Posted on 09/05/2006 4:23:20 PM PDT by wagglebee
HIGHLAND HEIGHTS, September 5, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – In May this year, a group of pro-life students at Northern Kentucky University (NKU) set up a display of white crosses to memorialize those children killed in the US by abortion. Such displays are popular with student groups as an affordable means of emphasizing the loss of life brought about by abortion, and are often vandalized by abortion supporters.
True to form, a feminist professor incited a group of students to destroy the Northern Kentucky University display and its accompanying sign. Unlike Canada, however, the story at NKU has a happy ending for the pro-life advocates. The professor, Sally Jacobsen, was removed from her position as head of the women’s studies program and briefly faced charges of solicitation, criminal mischief and theft by unlawful taking.
The students she led have, as a condition of having criminal mischief charges dropped, agreed to write letters of apology to the campus pro-life group, Northern Kentucky Right to Life (NKRL). The letters were to be published in the Northerner, NKU's campus newspaper. Three letters have been published so far. One was a straightforward apology as per the court agreement.
A public apology, however, was apparently too tempting a venue for the other two campus abortion activists, especially Michelle Lynn Cruey, to resist. While one paragraph contains a clear apology – though not for having committed the act – the rest of Cruey's letter is an undisguised reprimand to the pro-life group for having dared to make a statement against abortion.
Cruey wrote, “I am regretful and sorry for any discomforting emotions my actions may have aroused.”
She goes on to lecture the pro-life group saying, “I did not only feel remorse and sorrow for those unborn, but pain and sympathy for the mothers who for whatever reason felt as though they had no other choice but to use this practice. I also felt anger that religion, my own forgiving faith, appeared to be persecuting these women instead of offering refuge. Surprisingly, I discovered I was not alone in my disapproval.”
Cruey ends her letter with, “Our religious views and salvation are not tools to condemn and turn our backs, but are tools to help love and lead by our own understanding and forgiveness."
The letter by student Heather Nelson is also more of a justification for her actions. She does eventually end her letter with, 'I again apologize to those who were offended or hurt by my actions."
See the three letters
http://www.thenortherner.com/media/storage/paper527/news/200...
Read related LifeSiteNews.com coverage:
Kentucky Literature Prof Removed for Vandalizing Pro-life Display
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/apr/06041804.html
Charges Dismissed Against Kentucky Prof Who Vandalised Pro-Life Display
http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/jun/06062906.html
This barfy non-apology sounds like it came from a sermon in an Episcopal church.
Forced apologies are always worthless.
Then somebody needs to snatch her bald-headed.
NKU is a relatively conservative campus, as these things go. This woman's actions were, for the most part, unwelcome by the faculty and students alike. Her faux-pology only adds to her discredit. Good riddence.
I am regretful and sorry for any discomforting emotions my actions may have aroused.”
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Notice, she is not sorry for her actions.
She is merely sorry that others feel bad about it. So...the action is OK, it is too bad that they feel "discomforting emotions".
Oh brother! ( sigh!)
That's a fair sentiment, that a forced apology demonstrates power, and that even if the words are insincere, the lesson of the demonstrated power is real enough.
But there's still a problem with it, and it is highlighted by what these girls did. Their apology is a glancing non-apology. Forced to apologize, they used the "apology" to, in effect, make the people they were apologizing to look small. Trouble is, the ones being apologized too will look even smaller if they come out and start complaining that the apology wasn't "sincere". (Well no sh-t, it's not sincere! It's a forced apology. Forced apologies are by definition insincere!)
So, what then? Do judges spend their time parsing the words of carefully written apologies to decide if they were provocative ENOUGH to not count as apologies? Or do they just throw up their hands in disgust and say "You GOT your apology, now don't bother me again!"
The latter, of course.
The better answer is to not offer apology as a route, but just nail people to a cross every time. Only if they spontaneously come forth with a sincere apology that convinces the accusers might the accuser then drop the charges. This leaves the power to accept the apology or not in the hands of the wronged party. The LAW should just hammer away, unless the private parties decide to settle and pull the things away from the law.
As it is, the forced apology here made a mockery of the ones being apologized to, but was carefully enough worded to make them look ridiculous if they complain about it.
Don't force apologies. Punish.
Why isn't this considered a 'hate crime' or 'hate speech'? Why isn't this a crime of political intolerance or religious intolerance?
These people are not only radical. . .they are the worst of 'fundamental'; extreme and intolerant.
Save for their focus and degrees of MO; they are no different than the radical Islamists who deny any tolerance to another's version of reality.
I hate fake apologies.
Exactly. "YOU have the problem, not me."
Yeh.
Her "apology" boils down to: Take a Midol.
Good summary!
My kids do this type of "apology" all the time: "I'm sorry Pat got upset when I knocked him down and took his truck away."
Anyone over age 6 should grow up, already!
Take the criminal mischief charges if you believe your cause and actions were correct. This happens far too often. I knew somebody who went to a protest (that did not have a permit) in DC with her son, but when it came time for the police to round them up, they said that they were just walking down the street.
Well, that's one approach.
I have a different view.
When I know that what I believe is correct, and that I have done the right thing, my attitude is such that nobody has the RIGHT to punish me for doing the right thing. Accordingly, I do not view the person with the authority to punish as having LEGITIMATE authority in such a case. Simply cooperating with authority and letting it punish me is letting the bad guys inflict pain on me that I don't think they have the right to inflict in the first place.
Of course, therefore, I do not feel obliged to cooperate with their oppression of me, for instance by telling them the truth. If what I am doing is right, but somebody is going to punish me anyway, I assert my sovereign right to defeat them by lying to them. That too is part of resistance.
Fortunately this doesn't come up very often.
"Of course, therefore, I do not feel obliged to cooperate with their oppression of me, for instance by telling them the truth. If what I am doing is right, but somebody is going to punish me anyway, I assert my sovereign right to defeat them by lying to them. That too is part of resistance. "
So adding something that's actually wrong to a perceived wrong still keeps you in the right? It sounds like you would be all right with terrorism as long as the cause was just. Despite the fact that most worthwhile change is accomplished by nonviolent resistance - "within the system." If you strike out against injustice, but then drop to your knees when they catch you, nobody will respect you and you will have accomplished nothing.
"It sounds like you would be all right with terrorism as long as the cause was just. Despite the fact that most worthwhile change is accomplished by nonviolent resistance -'within the system.' If you strike out against injustice, but then drop to your knees when they catch you, nobody will respect you and you will have accomplished nothing."
Terrorism as long as the cause is just?
Well, sure.
That's what the atomic strikes on Japan and the firebombing of Germany were: terrorism. Effective terrorism: they brought the enemy to his knees and saved lives. I am for winning, with as few casualties to my own people as possible. That means terrorism. The American Indians were defeated through terrorism: destroy their food supplies, destroy their farms, harry them through the winter. The political will of the people of the Deep South was destroyed by Sherman's March to the Sea, an act of pure, intentional terrorism on a grand scale. Terrorism works. Obviously if the enemy uses it, that's evil, because the enemy is evil. Once I am at war with him, though, anything that it takes to destroy him is fair game. Terrorism is how the will of populations to fight is broken.
Most worthwhile change is brought about by non-violent resistance? The Continental Army, the Union Army and the 101st Airborne all beg to differ. All of the important fundamental changes in the human order have been wrought by massive violence and upheaval. People do not surrender power willingly. To change things for the better, such as ending slavery, or ending foreign rule, requires massive violence and bloodshed. You have to kill the existing rulers, because they never cede power willingly, at least not on anything important.
If you strike out against injustice, and the injustice is evil enough, you lie to live and fight another day. Respected? The Resistance movements across Europe, both against the Nazis and against the Soviet Empire, lied through their teeth every day. The CIA operatives in foreign lands lie through their teeth. Respected? Yes, they are respected, at least by anybody who has his head screwed on straight.
Truth is, there is very little in the way of practical injustice that is really worth killing over in America today. Which is why I say that it is fortunate that the issue so rarely comes up. The sort of things protestors in the US are out there protesting about, things like necessary foreign wars, or wanting people to stop wearing fur, is silly crap. Of course those folks need to have a boot put on their neck if they lapse into violence. But then, we in the majority are the rulers, and rulers never voluntarily cede their power. Of course the protestors who are overwrought about silly shit will apply the usual rules of warfare against evil and oppression...they think that we meat-eating Americans are the evil ones. Of course they lie. The difference is that they are the maggotry, doing stupid things in the service of stupid causes. The causes I get angry about - real oppression - are the sort of things worth killing over. The maggotry are not willing to kill, and their form of peaceful disturbance will never change anything, because we all know we can disregard them, and do.
Um, no. First of all, the civil war was not about slavery, the Emancipation Proclamation was just another tool of war for Lincoln. Europe ended slavery without bloodshed and did it prior to us. The half a million dead soldiers in a pointless war never made anyone or anything better.
Europe had a ruling class which was able to simply expropriate people (slaveholders) by fiat. The same ruling class has not lost its hold. In the 20th Century, in the West, they have systematically expropriated people of the better part of their property and wages, always by fiat.
In America, slavery couldn't be ended without bloodshed. Neither side was going to back down. The Civil War was absolutely about slavery. Had there been no slavery, there wouldn't have been a civil war. What ELSE was motivating Americans on both sides of the line to be SO fanatically absolutist in their politics? Not tarriffs. Not anything. Slavery was the indigestible lump that tore the nation apart.
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