Monday, June 01, 2009

The Murder of Dr. Tiller & Scary Right Wing Internet Chatter

Shortly after Tiller's Murder Little Green Footballs posted the "Bad Craziness Watch: Right Wing Reaction to the Tiller Murder," the content of which abounds with internet chatter that all Americans need to be aware of. As Solon has commented a few times on this blog, especially when a Democrat is president, the threat of political violence (Terrorism) in America skyrockets.


Here are a couple of other really whacked out threads Harrogate invites readers to check out. Sure to be at the center of this week's discourse is Fox News: here's the forum it has going, begun by Cal Thomas: Fox News. And here is the Townhall forum, equally whacked out. One commenter on this thread compares Tiller's murderer to John Brown.

7 comments:

solon said...

The incoherence of the arguments overwhelm me at times. For example, the first comment beings together Natural Law, Socialism, and Race Relations. Other posts compare the pro-life movement to the abolition movement, which can be a powerful argument so long as you diminish the role of women in the analogy. The slavery argument assumes there is no right to a choice or a women is never in control of her body, or imply that women must be the slave-holder and her body the plantation, which means that a woman's actions is inherently evil if she does bring the baby to term, even if it does threaten her own health.

Yet, even worse than the incoherence, is the authoritarian mindset in this issue, which when mixed with religious beliefs, leads to political assassinations.

One of my old office mates believed that there would be a time that the violence in the culture wars would increase. I still have my doubts that this will be the case but we will know when the media coverage of this case decreases.

solon said...

Over at Andrew Sullivan, Sully posts a clip about the analogy between Tiller and Theo van Gogh. It is interesting but it will never get the same amount of discussion as the abortion/ abolition analogy will.

harrogate said...

You are right that the television and print media will not give it the same discussion, even though it is a much more accurate analogy.

But Harrogate's process of newfound respect for Little Green Footballs continues, in noting that this site--in tandem with many (but not all) of its commenters--has been aggressively pointing out the affinities between between abortion-related violence (as well as the implicit racial and ideological supremacist proclivities displayed by the Paulians and the teabaggers) and the violent tactics of radical Muslims.

harrogate said...

Harrogate wants to add here, too, the importance of disabusing one of the great myths of the last eight or so years that the Right as well as many media heads have propogated:

Namely, that liberals and or opponents of Bush's foreign policy have a relativistic attitude towards Muslim theocratic cultures. There are undoubtedly some out there who say oh, if the Saudis wanna stone women to death for having sex out of wedlock, that's their culture, who are we to judge. Or who argue that we must not pretend cultural superiority to the Iranians. Etc.

But the VAST majority of us on the Left side of the American line always were closer to the Bill Maher view: that the "Muslim world" teems with gross injustice. And that we need MORE distinctio from them, socially and culturally.

Debra J.M. Smith said...

Obama said, "However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence." --If Obama only cared that much about the countless babies who died at the hands of that abortionist...

A family member said, "Today we mourn the loss of our husband, father and grandfather. Today's event is an unspeakable tragedy for all of us and for George's friends and patients. This is particularly heart wrenching because George was shot down in his house of worship, a place of peace." Wow, how about the wombs that all of those babies were in? The womb is supposed to be a safe place of peace for a baby. But that monster would intrude and kill each one of them, with no remorse.

And I do not feel sorry for a family who loved a murderer. And I sure do NOT feel sorry for a church that had no problem allowing a murderer to attend.

Debra J.M. Smith
of
www.InformingChristians.com

harrogate said...

Oh, look. Even our humble blog attracts terrorist sympathizers now.

solon said...

Debra,

Thanks for the post. I hope that you express your outrage about the loss of innocent life in many other cases though, when you start your comment with a criticism of one of President Obama's speech, I do not think you do.(Is he still not your president based on a few quotations in Romans?) I am sure that you are unlike other pro-lifers, who believe that life starts at conception, a view that does not understand carry any understanding of the reproductive process; or, somehow, that life seems to mysteriously end at birth, hence never the need to provide any services to women or families that would need them.

I am also sure that you are on the front lines for other life issues, such as the death penalty or the unjust war in Iraq. There is a very healthy theological perspective for the just war theory though, based on your web site, theology seems to be just a literal interpretation of the Bible mixed in with far-right political discourse. Mixing politics in religion is quite dangerous but to grasp that would mean you would need to understand history.

It is ironic, in a way, that a president can violate the constitution, lie to the American public to start a war in which millions of innocent civilians have died, and yet that man is your president. Others who attempt to end the killing of innocents and an unjust war are not.

I am also sure, with your moral certainty, that you follow all of the rules of the Bible and not just the ones you believe in politically. Maybe it has just taken you more time to post articles that condemn people for working on the Sabbath, wearing clothing made from different fabric, or eating shellfish.

Good luck with those articles.