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To: LearsFool
I never claimed he was justified - only that a jury could and, in my opinion, should find him not guilty.

Fair enough.

Roeder was justified in killing Tiller because as a Christian, Roeder believed that abortion is the taking of a human life and that by killing Tiller he would prevent Tiller from killing additional babies.

Okay, how about this one:

Kumar is a Hindu and believes as his religion teaches that cows are sacred and should never be killed.

Kumar discovers that name and location of the church where the man who runs the local slaughterhouse attends. Kumar, being very adherent to his religion walks into that church and shoots the man who runs the local slaughterhouse, so that he will not kill any more cows.

At his trial, Kumar's attorney argues that his client was justified in shooting the slaughterhouse guy so that he would never kill again.

Now remember, under our Constitution, Christianity, Hinduism and all religions have equal protection and the people are free to practice either religion.

If you are going to find Roeder not guilty, won't you also have to find Kumar not guilty?

415 posted on 01/31/2010 8:52:17 PM PST by trumandogz (The Democrats are driving us to Socialism at 100 MPH -The GOP is driving us to Socialism at 97.5 MPH)
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To: trumandogz
Roeder was justified in killing Tiller because...

Those are your words, not mine. Again, I never claimed he was justified.

As I've argued earlier, Roe was a seed of anarchy. It permits some murders while others are prohibited. It protects some murderers while others go to prison. It prohibits the prosecution of one killer, while another is tried and sentenced. If a jury had refused to convict Roeder for killing a protected murderer, that would've signalled that (at least some) Americans refuse to tolerate this injustice, that if the law won't protect our children from murderers, we'll do it ourselves.

This is not about religious beliefs. It's about the whole reason for the existence of governments and laws. When a government becomes so corrupt that it permits - and even promotes - the murder of a certain class of people, after defining them as non-persons, it has abdicated its fundamental duty, and with it, all rightful authority to judge those who take up that duty. The duty rightly devolves again to the people - who gave the government its authority in the first place.

Such a situation is, of course, anarchy. That's what you can expect when unjust laws made without their consent push the people past their breaking point.

Kumar is a Hindu and believes as his religion teaches that...

Right and wrong are not dictated by one's beliefs. Rather, one's beliefs must be dictated by right and wrong. Slaughtering a cow is not murder, but slaughtering a baby is. Since this is true, Hindus ought to square their religion with it.

Now it's very convenient to shrug off the murder of a baby by saying, "Oh, that's just your religion talking." But it won't do. Life is life, and murder is murder.

While some religions (i.e. humanism) may encourage the murder of unwanted babies, this aspect of their religion is given no more protection by the Constitution than Mormon polygamy or Muslim mass murder. In other words, you're free to practice your religion...right up to the point at which it conflicts with our civil society.

If Roeder was justified in his killing of Tiller, it wasn't on the grounds of religious freedom. If he was justified, it was on the grounds that, since the law has been corrupted and perverted into a protection for murderers, its authority is abdicated and its edicts null and void, and that therefore the people must take back from government the authority they delegated to it, and do themselves the job the law is no longer capable of doing.

We the people might say, in other words, "We ourselves will judge whether Tiller was guilty and deserving of death, and whether Roeder acted on our behalf and with our authority."
418 posted on 02/01/2010 6:47:21 AM PST by LearsFool ("Thou shouldst not have been old, till thou hadst been wise.")
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