Monday, January 11, 2010

Pandora, meet the hounds of hell


The world has gone mad.

What else can it be when whack jobs decide to use death as a weapon against the "Culture of Death," and when a Kansas state judge says the whack job can argue that killing Dr. George Tiller wasn't first-degree murder because the whack job really and truly thought he was saving babies?

Uh huh. And I really and truly think I'm the queen of France.

And I really and truly think I can go around
saying "let them eat cake," and there will be no consequences -- like revolution and the "Reign of Terror."


IF THE KANSAS JUDGE really and truly thinks stretching criminal law to include an almost-justifiable homicide defense won't -- in one respect or another -- unleash the hounds of hell, then we're all about to have another think coming. The story so far, via The Associated Press:
On a balmy Sunday morning, Scott Roeder got up from a pew at Reformation Lutheran Church at the start of services and walked to the foyer, where two ushers were chatting around a table. Wordlessly, he pressed the barrel of a .22-caliber handgun to the forehead of Dr. George Tiller, one of the ushers, and pulled the trigger.

As his premeditated, first-degree murder trial begins Wednesday, no one — not even Roeder himself — disputes that he killed one of the nation's few late-term abortion providers.

But what had been expected to be an open-and-shut murder trial was upended Friday when a judge decided to let Roeder argue he should be convicted of voluntary manslaughter because he believed the May 31 slaying would save unborn children. Suddenly, the case has taken on a new significance that has galvanized both sides of the nation's abortion debate.

Prosecutors on Monday challenged the ruling, arguing that such a defense is not appropriately considered with premeditated first-degree murder when there is no evidence of an imminent attack at the time of the killing, and jury selection was delayed. A hearing was scheduled for Tuesday afternoon to give the defense time to respond.

"The State encourages this Court to not be the first to enable a defendant to justify premeditated murder because of an emotionally charged political belief," the prosecution wrote. "Such a ruling has far reaching consequences and would be contrary to Kansas law."


(snip)

A man who runs a Web site supporting violence against abortion providers said in the wake of the judge's decision that he has changed his mind about attending Roeder's trial.

The Rev. Don Spitz of Chesapeake, Va., said he and other activists from the Army of God plan to observe the court proceedings quietly next week.

"I am flabbergasted, but in a good way," Spitz said of the judge's decision.

Spitz acknowledged that the possibility of a voluntary manslaughter defense may influence some people who in the past wouldn't kill abortion providers because of the prospect of a sentence of death or life imprisonment. "It may increase the number of people who may be willing to take that risk," he said.
NOTE TO JUDGE: If the Army of God is happy, you should be afraid . . . very afraid.

I have heard others use the "justifiable homicide/defense of the innocent" argument, and it is nothing more than fallen angels dancing on the head of a semantic pin. And when all is said and done -- when the philosophy of nuts like Scott Roeder, the Army of God and its abortionist-killing acolyte
Paul Hill escapes the fever swamps and the body count starts to rise -- you won't have legions of undead babies, a redeemed culture or anything approaching divine justice.

All you'll have is more and more death.

All you'll have is a discredited pro-life movement.

All you'll have is a divided country several steps closer to a homegrown Bosnia.

NO MATTER how "justified" the use of extralegal lethal force to stop legalized lethal force, what people like Roeder really have done is declare war. And justifying something as horrific as war is a tall order. Civilization demands no less, as does the God in Whose name these demons claim to commit murder.

It's called
"just war doctrine," and I think you can apply it here as well as you can to Iraq and Afghanistan. From the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:

the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;

all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;

there must be serious prospects of success;

the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition
.

These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the "just war" doctrine.

The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.

ON WHAT PLANET does assassinating abortionists meet any of these strict benchmarks for just violence? In whose reality does the common application of "justifiable homicide" as a "cure" for abortion lead to anything but an American bloodbath -- one which not only wouldn't spare the unborn but absolutely would consume untold legions of the already-born?

We live in a land of madness in a world of madness. And some who call themselves enemies of that madness just might be the maddest of all.

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