Betty: “You [Bruce] appear to want to say Let’s cut through all the B.S. and simply say that both men deserve(d) the electric chair”
Bruce: “Betty, I have clearly said that I supported the electric chair for Tiller, if our laws were just, and that I wouldn’t convict on 1st degree murder for Roeder, as I believe that his religious duties led him to a place that society was not willing to take up for him - and should have. I still believe however, that he made the wrong choice.”
Betty: Well, Duh!!!!”He made the wrong choice.” Are you under any illusion that I disagree with that assessment?
Bruce: Duh, what? We pro-lifers are all trying to makes sense of it - so what sense of ‘duh’ is there in that? Quite a few people in this discussion are saying something like “I don’t support or condone what Roeder did, but I’m glad he did it...and/or Tiller had it coming to him.” IMHO, those people really *do* condone Roeder’s vigilantism, even if they wouldn’t be a vigilante themselves.
People can’t have it both ways - either Roeder’s action was morally wrong or morally right for the pro-life movement. I maintain Roeder was morally wrong - however tortured his own morals and feelings may have been. I also maintain, that on balance, what he and the other vigilantes did harms the pro-life movement more than helps in the long term, especially if others copycat him - justify more violence/murder in the name of Life.
Not only would it be best (IMHO) for you to “lose” the “T-word”; but I think it ill-advised to use the “V-word.”
Actually in the case of late term abortions, I do not believe that to be true. Tiller's death was a targeted assassination of a man who was illegally performing late term abortions.
If anything this incident will bring a lot of attention to the practice of late term abortions and the fact of the matter is that anyone who actually sees the remains of a late term aborted baby cannot pretend in their mind that this was not the premeditated murder of a live baby.
Americans hate baby killers and by and large I suspect that Americans secretly admire people who kill baby killers. I think that this incident will bring a lot of attention to the horrors of what Tiller was doing in Wichita with the tacit approval of the State of Kansas (which had laws specifically protecting the lives of viable babies in the womb). Since the state had abrogated it's lawful duty to stop Tiller from performing illegal abortions and killing viable infants, I believe this justifies "taking the law into your own hands."
What had happened in Kansas was that the laws protected the unborn, but the people in charge of enforcing those laws had deliberately looked the other way (mostly because Tiller had been greasing the palms of those charged with executing the laws that Tiller so brazenly had violated.
I think it is wrong to call Roeder a "Terrorist" (the "T" word).
Roeder was not a terrorist, he was an assassin. There is a monumental difference. What he did was not a terrorist act, it was an assassination. No collateral damage was anticipated or intended and none occurred. The purpose was not to terrorize anyone. It would appear that it was to end a practice that the Governor of the State of Kansas had categorically refused to end.
Frankly Kathleen Sebelius bears most of the responsibility for this incident. She took blood money from Tiller in exchange for giving him freedom from prosecution for illegally killing viable human fetuses.
Ultimately when the government fails in its duty to enforce the law or to secure the blessings of liberty to our posterity, then the people have a right and a duty to "Take the law into their own hands".
The more I think about this case, the more I find myself having a lot of sympathy for Roeder.