Few things floor me more completely than violence in the name of religion. Seriously, what the living fuck? I understand there’s no line that separates passion from passionate hatred, but it never fails to astound me how self-aggrandizing, how willfully stupid, how hopeless you have to become to think this is a good idea.
Operation Rescue, who organized highly public protests outside Dr. Tiller’s clinic, is falling over themselves trying to get away from Scott P. Roeder. So is Phill Kline, who himself had been bearing down on Dr. Tiller since 2003. Yet any other day, they pee in a circle around their One True God, and still manage to sleep at night.
I’m looking for a guiding principle here. Not so much an authority to appeal to, lest the potential for abuse become overwhelming, but a workable way of talking people like this down. If that principle is equal justice for all, then he has his day in court for premeditated murder. If that principle is tolerating difference, or intellectual honesty, or conversation and investigation, then we figure out how to make these real in the face of seemingly intractable differences. If it’s the rule of law I want, then, well, you get the idea.
Tags: Kansas · Taliban Wannabe · Tiller4 Comments
4 responses so far ↓
Part of what’s so fucked up about how we describe the source of authority is this culture is that we think the basic unit of meaning is the individual. If it is, then someone’s inherent right to say “kill George Tiller” falls under freedom of speech (as does, say, creating images of women being murdered and passing it off as “erotic”). But if we think of the source of meaning as a community, or a collective of some kind, the inherent right of an individual to do anything he/she wants stops making sense.
And yeah, yeah, I know — the problems with communal mindset have been frighteningly well-illustrated in history, too.
This I know — any religion that claims to have The Only real path to truth/salvation/what everyone can eat for lunch is inherently a problem. And when that kind of religion becomes the source of authority, well, doctors get murdered at church, and Shia courts order women to be raped as punishment, and insane fundamentalist Jews stone children in Hebron.
Good points, Elliott. You don’t see many people slamming planes into buildings in the name of Collective Unity. Notwithstanding the Khmer Rouge. Or Stalinist Russia. Or any number of Chinese…okay, never mind. The point is, if your stance emphasizes individual rights above all, you have to give equal emotional energy to emphasizing individual responsibilities.
No matter what atrocities have been committed in the name of un-religion, and I will admit, as with your list, there are some doozies, I can’t help but think that through the course of history, much, much more is committed in the name of, or at best justified by whatever god is in vogue at the particular time, from “Great Bear God say we must kill all big brow men.” to “Kill Tiller”. What better excuse can one have for anything than “God told me to.”, which I would add “My insane delusion of God told me to.” to.
I can’t help it, Wil, I just expect more from my fellow earthlings. It doesn’t matter who’s more deranged; someone has to say “enough, already.”