Infamous Abortionist Murdered in Kansas (with Updates and Unhinged Reactions from the Left)
There’s a story breaking today in Kansas that abortion doctor George Tiller was shot and killed outside his church this morning. Stacy McCain is the go-to guy for updates and blogospheric reactions on the story as it continues to develop.
My opinion on this is, unfortunately, complicated. George Tiller was, to my thinking, a monster who willfully killed babies whose only “crime” is that they didn’t make it all the way out of the womb before he got hold of them. I can not see late-term or partial-birth abortions (both of which Tiller performed, and fought very hard to keep performing) as anything but infanticide. He was a reprehensible human being whose arrogance at coming within 100 feet of a house of worship is staggering.
However, that does not excuse his killer. The person who shot Tiller is a cold-blooded murderer and is every bit as monstrous a killer as Tiller himself. I don’t care how the killer rationalized his killing (I’m using the generic “him” here). He had no right to take Tiller’s life. He assumed the power of judgment that didn’t belong to him and he should pay for that very dearly. It wouldn’t sadden me at all if he were given the death sentence (assuming they have that in Missouri Kansas). I am very sorry for Tiller’s family and friends, who have lost someone they loved.
The other part of my thinking bears directly on what Stacy had to say about it.
One reason I so despise such criminal idiocy is that, as a student of history, I cannot think of a single instance in which assassination has produced anything good, no matter how evil or misguided the victim, nor how well-intentioned or malevolent the assassin.
From Brutus and the other republican Senators who slew Julius Caesar to Charlotte Corday, from John Wilkes Booth to Gavrilo Princip, and so onto Lee Harvey Oswald, Sirhan Sirhan and James Earl Ray, assassination seems inevitably to work against the purposes of its practitioners.
Those who slew Caesar did not save the Roman republic. Marat’s death only incited the Jacobins to greater terror. Booth’s pistol conjured up a spirit of vengeance against the South more terrible than war itself. Assassination is an act of nihilism. Whatever the motive of the crime, the horror it evokes always inspires a draconian response, and involves other consequences never intended by the criminal.
Tiller’s murder is going to be a very bad thing for the pro-life movement. He has undone years of patient, reasonable work. Tiller’s murderer is responsible now for the thousands of abortions that will be committed because of how far his actions today set back the pro-life movement. As Stacy said, assassinations spin off unintended consequences that never work in the favor of the assassin’s cause.
You will see some of those consequences almost immediately. I would be very surprised to find any pro-life group cheering Tiller’s death with the expected and rather boring example of Randall Terry. In fact, I expect the condemnations of the killer to be unequivocal. However, that won’t stop the pro-abortion left from tying every pro-life person in America to Tiller’s murder whether they find evidence of approval or not.
As a matter of fact, they won’t even bother to look. They’ll just ignore the condemnations from among the pro-lifers and let the ignorant, poisonous bile fly. Their reactions are dishonest, unfair, and purposefully ignorant. But that’s who they are. I feel very sorry indeed for the lives that will be damaged by the actions of this one person.
UPDATE: More news updates here.
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Category: The Social Issues
Just because you keep saying that, doesn't make it true.
Because it sounds like you're discussing semantics, not science. Let me try this example–in common usage, 'human being' and 'person' are the same thing. But, as you note, legally the concepts are different.
Likewise, in medical science, there is a specific definition of human being, but it is also common to use a more general, colloquial definition in the literature. Depending on which one you use (and again, this isn't a question of science), a fetus is, or is not, a human being.
I think the confusion is caused by the difference between science (use of the scientific method to obtain knowledge of general truths or general laws) and scientific terminology (specific definition of words used among scientists); the latter are not a product of science, just the jargon of that particular group of people. The scientific definition of a word is not better, or even more accurate, than the colloquial use, it's just (usually) more unambiguous.
(Incidentally, that's why arguments like "evolution is just a theory" don't hold water–the scientific term "theory" isn't the same as the colloquial word. The conversational meaning of "theory" matches the scientific term "conjecture".)
I am discussing semantics, because the semantic distinction is important. So far as I know (and I could well be wrong), the scientific definition of "human being" includes the unborn as well, to a certain point (which is the matter of viability I mentioned a few comments ago).
If we're going to make the discussion a moral one, which I think we must eventually, I think it's best to separate the term "human being" from the term "person", mostly because of the different concepts at work, as you pointed out. During slavery, we did reckon slaves as human beings in any way a scientist could determine but not as people.
jimmie, i think that reasoning is incorrect and grotesque.
that being said, your tone sounds uncharacteristically speculative and tolerant of porous, nuanced thought. it's more comfortable to be wrong in front of friends than right in front of enemies, isn't it?
if i am reading you correctly (you encouraged me not to do that once, then erased it; sorry to cross that boundary again), then i like your new, less-glib style.
i still hope you'll address my earlier posts.
Grotesque in what way?
grotesque in the sense of being bizarre, i.e. driving a wedge between 'personhood' and 'human being-ness (?)'; and fanciful, i.e. imagining that a justification for slavery and a condemnation of abortion lie in the gap between those two concepts.
if we are going to make this conversation a moral one, as you rightly suggest is necessary, we'll need more than new, weird definitions. not to sound hokey, but we'll each need to trust the other is a thinking, feeling person. otherwise, it will just be the most clever person who decides whether fetuses are people. my own views on this issue are pretty extreme — i don't feel that a child is technically a person until it has language — yet even i see that abortion is an issue that cleverness can't penetrate.
i don't believe you think that fetuses are full people like you and i are. i think you figured that position was the most defensible way to attack abortion. why do you condemn abortion? please provide an answer with shades of grey, if you still think it's appropriate.
Okay, then let's not separate the terms, since you can't seem to get past my doing so. However, I don't believe there is a gap between the terms as I separated them out. One deals with what things are and the other deals with what things may be. One term is objective and one subjective. It is also not true that thinking someone a human and not a person is fanciful. It was, in fact, how we justified slavery for a very long time. One of the things the abolitionists did that led to the end of slavery in this country was to get people thinking of slaves as people. Our military does the opposite thing, to a degree, to train solders to fight the enemy.
I believe that fetuses are human beings who should possess the same basic right to live as every other human being. That means that no one has the right to take their life unless extreme circumstances require it. I condemn abortion because it kills human beings who have done nothing to deserve that death, generally for less than extreme reasons.
This argument doesn't require cleverness. It does, however, require reasonableness enough to give the other side credit for not being rampant baby killers/rank enslavers of women.
That's fine, but it's not the point. Now I'm arguing semantics, too–if you say "science says," as an appeal to authority to support your argument, then your audience is likely to think you're referring to knowledge gained through scientific methods.
In this case, what you're actually referring to is scientific terminology, which is not based on any scientific procedure. It's just the conventional use of language scientists have arbitrarily chosen, and your only appeal to authority becomes, "Scientists are smart. Smart people pick good words."
Fair enough. I wan't actually using the appeal to authority (or I wasn't trying to do so intentionally), though I realize it appeared that way. What I was trying to say is that there is a difference between what is meant by the scientific term and the colloquial term and that the scientific term doesn't help me much in the discussion, since I see the entire debate as involving subjective belief instead of something we can put to a scientific test (like we can the scientific term to a very large degree).
I was using the word "personhood" to indicate that we'd be tiptoeing through less sharply-defined realms if we really wanted to tackle the abortion issue.
a semantic point: the distinction you describe,
"One [term] deals with what things are and the other deals with what things may be."
is not the difference between 'objective' and 'subjective.' it is the difference between 'indicative' and 'subjunctive.' you should have said, 'one term deals with what things are and the other deals with what things are perceived to be.' that is muddier ground, but it's more in line with your point.
one of the reasons the comparison with slavery is disturbing is that not only did the abolitionists encourage the public to think of slaves as people, they also, directly or indirectly, instigated a war that killed thousands of people (who are comparable to george tiller in your analogy). don't get me wrong — thank god for that war, without which we would have remained a primitive nation — but if you believe in the full humanity (and personhood, i suppose) of fetuses, it is contradictory to condemn george tiller while applauding the abolitionist sentiment. (contradictory views are the best kind! but they are hard to be glib about and easy to attack.)
i think your slavery comparison is too fraught to be useful. even so, there is something powerful in what you're saying. if i may make a suggestion, instead of comparing fetuses with slaves, you should compare them with children. after all, children do not have the full rights and responsibilities of (adult) personhood. the law protects them from harm only by virtue of their potential to one day assume those rights. fetuses, in most cases, have the same potential.
if the law acknowledges the value of that potential in children, why not in fetuses? i don't know a good argument against that (though i suspect such an argument would take the form of a 'challenge of assumptions'); i hope someone here who supports abortion can come up with one.
my tone was more abrasive than i meant it to be in my last response. i wonder if there's anything more annoying that a person who hides the seismic tensions of his contradictory views behind an ad hoc argument he reckons air-tight. when you say stuff like, 'you can't seem to get past my [separation of terms,]' you've got a hint of desperate condescension. i'll ignore it, because i think we're beginning to understand each other.
'I condemn abortion because it kills human beings who have done nothing to deserve that death, generally for less than extreme reasons.'
i disagree fundamentally. nevertheless, that answer feels honest to me. now, can you give an equally honest explanation of why you condemn george tiller's murder?
sorry to post so much, and thanks for indulging my questions.
[...] view as murder. The Other McCain rounded up both news updates and reaction from all over, including this reaction from The Sundries Shack (emphasis mine): He was a reprehensible human being whose arrogance at [...]