William Saletan at Slate attempts to use the Army of God’s website statement against pro-life logic. The Army of God defends the killing of killers with the following 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.”Saletan asks pro-lifers, “If preborn babies have the same value as born babies, why not kill their killer?” He denounces the pro-life claim to respect all life as irrational, based on this argument; pro-lifers don't really value pre-borns, or they would kill all abortionists.
Saletan presents the following false dichotomy: If old people were being killed would pro-lifers stand by, or would they kill the killer? Saletin claims they would intervene and kill the killer. Why does he say this? Is it based on his knowledge of any similar events? Is there empirical evidence to support this?
This statement is presented by Saletan as a sort of proof of the spinelessness and irrationality of the pro-life position. In fact, the two situations are in no way similar, unless they are placed in the identical context, which Saletan does not do.
Let’s assume that the old people are being killed under a government law protecting the killer. It is a constitutional “privacy” issue of course, between the children of the old people and their doctor: it's nobody else’s business, legally under the New Interpretation of the Constitution, and morally under the New Relativist Morality. If anyone interferes, it is a hate crime punishable in the harshest available fashion, as befits all hate crimes in the view of the New Relativist Morality.
The pro-old-life groups would form, protest, and be immediately denigrated as uncaring, reactionary, obstructionist, absolutists. And if a loony did actually kill the old-people killer, the pro-old-life groups would immediately be tarred as terrorist-murdering-loonies also. Their pro-old-life groups would lose legitimacy in the eyes of the fully Relativist populace. The killing of old people would keep on going. After all, it's constitutional and nobody's business.
The dichotomy is a false one, a Black and White fallacy. There are other choices and more importantly, other moralities than Saletan comprehends.
Saletan is unable to detect any moral issues in the killing of even the fully formed, full term babies. For him it is measured in distaste, in units of disgust that he claims to feel but is fully able to choke back. Morality is not an issue for Saletan or the New Morality. The New Morality is merely pagan decision-making based on the convenience or inconvenience to oneself. Everyone decides for himself if it is moral (convenient/inconvenient) or not; but it is definitely immoral to interfere in anyone else’s decisions, a sort of anarchy by mutual consent.
Saletan does interfere, however, through his program to reunite the two sides of the abortion issue. His solution is for the Pro-death Left to give up being quite so nasty, and for the Pro-life Right to give up their morals. This is quite reasonable to him; morals are disposable and inessential, usually hindrances to “getting along” in the Relativist world. So for Saletan, it is really just Tolerance that is absolutely needed, and well, that would be the one universal moral: to tolerate anything and everything in order to just get along together, one big happy anarchy. (Failure to Tolerate is, of course, a hate crime).
Saletan's thoughts are just another relativist apologia for the abortion industry, this time from the sub-moral, universal tolerance, relativism camp.
6 comments:
If I can play devil's advocate for just a minute, consider this situation:
You see an old person in front of you about to be killed. Wouldn't you be justified in doing whatever you could to stop the killing, including using lethal force? I mean, if someone had a knife or gun to old person X's throat. This is one argument I've heard as a pushback to what you've offered. I'm just wondering what your thoughts are.
Huggums, Thanks for your comment.
The direct analog of that would be seeing a pregnant woman about to be aborted - against her will - in front of me.
Both cases warrant forcible intervention.
But that's not the case with abortion in todays clinics, which is voluntary (supposedly), legal, and considered moral by the relativist populace.
Intervening in a murder would also be considered legal and moral, and would be considered heroism.
Intervening in a clinical abortion is criminal, punishable, and immoral in todays cultural climate.
Analogies rarely work, especially when they are false dichotomies, and supposedly the only two moral choices. It is important to frame the two issues being presented in completely equal contexts, or to reject them as logical fallacies, which they are.
OK. One more thing. Since, the one being murdered is a baby, does the mother's will matter at all. What if mom willingly offers her child to be killed and someone's about to do it in front of you? I think I can probably anticipate your response. This helped a lot. Thanks.
Also, if you know the killer's intentions (abortionist walking into abortionist clinic to do the macarena...and abortions) and you're protesting outside the building, wouldn't you be justified in at least stopping him? More devil's advocate here. I'm just trying to shore up my defense. And please excuse the humor.
Western culture and Judeo-Christianity do not require an observer to halt acts of immorality. Immorality is seen as between the actor and the Deity. We do not kill infidels or force them to pray. We do legislate against harm to others, except now in the case of abortion, where the unborn babies are declared non-human, non-sentient or at least feeling no pain.
The pragmatic requirement for the individual, it seems to me, is to fight for legislation for the greater good. The moral harm is done by the actor, not the bystander. If a bystander becomes involved as an actor, he risks doing harm as well as good, because the outcome is not certain when he makes that decision.
If a person does not jump into a river to save a drowning person, we might consider that to be a character weakness, perhaps cowardice or fearfulness, but not necessarily immoral. Being a good Samaritan would entail good works, but not moral requirements.
There might be other mitigating factors that might change my perspective. For example, a father attempting to save his unborn baby. In this case the father is not a casual observer, though, and is an actor himself.
A grief stricken father who lost an unborn child to an abortion still is not justified in more action than fighting for legislation for the greater good.
Alrighty then.
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