Apparently that is all that matters.
We can't "take the law into our own hands" even to save condemned children who are destined to be murdered before our eyes (or behind clinic walls).
As long as it is "legal" to perform abortions, then I guess it is both legally and "morally wrong" to take any kind of "illegal" step to prevent the murder of any specific child.
Instead we hold candlelight vigils at night while during the daytime abortionists are executing our posterity with inmpugnity.
I give up.
Nobody really believes it is "murder" so why should I bother fighting against it?
When someone takes a drastic step and actually does prevent a few actual and specific murders we are all on board condemning him for breaking "the law".
To Hell with it. If nobody really believes it is "murder" except in some esoteric moral sense, then who am I to condemn the abortionist. He's making money by legal means. That is what capitalism is all about.
Instead of calling it "murder", let's just call it what it is "CAPITALISM".
Although what Mr. Tiller was doing was murder in the moral sense, in the legal sense, you’re correct.
P-M: Apparently that is all that matters.
++++++++++++++
It does matter morally. Absolutely and always. Christianity did not overtake Rome in a day. It was not taken by force. Morality and Truth and God’s heart in the matter, do matter.
Nobody really believes it is “murder” so why should I bother fighting against it?
When someone takes a drastic step and actually does prevent a few actual and specific murders we are all on board condemning him for breaking “the law”.
+++++++++++++++++
There are SO many drastic steps (and otherwise) we can say and do, other than assassinating abortionists.
If we’d all get together and do them, we’d stop abortion and the death cultists in their tracks.
Why aren’t we doing all we can?
Why aren’t we doing what is within our reach to do?
Many are and will continue. We need to band together and not lose heart in this struggle.
Read about the Romanian Christians against Ceausescu - that will inspire you about how things can change.
“’Although what Mr. Tiller was doing was murder in the moral sense, in the legal sense, you're correct.’
“Apparently that is all that matters.”
No, it's not ALL that matters, but it sure as heck is a very important part of the question. Christians are instructed to obey the laws of the land. I don't remember that the Church's reaction to the Romans legally handing Christians over to torture and death was to kill individuals who actually performed the moral crimes. Killing persons who commit murder with legal impunity isn't the only option (and often may not be a moral choice) for the Christian, as testified by two thousand years of history.
“As long as it is ‘legal’ to perform abortions, then I guess it is both legally and ‘morally wrong’ to take any kind of ‘illegal’ step to prevent the murder of any specific child.”
You may guess that it is morally wrong, and others have so argued.
I haven't argued that it is morally wrong, at least not intrinsically. The question of the morality of killing baby murderers isn't as straightforward in my own mind. I can't say, “It's against the law, it's legally ‘murder’ and thus, it's immoral.”
I may come to the same conclusion, that it's morally wrong, but perhaps for different reasons, and for more contingent reasons.
For instance, it appears to me to be an act of futility, or even a severely counterproductive act.
If I really believed that killing an abortionist would actually reduce the number of dead babies in the long term, I might then say it would be a moral act to do so (there are other moral obstacles, but at least this one would be overcome, that the act of killing the abortionist might actually INCREASE the number of dead babies). But to the best of my judgment, I think that it will delay the end of legal abortion on demand in our country, and thus will ultimately lead to more dead babies.
I can't countenance such an action as objectively moral under those circumstances.
“Instead we hold candlelight vigils at night while during the daytime abortionists are executing our posterity with inmpugnity.”
First, a lot of folks actually get out there in the daylight and try to persuade women, one person at a time, to change their hearts and minds, and not procure the killing of their baby. You have thus far ignored these folks in our conversation, but I suspect that person for person, they save more babies than Mr. Roeder. But I acknowledge that it isn't as emotionally satisfying as exterminating a baby murderer.
But beyond that, part of the issue is whose posterity is being executed. Mine isn't. In your analogy as to what would one do if one’s daughter were about to be murdered, the failure occurs because, well, it's not my daughter. My daughter, or son, are not being threatened with government-permitted death. What I might do where my own children are immediately threatened with death might differ from what I might do to protect from death some folks whom I don't know.
It doesn't mean I don't think that their murders are actually murder, it just means that I'm a limited human being who must make choices as to how to spend my life.
Christians are murdered with impunity in places like Pakistan, Sudan, Iran and other places. Ever heard of Darfur? They are really and truly murdered. I am fully persuaded that they are murdered. And I think, so are you. So, how many government soldiers in Darfur did you kill? So why aren't you on the next plane to one of these countries to kill at least one murderer to prevent him from murdering again? Don't you believe that they are truly being murdered?
“Nobody really believes it is ‘murder’ so why should I bother fighting against it?”
What folks find hard to believe, or at least take seriously, are the arguments you present, full of logical holes and fallacies. You elide over a lot of the complications inherent in the question. To seize the moral high ground, you wave them away as if they were but quibbles. You equate moral complexity with casuistry or jesuitism.
You're wrong to do so.
The fact of the legality of the act of unborn baby-murder greatly complicates the question of what should we do in return. I've tried to lay out a little bit of what's involved, but it seems to frustrate you, and you then wave it away as if it wouldn't really matter if we really did believe that abortion is murder. But the issues involved DO matter. A lot. Even though we know that abortion is murder.
I understand the frustration, the anger, even the sense of bitterness that I feel because I am so limited in my capacity to act to change the fact that several thousand babies are murdered each day in our country. There is very little that I can do about it on my own, alone by myself, that is truly effective, and that frustrates and angers me, especially because I'm an intelligent, capable person, and ordinarily I'm able to do lots of good stuff on my own.
But it isn't moral reasoning, it isn't a moral act to sweep away all the complexities of killing someone to prevent them from performing a legal act, and act from my anger, frustration and bitterness.
“To Hell with it. If nobody really believes it is ‘murder’ except in some esoteric moral sense, then who am I to condemn the abortionist. He's making money by legal means. That is what capitalism is all about.”
Many folks really believe that what the abortionist does to the unborn child is murder. The moral sense in which it is just that, murder, is not esoteric. But currently, that moral sense is not vindicated in law. Which is why we continue to try to change the laws.
But we accept the frustration, the anger that come our way by having to hold two true things at the same time: abortion IS murder; yet, generally, we should not slay the perpetrators of the crime.
sitetest
With a single vote of 5 people at the USSC it could flip in a second and abortion would still be IMMORAL but we could begin executing its practioners.
The whole business depends on who controls the organs of state.
You do understand that, right? And the same executioner who injected Mr. Hill would now inject the nurse he shot who survived.
BTW, the situation is, to say the least, "madness" and it will bring down the nation.