simon
It is the surest way, and where protecting life from murder, being sure wins the day.
It is the intentional taking of guilty life, life that is hostile to other life. In this sense it is indeed self-defense.
Your view here is not logically compelling. If you believe even mass-murderers have an innate right to life and that society has a duty to feed them in prison for the rest of their lives, then you must feed mass murderers and otherwise seek to keep them alive. But this will necessarily come as a result of your personal definition of “pro-life,” and not because of an objective definition.
What is logically compelling is the mathematical fact that one can be pro-life without being pro-mass murderer’s life. The mere fact that one stands in defense of all innocent life (indeed ANY life, including that of mass-murderers), technically gives one the claim of being pro-life.
Of course being for the death penalty does not mean a person is pro-death, anymore than a pro-choicer’s being for abortion’s rights make him pro-abortion. The matter here concerns the state’s right to, if it so chooses, put to death people who present a dire threat to society. One may want the state to have this right, but, like pro-choicers, want it to be rare.
I am tired of this issue, as I think I have made the case quite powerfully enough for you to understand it. It is my considered belief that should you persist in disagreement, it is not because you wish to understand your opponents but only because you wish to hate and intentionally mischaracterize them.
In any case, I leave you the last word.