A Kind of Terrorism that Works
George Tiller, the Wichita doctor who became a national lightning rod in the debate over abortion, was shot to death this morning as he walked into church services.
Tiller, 67, was shot just after 10 a.m. at Reformation Lutheran Church at 7601 E. 13th, where he was a member of the congregation. Witnesses and a police source confirmed Tiller was the victim.
Random murder of civilians in order to coerce political concessions doesn’t have a great track-record. But direct action terrorist violence against abortion providers has, I think, proven to be a fairly successful tactic. Every time you murder a doctor, you create a disincentive for other medical professionals to provide these services. What’s more, you create a need for additional security at facilities around the country. In addition, the anti-abortion protestors who frequently gather near clinics are made to seem much more intimidating by the fact that the occurrence of these sorts of acts of violence.
In general, I think people tend to overestimate the efficacy of violence as a political tactic. But in this particular case, I think people tend to understate it.
173 Responses to “A Kind of Terrorism that Works”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
May 31st, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Expect a lot of loose talk about John Brown for the next week or so….
May 31st, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Of course you don’t mention that the likely suspect is “pro-life”, not to mention Tiller was killed on church grounds. Let that one sink in a little bit. I haven’t heard anything about suspects or an arrest though. I doubt this was just a random act of violence. It is likely pre-meditated.
May 31st, 2009 at 1:36 pm
Okay, you’ve persuaded me. From now on, no more random killings, only targeted assassinations. It’s only practical.
May 31st, 2009 at 1:38 pm
I wonder if the police are doing any gun residue tests on the hands of all those nice Christians they have quarantined inside of Tiller’s church?
May 31st, 2009 at 1:45 pm
Re Calvin at 2: “I doubt this was just a random act of violence. It is likely pre-meditated.”
———-
From the news report: “Tiller’s clinic was severely vandalized earlier this month. According to the Associated Press, his lawyer said wires to security cameras and outdoor lights were cut and that the vandals also cut through the roof and plugged the buildings’ downspouts. Rain poured through the roof and caused thousands of dollars of damage in the clinic. Tiller reportedly asked the FBI to investigate the incident.”
Hmmm. Shows some expertise –including avoiding triggering the federal action that goes with use of explosives or arson.
Plus taking out the security system.
On the other hand, maybe not:
“Police said they are looking for white male who was driving a 1990s powder blue Ford Taurus with Kansas license plate 225 BAB.”
Be interesting to see if the plate is stolen. Lots of Taurus’s out there — and a green or red Taurus that’s repainted to blue wouldn’t show up on the data base query.
May 31st, 2009 at 1:53 pm
So when the suspect is apprehended, will conservatives applaud waterboarding him in order to find out if he was part of a larger cell that plans to target more doctors?
May 31st, 2009 at 1:58 pm
It’s not really terrorist violence if it’s assumed that the perpetrators are neither Arab nor Muslim.
May 31st, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Tiller was killed on church grounds
Pfffft. It’s not as if Tiller was a real Christian, or if that was even the right church. Or that’s what the mainstream Republicans who defend this terrorism would have themselves believe.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:00 pm
I think it depends on which side of the abortion debate is going to prevail. If you think that it is possible that we as a society will shift in the direction of banning abortions then these terrorist acts probably hurt that long term effort. If on the other hand you think that a moderate pro-choice position is going to win the day then these murders are successful as you suggest.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:01 pm
Hmmm. About 2 miles east and the perp’s on major Rt 96 — two miles south and he’s on Interstate 35. Hard to bag him –especially if the Taurus is stolen, he dumps it, and jumps in a second unknown getaway car.
Might show up on local motel records –unless a local sympathizer provided perp with room and board.
However, I think a pro would have done the hit early in the night at Tiller’s home –to provide hours of escape time –rather than in broad daylight at a church with witnesses.
And no pro would work with these religious nuts other than at arm’s length with cutouts.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:01 pm
We’ll have to wait for a pattern, but we did have more right-wing violence during the Clinton administration.
I don’t know why we have to tolerate a political party that starts shooting when it loses elections.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Mr. Williams,
Clearly, Mr. Tiller himself was a practicing Christian. So maybe you could show some respect and not use the event of his horrible murder to make a bigoted anti-Christian remark.
I don’t think Mr. Tiller, a Lutheran, would want us to blame all Christians for the work of these sick pro-life nut jobs.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:03 pm
Your modern Republican party at work. Lovely.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:04 pm
Within geographical constraints, yes. But keep in mind, this was Wichita, Kansas. An aspiring abortion provider in, say, Seattle has, I suspect, been little affected. The upshot isn’t ‘Wow, I’m not going to perform abortions’, it’s ‘Wow, I’m not going to perform abortion in f*%$ing Kansas‘. And you have de facto abortion law federalism enforced by terrorism.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:08 pm
Who could have predicted…?
May 31st, 2009 at 2:09 pm
A hard rain is coming when a political movement gives such eager approval to acts of violence.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:12 pm
“Of course you don’t mention that the likely suspect is “pro-life””
While it seems likely that the culprit is anti-abortion, I don’t believe there’s any word on that so far.
Mike
May 31st, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Yeah, and the Unabomber did most of his work while Democrats were losing Presidential elections. Tree spiking, resulting in serious injuruies and death to loggers, started after Democrats were losing elections.
Is there anything more stupid than using a tiny sample size of violent acts to form generalizations about dozens of millions of people?
May 31st, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Stupid ass freepers seem to have missed the part where their favorite president stuck a huge tap on the internet and made a federal wayback machine the size of the superdome to keep track of everything they write on the internet. Have fun with the FBI, kids.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:24 pm
10 years since the last political assassination. This is no coincidence.
1:There was a long time when John Brown was a heroic symbol for the left. Progressives defending themselves continued through the IWW and the Detroit Riots and the 60s until the surrender monkeys took over the left and gave the kids very bad attitudes.
Back when the right knew the left would fight back we got child labor laws and civil rights and, well, choice.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:30 pm
Some excerpts from the Free Republic thread re Tiller killing that Neil linked to in 16:
————————–
“When I first read this, part of me wondered if some liberal isn’t secretly behind this to get just the outcome you have listed. I used to not be so paranoid, until this surreal reality replaced what used to be. Interesting the timing of this, as it was recently released that according to polls a majority of Americans are anti-abortion/pro-life. Good way to discredit the movement and those beliefs – assassinate an abortionist.”
———-
“Obama is going to take advantage of this murder to sieze even more control over our society.
I would not even put it past them to commit this murder themselves, as an excuse to sieze power. Reichstag Fire, and all that…”
————
Thou Shalt Not Murder.
But, wasn’t this just another late term abortion(?)
—————
“This will not change hearts.”
It sure changed his.
———————
But he was 3 minutes late for the 10:00 service.
—————–
May 31st, 2009 at 2:32 pm
The unabomber? really
That’s the unabomber, don’t hang that bastard on our neck.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:34 pm
As Ann Friedman notes in her post, this is a good time to make a financial contribution to Medical Students for Choice: http://www.ms4c.org/
May 31st, 2009 at 2:34 pm
The Unabomber was certainly a terrorist, in the use of violence, though, one could question the coherent political goals no matter how many pages he sent, but he wasn’t part of an organized movement frequently advocating the use of deadly violence, i.e., the anti-abortion nut squads.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:35 pm
So, if we followed the Bush/Cheney MO, we would now label all pro-lifers “enemy combatants” and lock them up without trial. Then we’d subject a few to “enhanced interrogation” until they admit their connections to Iran. Because there are no half-measures when it comes to the security of Americans.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:45 pm
“Random murder of civilians in order to coerce political concessions doesn’t have a great track-record”
I’d disagree, terrorism does have a pretty good track record. About as good as traditional warfare does, at least. The IRA got concessions from England. The Zionists got England to move faster on creating Israel. The PLO got a seat at the table. The LTTE controlled a third of Sri Lanka for 15 years. Viet Cong terrorist made our lives miserable enough to get us to leave Vietnam. The Maoists in Nepal got control of the government. Compare that to warfare, where at least half of the warring sides must by definition lose. And in many wars (think Iran-Iraq), both sides lose.
May 31st, 2009 at 2:50 pm
“The Leeebruls done it”
May 31st, 2009 at 3:03 pm
[...] Matt Y. [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 3:06 pm
Rime for Mr. Hector to chime in and give us his slant on the situation.
May 31st, 2009 at 3:07 pm
Ed, my point was one shouldn’t be laying the work of any murderer on another’s neck, unless the evidence warrants it. People who use sample sizes of three or four events, and then draw causal conclusions regarding lagrge political factions comprising millions of people, are morons.
This much we know. There is a murderer loose in Kansas, and the murderer might have had assistance. The comments about the problems with legal assertions made by the Bush/Cheney legal advisors are apt, but let it be noted again that Democrats continually venerate a U.S. President who had a U.S. citizen tried by military tribunal, and then put to death by the electric chair, after he quietly informed the Supreme Court that this U.S. citizen would be executed no matter how the Court ruled on the citizen’s appeal, thus telling the Court that it’s legitimacy would be under attack by a President if the Court ruled for the condemned citizen. The Court got the message, and the citizen did the 50,000 volt jig. There is a monument on The Mall to honor the President.
To be a President is to be a thug, which is not to say that all are equally thuggish. However, probably the only one who had an unimpeded path to greatly expand his ability to force others to submit to his will, and refrained from going down that path, was Washington.
May 31st, 2009 at 3:12 pm
@26 foster: “terrorism does have a pretty good track record.”
I agree.
9/11 is the primary example. Osama bin Laden’s plan -openly and repeatedly stated before 9/11- was to launch a terror strike against the United States in the hope that we would respond by attacking Muslims in Islamic countries.
His goal was to extract so much blood and treasure from the United States that our economy and political will would be crippled from the strain of an endless war fought far from home.
Bin Laden used terror to set a trap, and it worked perfectly.
May 31st, 2009 at 3:17 pm
Al Gore or the Unabomber
May 31st, 2009 at 3:19 pm
According to the NY Times, Dr. Tiller was shot in both arms in 1993 by an “abortion opponent.”
If you set a SUV on fire, you’re an “eco-terrorist,” but if you shoot someone with the intent to kill, you’re just a political opponent (provided you’re a right-wing terrorist, I mean opponent, anyway.)
May 31st, 2009 at 3:29 pm
Likewise everyone who opposed the Iraq war must be responsible for the bombing of an armed forces recruiting station right?
May 31st, 2009 at 3:37 pm
From a Wichita TV News station:
”
BREAKING NEWS
Tiller Shooting Suspect in Custody
Eyewitness News has confirmed the suspect in the shooting of Dr. George Tiller is in custody in the Kansas City area. Wichita police say the man was arrested near Gardner, KS at around 2:00 Sunday afternoon. ”
Ref: http://www.kwch.com/
May 31st, 2009 at 3:39 pm
“Bin Laden used terror to set a trap, and it worked perfectly.”
I forgot about that one. But I’d add two more things that bin Laden wanted. He wanted Saddam removed from power, which we did. He also wanted our troops out of Saudi Arabia, and we mostly did that, too.
May 31st, 2009 at 3:39 pm
Interesting that Hector hasn’t commented. Was he in Wichita today?
May 31st, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I’ll own up to being a probable ideological brethren to the guy who set the bomb at the recruiting station. I don’t approve or think wise the tactics, but I’m not going to pretend that wasn’t an ideological comrade. If I have to go back in history I’ll claim The Weathermen, the anarchists of the early twentieth century, and other violent actors on the left.
The fact is though, in the United States, there is nothing on the left to compare with the political violence on the right. I’m willing to own up for my people, but no way in hell are you going to own up for the Klan, this guy, the other hundreds like him.
May 31st, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Obama isn’t going to do anything. The FBI may arrest a murderer, but that will not deter, and will not protect the right to choose. It will be twenty years before we have a strongly pro-choice SCOTUS. The methods of the last thirty years have been a tragic failure. Good people have died in the name of moderation and incrementalism. Doctors and young women have died.
Very close to 150 years since John Brown fought the Good Fight in Kansas. I am the type to see that as a sign. It is very hot in Kansas in the summer, but a million choicers spending part of their summer in Kansas, having conversations with people who may have aided, abetted, provided comfort or support to assassination could make Kansas even hotter.
May 31st, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Eco-Terrorism Remains No. 1 Domestic Terror Threat
May 31st, 2009 at 3:55 pm
“Sedgwick County 911 dispatchers are confirming that the Johnson County Sheriff’s Department has arrested a possible suspect in Dr. George Tiller’s murder. A car matching the description of the vehicle wanted in the killing was pulled over near Gardner, KS.
Kansas City television stations report the stop was made along I-35 near Gardner, south of Kansas City.”
——————
Yep, he went for I-35 escape route, as I speculated he would in post 10 above.
Which suggests he wasn’t a member of a competent terrorist organization. Because if he was, he would have been dead when the police found him.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:01 pm
Fuck me — he got roughly 168 miles in over 2 1/2 hours of driving on an Interstate leading from the scene of the crime.
Dumbshit must have thought he could outrun radio transmissions.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:02 pm
Democrats claiming that eco-terrorism doesn’t exist.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:03 pm
Uh, Don, most people use an interstate when traveling any distance, if one is nearby. You may have heard of a phenomena, known as a “traffic jam”, which exist even in Kansas, which results from the fact that a huge percentage of the population, outside of the subset of murdering terrorists, use an interstate when traveling by auto.
Congratulations, Sherlock.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:06 pm
That eco-terrorist bogeyman is the most pathetic thing I’ve ever seen. It’s an appalling insight into the benighted nature of our troglodytes to watch them get worked up and excuse their violence against humans by pointing to someone doing violence to someones crap.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Having comrades usually leads to all manner of bad acts. Screw camraderie.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:09 pm
If someone burnt Dr. Tiller’s down would you consider that terrorism? Would it be terrorism if someone set fire to the cars in the parking lot of his abortion clinic? If someone set fire to the homes of people employed by Planned Parenthood?
May 31st, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Er ..Will. If you are fleeing from a murder, it’s kinda idiotic to take what is obviously the primary escape route when there are hundreds of obscure roads to follow.
Of course, what is really stupid is using a car which can be linked to you — or Staying in the same car that you used to flee the scene of the crime. Which I assume is how they caught him.
What is really, really stupid is not changing the license plates — since they have cameras on major routes now which can read license plates, interpret the image by computer image recognition, and have the computer send an “Ah Hah!” alert to a police terminal in a few seconds.
http://www.photocop.com/products.htm
In case you didn’t notice, 1984 has passed. What the fuck do you think the Department of Homeland Security is doing with that $60 BILLION/year budget? Looking for A-Rabs?
May 31st, 2009 at 4:13 pm
Ted Rall is a Democrat?
May 31st, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Ed Marshall,
And likewise, neither do I approve nor think wise the tactics of this fellow. Like most pro-lifers, I oppose the extrajudicial murder of abortion doctors, even while I acknowledge that we both want the end of legalized abortion. Just the same way you do with the Weathermen. (To be fair, I share some things with the Weathermen too, i.e. a hatred of late-capitalist society, even as I oppose their tactics).
I don’t see, however, how you can put together pro-lifers and Klansmen in the same “Right-wing” boat. The intellectual and ideological motive power behind the organized pro-life movement is the Catholic Church, which was both generally opposed to racial segregation (they excommunicated segregationist politicians in the 1960s, I believe) and generally hated by the Klan. Ideologically, of course, I’d argue that your side (inasmuch as you want to deny the humanity and personhood of the unborn) has more in common with the Klansmen then vice versa.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:14 pm
That should Read “burnt Dr. Tiller’s house down”
Also do you consider burning a cross terrorism?
May 31st, 2009 at 4:18 pm
Grey area, I guess. I don’t really give a damn at all if someone burns out some developers empty suburb project trying to screw up a wetland. I’d be less sympathetic to them burning down the developers house, but if every effort was made to make sure no one got hurt, I’d think it was dangerous and dumb. Maybe even terrorism because now you are messing with personal property and not someones capital development, but still somewhere morally distinct from putting a bullet in his skull.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Yes, Don, most terrorist/criminals are stupid. Like when they try to get a deposit back on a rental truck they blew up. Thank you for another penetrating insight.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:21 pm
Then there’s the shoe bomber who didn’t have a lighter. Or so the story was told.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:23 pm
Re anon’s question “Also do you consider burning a cross terrorism?”
—————
It originally was a Scots-Irish custom — a signal to clan members to assemble for battle to defend the land from an enemy invasion.
The ethnic identity of hooded KKK members is left as an exercise for the reader.
You would think they would use cell phones by now.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:25 pm
Re Will’s comment “Yes, Don, most terrorist/criminals are stupid.”
———–
Er..no they are not. That’s why it’s important to look for signs of whether you are dealing with real pros vice the random nutjob.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:27 pm
So if pro-life activist set fire to Planned Parenthood offices in the middle of the night making sure they were unoccupied you’d be ok with it?
May 31st, 2009 at 4:28 pm
I wouldn’t call it terrorism.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:28 pm
anon at 57: “So if pro-life activist set fire to Planned Parenthood offices in the middle of the night making sure they were unoccupied you’d be ok with it?”
———–
Be sure to speak clearly into the mike.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Don, what do you think the intelligence is of the typical meathead who straps a bomb to himself and goes looking for a target? Yeah, some of the terrorists who indoctrinate the meatheads have some wit, but for the most part it is the large supply of meatheads which makes terrorism a useful tool.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:39 pm
Hector you have to know you are an odd duck. If I put a ven diagram together of shitty, retrograde, KKK, opinions and vehement opposition to abortion, you don’t think the overlap would be overwhelming?
May 31st, 2009 at 4:45 pm
#61 There doesn’t appear to be any correlation between the segregationist states and abortion law.
May 31st, 2009 at 4:49 pm
Re anon at 62: “There doesn’t appear to be any correlation between the segregationist states and abortion law.”
———–
That data is from 36 years ago –well before the Christian right’s jihad kicked into gear.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Re: Hector you have to know you are an odd duck. If I put a ven diagram together of shitty, retrograde, KKK, opinions and vehement opposition to abortion, you don’t think the overlap would be overwhelming?
Ed Marshall,
Don’t be silly. The question isn’t whether most KKK members oppose abortion (presumably they do, although I’m not certain the Southern Baptist church was always pro-life) but whether most abortion opponents hold pro-KKK or other racist opinions. Given that the intellectual core of the pro-life movement is Catholic, and that traditionally the Catholic Church and the KKK hated each other, it seems to me to be highly unlikely.
I mean, conservatives could argue that the Maoist yahoos tend to oppose the Iraq War (which is true), and therefore ‘the overlap between Maoists and Iraq War opponents is great’. But that would be just as silly as what you’re doing. The fact is that most opponents of the Iraq War are not Maoists, any more than most of the 30-40% or so of this country that is pro-life, are racists.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:07 pm
Don Williams,
Again, ‘Christian Right’ is a weasel word (like ‘Communist’ or ‘Fascist’) by which you are grouping together at least two major disparate movements: Southern evangelicals and the official Catholic hierarchy. (As well as a variety of smaller factions- Midwestern Lutherans, pro-life minorities within the mainline churches, and so forth). While the Southern evangelicals may have had a significant amount of overlap with racists (although I question how relevant that is in the younger generation today), such was _never_ the case with the official Catholic church. Nor was racism that big of a force among Northern mainline (=non evangelical) Protestants.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:14 pm
Hector
I’d suggest your use of the term ‘official Catholic church’ runs the risk of being a weasel word itself. Northern Catholics in the US have had quite a bit of racist views. Not all of them by far an not supported by official church teachings, but anti-black views by Irish or Italian Catholics aren’t exactly unheard of.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:15 pm
I’m going to respond to sidereal’s comment at 14, because it’s substantive, because my experience is that sidereal is worth responding to… and because it’s completely wrong and sadly complacent.
Sidereal, you say:
An aspiring abortion provider in, say, Seattle has, I suspect, been little affected. The upshot isn’t ‘Wow, I’m not going to perform abortions’, it’s ‘Wow, I’m not going to perform abortion in f*%$ing Kansas‘.
This is wrong in two ways. For one thing, anti-abortion terrorism isn’t restricted to conservative areas; in addition to the assassinations of two abortion doctors in (arch-conservative) Pensacola, FL in 1993-4 and one in upstate New York in 1998, two clinic workers were assassinated in liberal Brookline, Mass. in 1994. So you can be pretty damn sure that a doctor in Washington State is intimidated by this. This disgusting terrorism doesn’t require majority support, it just takes a few committed fanatics.
Second, the chilling effect on late-term abortions is extreme. Tiller had one of three clinics in the US that perform late-term abortions. Now there will be two. This scarcity is probably partly due to over-the-top legal harassment like the trumped-up prosecutions Tiller endured, but it’s surely also partly due to terrorist intimidation. Remember, Tiller was shot in both arms in 1993.
That means that it’s almost impossible to exercise a constitutional right because of terrorism. And the mealy-mouthed pro-lifers who are crying crocodile tears right now are perfectly happy with that state of affairs. They disgust me.
It’s time to bring abortions back into hospitals where they belong. A sensible Supreme Court would invalidate all the restrictions that are designed to drive abortions into stand-alone clinics where the terrorists can do their work. Unfortunately we don’t have one and never will.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:27 pm
Re: an not supported by official church teachings,
Yes, Stefan. Precisely. The Catholic church is no more responsible for the views of ‘Catholic’ racists in Buffalo than they are for ‘Catholic’ hipsters in Georgetown. Racism, like abortion and other modernist fads, is explicitly condemned by Catholic teaching.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:33 pm
“The intellectual and ideological motive power behind the organized pro-life movement is the Catholic Church…”
That would be a pretty big surprise to the members of Operation Rescue and other American anti-abortion groups, many of whom I’m sure don’t see Catholics as Christian at all.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:50 pm
“Racism, like abortion and other modernist fads, is explicitly condemned by Catholic teaching.”
As is capital punishment. As was the US invasion of Iraq.
And racism is “moderist?” LOL! Racism has been around for at least a couple thousand years, Hector.
Smarter trolls, please.
May 31st, 2009 at 5:58 pm
Joel,
I said that abortion was a modernist fad, not racism. As for capital punishment, and war, neither of them is condemned in principle by scripture, tradition, or natural law. The Catholic church teaching about the death penalty, and the Iraq war, falls under the auspices of prudential judgment: the last two popes forbade them as a matter of pastoral advice, not infallible dogma (unlike the condemnations of abortion and racism or, for that matter, war crimes against civilians). Needless to say, since I’m not Catholic I do not subscribe to ‘Roma locuta, causa finita’.
Your attempts to make excuses for abortion is despicable. I sincerely hope that Mr. Tiller, on meeting Christ, had a moment of repentance. If he didn’t, here’s a foretaste of what might await him:
“And the milk of their mothers flowing from their breasts shall congeal, and from it shall come beasts devouring flesh, which shall come forth and turn and torment them for ever with their husbands, because they forsook the commandments of God and slew their children. As for their children, they shall be delivered unto the angel Temlakos. And they that slew them shall be tormented eternally, for the Lord God willeth it so.”
May 31st, 2009 at 6:09 pm
Hector,
You seem to take a lot of joy out of (what you believe to be occuring, which I don’t) eternal punishment. That is not Christian.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:10 pm
[...] been out all day and just heard the news that Dr. George Tiller was murdered outside his church. Matt Yglesias says, Every time you murder a doctor, you create a disincentive for other medical professionals to [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 6:14 pm
Beyond the utter immorality of it, how stupid does someone have to be to try to deflect attention from yet another murder committed by anti-abortion terrorists by repeatedly raising, by way of comparison, a “terrorist” movement that has never killed anybody (ie, the “eco-terrorists?”)
anon, when I saw your first link – “Eco-terrorism still the #1 threat” – I assumed you were a left-wing environmentalist drawing attention to how idiotic today’s sad events makes paranoia over environmentalists look.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:21 pm
“many of whom I’m sure don’t see Catholics as Christian at all.”
That’s certainly true in the South, where people always ask you: “are you Catholic or Christian?” I’ve learned that if a waitress or bartender asks you that question, do not answer “neither.” You’ll never get served then. You’re better off being black than a Devil Worshipper.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:25 pm
By the way, just to clarify: I do NOT support the murder of Dr. Tiller. Except in circumstances of war and revolution, extrajudicial killing- even of very evil people- is wrong. Full stop. To tolerate the killing of people like Dr. Tiller would be to open the way to anarchy.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:32 pm
Shorter Hector: if a military dictator who fits my model of the ideal leader decided to knock off abortion providers, that’d be fine.
What a creepy bastard he is.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:35 pm
I’m surprised nobody has brought up Eric Robert Rudolf. He spent several years on the lam with plenty of federal agents looking for him. You can’t last that long on the lam without a sophisticated support organization. In other words, he had a genuine terrorist network aiding him. But that network hasn’t been broken up yet. We never rounded up the operators of the violent anti-abortion websites. We never froze the assets of questionable anti-abortion groups. We simply have never taken the anti-abortion terrorists seriously. But then again, when Irish Catholic churches in America were funneling donations to the IRA, we didn’t do anything about that, either. We have simply decided that Christians are allowed to operate terrorist networks, while other religions aren’t. It’s good to be the majority religion, isn’t it?
For clarification, I do not equate the pro-life movement with terrorism, they hold a legitimate political view that they should be free to express. But I do believe that genuine terrorist organizations should not get a pass simply because they are pro-life or Christian. And we have done that.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:41 pm
Fostert,
The IRA wasn’t committing violence against Americans, but rather against England. I think that’s the salient distinction. That said, I agree they should round up the anti-abortion terrorists. If I overhear anyone in a coffeeshop plotting to blow up a clinic, I’ll be sure to call the FBI.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Plenty of people got arrested for funneling funds to the IRA.
One of the cases that Whitey Bulger informed about to his FBI handlers/co-conspirators was a scheme to run guns to the IRA out of a port in Massachusetts.
May 31st, 2009 at 6:51 pm
[...] from Cara at Feministe, Feministing,the NY Times, Matt Yglesias, SarahMC, Andrew Sullivan, Bastard.Logic, Pandagon, Pro-Science, Pharyngula (and [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 6:52 pm
fostert, I’ve backpacked through the country Rudolph hid in, and a skilled wilderness person could hide successffuly there damned near forever, with absolutely minimal help. One or two sympathizers would be enough.
May 31st, 2009 at 7:01 pm
[...] worth noting that this is an incredibly effective form of terrorism. As Matt Yglesias explains: Every time you murder a doctor, you create a disincentive for other medical professionals to [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 7:10 pm
[...] Yglesis points out quite correctly, Christian anti-woman violence has proven itself to be “a kind of terrorism that works“. The chilling effect of anti-choice terrorism on abortion service providers is quite real, [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 7:20 pm
“fostert, I’ve backpacked through the country Rudolph hid in, and a skilled wilderness person could hide successffuly there damned near forever, with absolutely minimal help.”
I have too. And my brother was actually looking for him because the reward was pretty high and he knew the area like that back of his hand. My brother actually shopped at that Save-a-Lot store where Rudolf was found. My brother canvassed the town of Murphy asking if anyone had seen him, and they all denied seeing him. When you consider the fact that shops in the town were selling “Run Rudolph, Run” T-shirts, and Rudolph had all new clothes when he was found, he obviously had way more than one or two sympathizers. And keep this in mind: the people of Murphy ran my brother out of town when they found out he was looking for Rudolph.
May 31st, 2009 at 7:28 pm
“The IRA wasn’t committing violence against Americans, but rather against England.”
In case you hadn’t heard, England is a very close ally of ours. Are you arguing that we should support terrorist groups that attack our close allies? Well, I guess you are, but that would seem to violate our NATO agreements, which under the Constitution are our laws. Sadly, our support for the PKK in Turkey shows that our government agrees with you and not me. But it’s a sick concept. We shouldn’t support terrorists anywhere, but it’s just stupid to support them against our allies. But it’s even worse to support them against ourselves, which we do with our homegrown Christian fanatics.
May 31st, 2009 at 7:37 pm
Hector:
I said that abortion was a modernist fad, not racism
Oh geeze, what a surprise! Anything you don’t like is a “hipster/modernist” fad.
Keep reading that Heidegger and Spenglar, just try and keep you hand out of your pant while you do it, k?
May 31st, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Ed and others….
I’m Republican. I’m Christian. I’m from Kansas. Wichita to be exact. I cried in my car today when I heard about the murder of Dr. Tiller.
I believe in limited gun rights, I veer more pro-choice than not, I support gay rights and all human rights for that matter, but am personally opposed to gay marriage, but not to civil unions– I support the right of all Americans to have their own view on these matters. I believe in evolution and God. I’ve found my own way to reconcile this, and it works for me. If it doesn’t for you–that’s fine. I am an educated, hard-working, single mother. I have empathy and compassion for others. I am not a bigot or a racist. I am not stupid or small minded. I struggle to make ends meet–working 6 days a week every week. I am not rich. I believe in Capitalism, but am not evil. I believe in giving a helping hand when I can–but not in being required to do so. I do not believe anyone else owes me anything–but have done much to help myself and others.
I’m tired of people who tend to veer Democratic/Liberal demonizing me and my beliefs because I feel differently than they do. I have never done this to those who hold views that are different than mine. I’m an American. My voice counts–just as much as yours. At least it should.
I don’t like everything every Republican says. I don’t hate everything every Democrat says.
Yes, the right has it’s problems. As does the left. Yes, the right has it’s nut jobs. As does the left. Don’t put me in your dismissive neat little box because it works for you. I don’t belong there. There are many of us “Right Wing Wingnuts” as you all like to refer to us, out here that don’t fit your stereotype.
May 31st, 2009 at 8:01 pm
Fostert, what you consider to be obvious proof that Action x has occurred is, well, novel, if nothing else.
May 31st, 2009 at 8:06 pm
“Random murder of civilians in order to coerce political concessions doesn’t have a great track-record”
No, but that’s not what is under discussion here. Organized murder, brutality, and intimidation of “civilians” and government officials by extra-legal organizations has a great track record around the world. Even as we speak, that sort of activity is achieving results for the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Sunni and Shiite radicals in Iraq, and a number of other countries.
The United States, for the century after our Civil War, was the setting for one of the most successful terrorist campaigns of modern times. Terror brought the Redemptionists control of southern legislatures and allow them to legalize Jim Crow, Terror kept segregation in place in social situations the laws didn’t cover, and terror prevented political opposition from developing until after World War II.
It works if you let it work, doesn’t work if you have the wits to recognize it and means to fight it properly.
May 31st, 2009 at 8:08 pm
Oooh, look at Hector all dipping into the Non-Canon Apocalypse of Peter just so he can enjoy some schadenfreude over the death of a man who saved women’s lives. Beware the angel Temlakos! If God quickens a set of conjoined twins in your womb, and the only way to save, maybe, one of them is to have a man like George Tiller perform a selective reduction, then you’ll have to face the wrath of Hector’s angel friend!
May 31st, 2009 at 8:18 pm
I support gay rights and all human rights for that matter, but am personally opposed to gay marriage, but not to civil unions– I support the right of all Americans to have their own view on these matters.
OK, if you don’t support gay marriage, then you really don’t support gay rights. What does “personally opposed” mean? It’s not some private belief, but something that effects how you vote and feel about what the State does—whether it confers the status of marriage to gay people or not. Here’s an example: I’m personally opposed to broccoli, so I don’t eat it, but I believe that the State should forbid robbery, so I’m not “personally opposed” to robbery, I’m just opposed to it. “Personally opposed” on an issue where your views determine how you vote, what rights you confer on your fellow citizens, is a dodge.
You support the right of all Americans to have their own views on these matters….well the right of people to hold views is not in question. What is in question is the right to marry, which people like you withhold from others. Supporting the right to “hold views” is cold comfort and pretty unreflective coming from a member of a majority denying civil rights to a minority.
Yes, the right has it’s problems. As does the left. Yes, the right has it’s nut jobs. As does the left.
That is a lazy false equivalence. The nut jobs on the Left are an isolated fringe that the Democratic party does not take seriously. The nut jobs on the Right are influential talk-radio and media personalities, *elected officials* and people in party leadership positions. It’s just not a fair comparison, and this “pox on both their houses approach” is really tedious.
May 31st, 2009 at 8:29 pm
Yes, directly killing people IS the most effective form of terrorism. The ’60’s Weathermen weren’t taken seriously because they explicitly tried to avoid killing people (except themselves, apparently).
The core of my plans back in the early ’90’s was to kill seriously important people.
Not even bin Laden has come close to doing effective terrorism. Killing 3,000 random civilians was less significant than bringing down the towers, a national landmark. And he was helped because it played into the hands of the assholes in Washington. Had he killed far fewer really important people, he would have been caught by now. Nobody in power cares when the “little people” die. If bin Laden were to kill Bill Gates and the entire board of directors of CitiBank and five senior Senators, he’d be caught by Tuesday before lunch.
Nobody in power anywhere wants to die.
May 31st, 2009 at 8:43 pm
When police officers are shot for enforcing laws against drug use that is terrorism and it’s the liberals that are doing it but the media doesn’t report it that way.
May 31st, 2009 at 8:47 pm
joe from Lowell, the Unabomber killed many people don’t claim that eco-terrorism never killed anyone.
May 31st, 2009 at 8:51 pm
Keep tying with this. I’m sure it’ll make sense eventually.
Suggestion – Include an example of whatever the hell you’re talking about.
May 31st, 2009 at 9:00 pm
Keep tying with this. I’m sure it’ll make sense eventually.
Suggestion – Include an example of whatever the hell you’re talking about.
Convicted drug dealer pleads guilty in plot to kill Tucson cop
Drug dealer kills cop has 124,000 hits on Google. Liberals think drugs should be legal, since they can’t accomplish it legally a small number are shooting cops for attempting to enforce law against drugs.
Barney Frank Introduces Marijuana Decriminalization Bill
May 31st, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Anyone affiliated with this guy or whatever group he belongs to needs to be put on the terrorist watch list, wiretapped, and very possibly waterboarded. We do not know that this is an isolated incident. In fact, if you look at the period during which we last had a Democratic president, there was a wave of abortion bombings and murders, as well as the Oklahoma city bombing. This may well be the first wave.
In fact, this can definitely be viewed as the ticking time bomb scenario.
Nothing should be off limits. Stress position every fucker this guy has spoken to over the last month.
Squeeze them till they squeal. American lives are at stake here.
May 31st, 2009 at 9:02 pm
Anthony—
I’m confuse by your statement. Marriage is the only right that gays have been fighting for? I didn’t realize that. Look, I’m not gay. I don’t claim to see the issue from the viewpoint of someone who is. (But, as someone who has been married, let me tell you, gays aren’t missing out on much-lol) I’m not saying my view is right–only that I have the right to it. (By the way–that too is a civil right) I do not support the idea of traditional marriage between two people of the same sex. That’s me. If I lived in a state where the people voted to legalize it–so be it. The majority rule. That’s the way it works here in the good old USA. Live to fight another day. There are many states that have voted to legalize gay marriage. I’m not out protesting it–it isn’t a matter of life and death for me. If it is for you or those you know–go for it. Rally and vote for it. But don’t demonize me because I choose not to stand on your side. We see it differently–that’s all. I have the right as an American to have an opposing view and to be as vocal about it as you have. I get your point on the “cold comfort”–many of my beliefs and views are not upheld by our government. I live with it, and do what I can to bring about change–as I suspect you are doing. But I don’t uplift myself by belittling those who are on the opposing side. I argue on the issue and the merits–I don’t allow myself to attack the other side as small minded, ignorant or wrong. If I succeed–great. If not, I’ll continue to live a happy, full life.
I’m sorry, I disagree with you on your second issue. Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and other “conservative” radio and media personalities are the right equivalent to Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Janeane Garofalo, plus generally all media in this day in time, etc… on the left. But what do any of them have to do with my views? I’m not Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter, or any of the others. Why should my views be dismissed because you don’t like what they say? They are in the money business –they aren’t elected officials. But as to elected officials–I’m sure both of our “houses” has it’s fair share of losers. But, I guess we are not so evolved that we live in an era of wanting to find a middle ground. It’s more important to have a right side and a wrong side. A good side and a bad side. So, if it makes you feel better just “pox” the conservative house. That’s the trendy thing to do these days.
May 31st, 2009 at 9:07 pm
[...] stopped even “respectable” leftists from using the broadbrush, and in the process characterizing this murder as an act of “domestic terrorism” (more [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 9:15 pm
The nut jobs on the Left are an isolated fringe that the Democratic party does not take seriously. The nut jobs on the Right are influential talk-radio and media personalities, *elected officials* and people in party leadership positions. It’s just not a fair comparison, and this “pox on both their houses approach” is really tedious.
Bill Ayers is a tenured professor at a major university he was named Citizen of the Year by the mayor of the nation’s third largest city that doesn’t seem very isolated to me. Last fall every liberal was defending him. Show me a conservative with the amount of respect that he has.
May 31st, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Actually, Hector, its ‘anti-abortionism’ that is the modern fad. Induced miscarriage and terminated pregnancy was a well established part of historical medicine and midwifery. The move against abortion and abortifacents was actually part of power struggle by Doctors to outlaw Midwives and gain legal control over women’s reproduction. It’s not more complicated than that.
Historically, the Catholic Church didn’t give a rats ass about abortion until the late 19th or early 20th centuries. More startlingly, it was not an issue at all for the Christian right until the 1960’s and 1970’s, when their traditional political causes – segregation and defeating race mixing, fell apart.
I would frankly be much more sympathetic to the moral issues that the Pro-Life movement argues, if they weren’t almost to a man, a bunch of violent, recidivist, dishonest, lying, ideological terrorist scumbags.
I’m funny that way.
May 31st, 2009 at 9:35 pm
But, as someone who has been married, let me tell you, gays aren’t missing out on much-lol)
No, just hospital visitation rights, health insurance, social-security benefits: all that stuff that you take for granted.
The majority rule. That’s the way it works here in the good old USA. L
That is absolutely not how it works in America. We have these things called rights, and they exist even when the majority is against them. Majorities in the south didn’t vote to integrate schools. In fact, they did all they good to keep them segregated, but again those *rights* are enjoyed even and especially against the will of the majority. (You don’t really need explicit rights for things that the majority supports, after all.) The Constitution protects rights *against* the tyranny of the majority and the courts are there to enforce it. That’s how it works in the United States.
Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and other “conservative” radio and media personalities are the right equivalent to Rachel Maddow, Keith Olbermann, Janeane Garofalo, plus generally all media in this day in time, etc… on the left.
The idea that the people you mentioned and “generally all media” are at all equivalent to O’Reilly, Rush, et al., is just laughable. (And please don’t talk to me about Olbermann–he was undercover about his views for 20 years in broadcasting before he surprised MSNBC by outing himself as a liberal on Countdown.) There are really no Leftists on American TV news–Maddow is as close as it comes. For example, Donahue had the highest rated show on MSNBC but was cancelled because he opposed the Iraq War. Liberal media indeed. The fact that you think mainstream media is the left-wing equivalent to the right-wing hate and invective spewed by O’Reilly either shows that you don’t watch media very critically or that you’ve never met anyone on the Left. Or that you can’t make distinctions. When Anderson Cooper threatens boycotts of countries that he thinks don’t support his liberal views, then we’ll talk.
But as to elected officials–I’m sure both of our “houses” has it’s fair share of losers.
Nope. The Republican *leadership* and main elected spokespeople are exactly the kind of fringe figures ignored by the Democratic party.
But, I guess we are not so evolved that we live in an era of wanting to find a middle ground. It’s more important to have a right side and a wrong side. A good side and a bad side.
The “middle” of two opposing positions isn’t good or of value in and off itself. Yes, I believe that my views are right and have no interest in finding some “middle” between me and fabulously uninformed hate-mongers like Rush. That you think this is of value is pretty sad.
May 31st, 2009 at 9:40 pm
Bill Ayers is a tenured professor at a major university he was named Citizen of the Year by the mayor of the nation’s third largest city that doesn’t seem very isolated to me. Last fall every liberal was defending him. Show me a conservative with the amount of respect that he has.
Ayers? Really? I’m sorry, what has been his involvement in or influence over the Democratic party again? What elective office does he hold? What are the ratings of his three-hour daily radio show?
Liberals were defending him because Republicans plucked him out of obscurity to smear Obama for a very tenuous connection. The idea that he is an influential figure on the Left compared to ingorant wingnuts that you elect and make stars out of on the Right is laughable.
May 31st, 2009 at 9:45 pm
There are many states that have voted to legalize gay marriage.
This word “many”, I do not think it means what you think it means. Now, many states have adopted constitutional amendments barring gay marriage. That is true. Your statement is not.
many of my beliefs and views are not upheld by our government. I live with it, and do what I can to bring about change–as I suspect you are doing.
Your “views” aren’t upheld by the government? Boo-hoo. The fact that you equate this–the government not agreeing with your views–to denying many of your fellow citizens equal protection under law shows how blinkered you and many “tolerant” opponents of gay marriage are.
It’s not about “views”, it’s about hard rights, like the ones I listed above: the right to visit your dying spouse in the hospital, for example, or even discuss his illness with the doctor (which gay partners often can’t do b/c they’re not “next of kin”). When anyone is debating your right to your “views”, feel free to dive in with this treacly bullshit. But this discussion is about the right to equal treatment, not to hold views.
May 31st, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Good luck to you Anthony. I wish you well. I’m going to take my ignorant, tyrannical, sad ass self off to the ice cream store with my kid and continue living my life–dreaming of the worthless, non-existent middle ground.
And tonight, I’m going to say a prayer for Dr. Tiller and his family. My heart aches for their loss and the sad commentary of today’s events. Unfortunately, Dr. Tiller’s killer didn’t believe in middle ground either.
May 31st, 2009 at 9:54 pm
What right wing terrorist has been elected to office? What right wing terrorist is a tenured professor at a major university? What republican with the prominence of Mayor Daley has given a right wing terrorist a Citizen of the Year award?
May 31st, 2009 at 10:00 pm
[...] —-Matthew Yglesias,goes over the deep end: Random murder of civilians in order to coerce political concessions doesn’t have a great track-record. But direct action terrorist violence against abortion providers has, I think, proven to be a fairly successful tactic. Every time you murder a doctor, you create a disincentive for other medical professionals to provide these services. What’s more, you create a need for additional security at facilities around the country. In addition, the anti-abortion protestors who frequently gather near clinics are made to seem much more intimidating by the fact that the occurrence of these sorts of acts of violence. [...]
May 31st, 2009 at 10:07 pm
I think this is the perfect application of Obama’s new theory of jurisprudence that allows him to pre-emptively detain anyone he suspects of supporting terrorism.
If this guy is a Christian, send his congregation to Bagram indefinitely. If he is a Republican, start rounding them up. This is what we would be doing if he were a brown, Muslim person.
Wonder if this would change the mind of many of the supporters of the President’s expanded powers.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:11 pm
I wish you well. I’m going to take my ignorant, tyrannical, sad ass self off to the ice cream store with my kid and continue living my life–dreaming of the worthless, non-existent middle ground.
You may think the “middle ground” is where you or we as a society should be in this case. In some cases that is a legitimate perspective, because some issues can be adjudicated that way, and rightly so if they are zero-sum issues as some economic and cultural issues are. But I suspect you wouldn’t support the “middle ground” on slavery, or the middle ground on Jim Crow, or the middle ground on women voting, and I think Anthony and many others are right to put this issue in that same category. You should read Jon Chait’s “definitive case against gay marriage critics” for a persuasive argument about why. Here is a the final paragraph, which is good in any case, but better after having read the piece:
The line “I believe that marriage should be between a man and a woman” is an expression of that sensibility–a reflection of unease rather than principle. As people face up to the fact that opposing gay marriage means disregarding the happiness of the people most directly (or even solely) affected by it, most of us come around. Good ideas don’t always defeat bad ideas, but they usually, over time, defeat non-ideas.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:12 pm
Hold it, hold it: a college professor AND “Citizen of the Year?” Is he in the Elks Club, too?
That’s EXACTLY the level of influence within the party enjoyed by sitting Senators, Congressmen, or Rush Limbaugh. EXACTLY.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:22 pm
What republican congressman or senator has committed a terrorist act? What terrorist acts has Rush Limbaugh committed?
May 31st, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Ah, Joe, but has Rush Limbaugh ever won “Citizen of the Year?” or been a member of the Elks Club? Also, Rachel Maddow, er, has a show, and, despite all evidence obvious to anyone who has watched her, including the fact that she’ll have an amiable chat with someone like David Frum, is at least as bad as Rush, who is always *joking* when he says controversial stuff. Can’t you take a joke? So what if he isn’t “politicallly correct.” You liberals, are, er, humorless. Also, you say Dick Cheney and I say Al Gore, because, you know, pointing out stuff that 99.9% of climate scientists agree with is the exact same thing as running a shadow governement within a government that is in charge of torturing people, and defending said torture in snarling tones on television is the same thing as climate powerpoints.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:25 pm
I’m a liberal.
I believe drugs should be decriminalized.
I believe that murder is wrong and is illegal for good reason.
Therefore, I believe that it is wrong to murder a police officer, even if that officer is arresting someone for drugs.
Can you follow that, anon?
May 31st, 2009 at 10:30 pm
From Ta-Nehisi Coates. Pardon the long quotation:
Courtesy of Andrew, I just read that abortion doctor George Tiller was murdered inside his church this morning. This was the second time he’d been shot. Andrew has the info on all of this–including the role that an odious Bill O’Reilly (he accused Tiller of running a “death-mill”) played in this. I couldn’t even bear to watch the first O’Reilly tape, where he interviews one of Tiller’s ex-patients. I’ve been thinking so much this past week about the right’s rhetoric, in relation to Sotomayor–especially toward the end of the week when Rush Limbaugh said the following:
How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration? By hating white people or even saying you do, or that they’re not good or put ‘em down, whatever…make white people the new oppressed minority and they’re going right along with it because they’re shutting up. They’re moving to the back of the bus and I can’t use that drinking fountain, okay. I can’t use that restroom, okay.
Anyone who knows anything about American history knows what lies at the end of this kind of rhetoric. Anyone who knows what “Redemption” is all about knows where this goes. We don’t have the luxury of thinking about these bilious hate-mongers as loonies running off the lip. People are dying. And these shameless goons are cashing checks. Disgusting. I’m sick over this.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:31 pm
To be clear, only this part was from Rush:
“How do you get promoted in a Barack Obama administration? By hating white people or even saying you do, or that they’re not good or put ‘em down, whatever…make white people the new oppressed minority and they’re going right along with it because they’re shutting up. They’re moving to the back of the bus and I can’t use that drinking fountain, okay. I can’t use that restroom, okay.”
Now, julee and others, show me how Rachel Maddow and Olbermann are the liberal equivalent of this.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:37 pm
I’m a liberal.
I believe drugs should be decriminalized.
I believe that murder is wrong and is illegal for good reason.
Therefore, I believe that it is wrong to murder a police officer, even if that officer is arresting someone for drugs.
Can you follow that, anon?
Yes, do you recognize that not everyone opposed to abortion supports the lawless murder of Dr. Tiller? Notice that he msm is giving this shooting more attention than they give to the more frequent terrorist acts by proponents of drug legalization.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:38 pm
What Democratic Congressman or Senator has committed a terrorist act? What terrorist acts has Keith Olberman committed?
Your question doesn’t make any sense. You seem to have gotten tangled up in your own logic, anon.
You were attempting to show that Bill Ayers – college professor and proud owner of a Citizen of the Year Certificate – was in a comparable position to Republican Senators and nationally-prominent right-wing media figures.
Remember? Show me a conservative with the amount of respect that he has. Ring a bell?
May 31st, 2009 at 10:43 pm
What terrorist acts by proponents of drug legalization? You just made that up. You linked to a story about a drug dealer who shot a policeman, a story that provides absolutely not evidence that the murderer was a) a liberal or b) a proponent of drug legalization, and decided that if you pretend he was both, you can point to a case of a liberal who shot a police officer.
Ted Bundy was a Republican volunteer, you know. As weak as this fact is as evidence that Republicans are serial killers, it is much stronger than your “evidence” of liberal drug-war-opponents being terrorists. Do you know why? Because unlike you, I actually have a real-world example to back up my case.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:47 pm
I suppose bank robbers are now to be classed as “advocates of free money distribution”.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:51 pm
But, I guess we are not so evolved that we live in an era of wanting to find a middle ground.
Wanting to find a middle ground isn’t by definition ‘evolved’– it’s either a) politically pragmatic in certain situations that make half-measures better than nothing at all, or b) lazy and/or confused. Actual political evolution requires a fair amount of philosophical testing, examination of one’s own biases & discomforts, and some study of history and culture against hypothetical outcomes that very few are really inclined to undertake, especially when there are cool things to watch on tv. Wishing everyone would stop shouting and find some way to thread the needle so one doesn’t have to think about unpleasant & difficult ideas is very common among voters and I of course wouldn’t deny anyone the franchise for it (that’s one of my own weaknesses I’ve had to overcome by checking it against a core principle, btw), but it’s not particularly useful in an openly ideological political debate.
May 31st, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Hey right-wingers:
Ann Coulter, who spoke at the Conservative Political Action Conference numerous times, said in 2002, that “the only mistake Tim McVeigh made was not going to the New York Times building.” She later confirmed she was not joking, and said she only wanted the “reporters and editors” dead. I’m going to translate this: Ann Coulter has called for the deaths of hundreds of Americans because she disagrees with their politics.
Bill O’Reilly said in 2005 that if Al-Qaeda blew up San Francisco, we shouldn’t rebuild it.
Bill O’Reilly has, for all intents and purposes, indicated to Al-Qaeda his choice of target; it’s fair to assume Al-Qaeda doesn’t want any city they blow up rebuilt, thus, if Al-Qaeda listens to O’Reilly, they’re more likely to choose San Francisco as a target than another city.
Rush Limbaugh directly advocated violence last year:
http://jeffrey-feldman.typepad.com/frameshop/2008/05/frameshop-limba.html
“The dream end… I mean, if people say what’s your exit strategery, the dream end of this is that this keeps up to the convention and that we have a replay of Chicago 1968, with burning cars, protests, fires, literal riots, and all of that.”
Conservative talk-show host Michael Reagan called for Howard Dean, then the leader of the DNC, to be hanged from the neck until he was dead in 2005:
http://mediamatters.org/mmtv/200512090014
Can you show me, with links and evidence, any examples of prominent liberals
A) Calling for the deaths of hundreds of Americans
B) Expressing the desire that an American city be blown up
C) Calling directly for violence
D) Calling for the assassination of a fellow American.
Note, please, use of the word prominent. They have to be:
A) A best-selling author who is invited to major political conferences
B) A very prominent political pundit/TV host watched by over one million people a night
C) A political figure so major he/she was named an honorary Congressperson, and is considered by many to be one of the leaders of the movement
D) Have some sort of major media syndicated radio or TV show to express his views on daily.
Good luck. I *eagerly* await your answer. Those about to cite the UNABOMER should read Ed Marshall’s comment at #23, which includes this quote from Kaszinski: “Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong,
good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western
civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The
reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not
correspond with their real motives.”
Happy evidence-demonstrating!
May 31st, 2009 at 11:12 pm
What Democratic Congressman or Senator has committed a terrorist act? What terrorist acts has Keith Olberman committed?
Your question doesn’t make any sense. You seem to have gotten tangled up in your own logic, anon.
You were attempting to show that Bill Ayers – college professor and proud owner of a Citizen of the Year Certificate – was in a comparable position to Republican Senators and nationally-prominent right-wing media figures.
Remember? Show me a conservative with the amount of respect that he has. Ring a bell?
I was responding to Anthony’s claim that:
The nut jobs on the Left are an isolated fringe that the Democratic party does not take seriously.
If that were true Ayers would not be professor at a major university would not have had any role in the Chicago public schools and would not have been given named Citizen of the Year by the Mayor of the nation’s third largest city. College professor is a more prestigious position thank talk radio host. No right wing terrorist has received the amount of respect that Ayers has.
May 31st, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Drunk drivers = supporters of transportation deregulation.
May 31st, 2009 at 11:16 pm
You know, I was against waterboarding until now.
Now I want this terrorist waterboarded for information about whether Kansas Republicans and Rush Limbaugh were involved in this murder.
If they are, detain and waterboard them too. See if Republicans out of state and other media personalities played a role.
May 31st, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Umwhut? Have you, perchance, ever attended a university? Or maybe read about one, at some point?
Why not? Neither volunteering for a school nor being recognized for your volunteer work is an endorsement of his politics.
So the answer is, no, you have neither been to a university, nor read about one. That sound you hear is the laughter of several thousand college professors laughing at the idea that they hold a more prestigious position than Rush Limbaugh, a nationally-prominent political figure who earns roughly ten million dollars per year for his political commentary.
May 31st, 2009 at 11:41 pm
Can you imagine the outcry if Bill Ayers–a repentant former quasi-terrorist–had a nationally syndicated radio show? I believe he was recently denied entry into Canada to attend a conference…at the very least, he was threatened with this. Yet Rush, O’Reilly, etc., preach hate and violence from national platforms. The hard-core racist and anti-Semite Pat Buchanan is all over MSNBC but Donahue got cancelled.
But sure, the Left puts its “nutjobs” front and centre, just like the Right does. I mean, when Bachmann started talking about wanting the citizenry “armed and dangerous”, the right rallied around her and increased her visibility–she was on Glenn Beck, etc. Who is the Democratic equivalent of that? Ward Churchill? Yeah, he was really embraced by Democratic media figures (such as they are—and no, whoever said it, the whole msm is NOT the liberal equivalent of Rush. That is really an awful thing to think.)
May 31st, 2009 at 11:41 pm
What terrorist acts by proponents of drug legalization? You just made that up. You linked to a story about a drug dealer who shot a policeman, a story that provides absolutely not evidence that the murderer was a) a liberal or b) a proponent of drug legalization, and decided that if you pretend he was both, you can point to a case of a liberal who shot a police officer.
The reason Dr. Tiller was shot was A) to prevent him from performing any more abortions and B) intimidate other doctors into not providing them. Likewise when a drug dealer kills cops and civilians who cooperate with cops it is to A) stop them from enforcing laws against drug use and B) to intimidate others from enforcing drug laws. In both cases it is an attempt to achieve through illegal means what cannot be achieved through legal means drug legalization is something liberals want the criminalization of abortion is something conservatives want.
May 31st, 2009 at 11:42 pm
Not to mention, Ayers wasn’t a Democrat when he was a crazy, and he isn’t a crazy now that he’s a respectable citizen. He’s a teacher who does a lot of charity work.
He used to be a crazy. He also used to not be a Democrat.
I not sure he’s a Democrat now, come to think of it.
May 31st, 2009 at 11:48 pm
Of course, I would agree that not all Christians are in favor of shooting doctors who perform abortions, but to ignore the evangelical influence in the anti-abortion crusade is to ignore reality.
link
May 31st, 2009 at 11:50 pm
None of which has anything to do with the movement (some, not enough) liberals support to legalize drugs. When a drug dealer commits a violent crime against a police officer, he’s doing so to keep drug laws from being enforced against him, not to get the law changed to legalize drugs. Drug dealers don’t want the law changed, because their business depends on being able to supply an illicit substance. If it was legal, the business would be taken over by legitimate business, like when alcohol prohibition was lifted.
This makes them entirely different from liberals (some liberals, and libertarians, and even some conservatives) who support drug legalization. It also makes them very different from anti-abortion people (both the terrorist kind and the regular kind). Those people actually want to change the legal status of something.
Anyway, if you’re going to accuse Group X of supporting Terrorist Act Y, you’d better have an actual example of that happening – of that crime being committed by a member of that group. Not some half-assed political theory about how liberals are just like cop-killing drug dealers if you really think about it, man.
May 31st, 2009 at 11:52 pm
joe–great points. He is most likely not a Democrat, and he is certainly not mainstream among Democrats the way Rush is for Republicans.
Here is a piece Ayers recently wrote for the Ottawa Citizen. How anyone could read that an conclude that he is the Democratic party’s equivalent of Rush is beyond me.
he reason Dr. Tiller was shot was A) to prevent him from performing any more abortions and B) intimidate other doctors into not providing them. Likewise when a drug dealer kills cops and civilians who cooperate with cops it is to A) stop them from enforcing laws against drug use and B) to intimidate others from enforcing drug laws. In both cases it is an attempt to achieve through illegal means what cannot be achieved through legal means drug legalization is something liberals want the criminalization of abortion is something conservatives want.
You have to be kidding.
First of all, drug dealers don’t usually shoot cops to effect their political program, and liberals don’t spend hours every day riling up, encouraging and supporting the violent-drug-dealer community, as conservatives do with all kinds of violent extremists, particularly anti-abortion types. You have a Republican member of congress spouting conspiracy theories and saying she wants the population “armed and dangerous”; another one whom I won’t mention because I don’t want to attract a bunch of goldbugs expressed a belief in the N. American Union/Amero conspiracy in a televised debate.
The “yeah you have nutjobs too” argument is really weak.
May 31st, 2009 at 11:54 pm
Anthony,
It’s possible to be ‘personally opposed’ to gay marriage in the sense that you think gay people should have the _legal right_ to get married, but that in a moral sense they would be better off if they chose not to avail themselves of it. I’m under no impression that that is what the aforementioned Julee thinks, but it is a logically consistent position. I support gay _civil_ marriage in a legal sense, in the United States, and I would vote for gay marriage if it was on the ballot in my state (and, indeed, think the Supreme Court should make gay marriage the law of the land, if for no other reason than to make the state laws consistent.) That said, I do not think that a same sex union (or to be fair, a voluntarily childless heterosexual union, or most unions following a divorce) can be _sacramentally valid_ marriages in the eyes of God or his church. They should be equal in the eyes of the United States government and its constituent states, but I don’t think they are equal in the eyes of God.
Den Valdron,
The Christian faith opposed abortion from the beginning. See the Didache, or other early texts like the Apocalypse of Peter (which was probably penned by a follower of Peter and, though ultimately excluded from the canon, often cited as a patristic testimony against abortion including by Clement of Alexandria). Or see the writings of Clement, Tertullian, Athenagoras, and others. At times some individuals like Aquinas did not believe (mistakenly) that very early term abortions were homicide, but they never said that such abortions were anything less than a very grave sin. There has consistent testimony from the time of the Apostles (and before that, from the Jews), that abortion was homicide.
On the grounds of self defence one can make exemptions for the cases where a woman’s life is at risk, and one can also make an exemption for terminally nonviable fetuses. Elective abortions, however, are right out, just as any other sort of homicide would be.
May 31st, 2009 at 11:59 pm
It’s possible to be ‘personally opposed’ to gay marriage in the sense that you think gay people should have the _legal right_ to get married, but that in a moral sense they would be better off if they chose not to avail themselves of it. I’m under no impression that that is what the aforementioned Julee thinks, but it is a logically consistent position
Hector, I totally agree. Just like I’m personally opposed to drug use but think people should have the legal right to do it.
I just, like you, don’t think that that is what Julee meant by “personally opposed”—see my lame broccoli analogy—and argued from that assumption rather than get into the possibilities for being personal opposed but in favour of a legal right. You are, of course, right–this is possible and logically consistent, and, in my view, virtuous, as recognising the right to do things that one personally disapproves of is difficult for most people.
I just didn’t get into it because I was pretty sure that by “personally opposed” she meant that she would vote against it, etc.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:01 am
That said, I do not think that a same sex union (or to be fair, a voluntarily childless heterosexual union, or most unions following a divorce) can be _sacramentally valid_ marriages in the eyes of God or his church. They should be equal in the eyes of the United States government and its constituent states, but I don’t think they are equal in the eyes of God.
Hector, this is really a wonderful assertion of how rights work in a society like the United States. People should be free to understand God however they please–and no church should ever be compelled to perform or recognise gay marriage–but the secular state must provide equal protection and recognise marriages as a civil matter.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:03 am
1) Unconfirmed news leaks are suggesting the suspect is a man named Scott Roeder. Again, we won’t know the name of the suspect until charges are formally filed tomorrow.
2_ A scan of Operation Rescue (the anti-abortion group) shows the following comment by a Scott Roeder in 2007 with re to a protest in Wichita against Dr Tiller:
“# Scott Roeder Says:
May 19th, 2007 at 4:34 pm
Bleass everyone for attending and praying in May to bring justice to Tiller and the closing of his death camp.
Sometime soon, would it be feasible to organize as many people as possible to attend Tillers church (inside, not just outside) to have much more of a presence and possibly ask questions of the Pastor, Deacons, Elders and members while there? Doesn’t seem like it would hurt anything but bring more attention to Tiller.”
Ref: http://74.6.239.67/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=scott+roeder+kansas&fr=yfp-t-106&rs=0&u=www.operationrescue.org/pray-in-may-to-end-aboriton-wichita-ks-may-17-20-2007/&w=scott+roeder+kansas&d=Nc_wt0xIS0pB&icp=1&.intl=us
(Note: Above is from a cache )
June 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
Youtube has a video of an anti-abortion protest outside Dr Tiller’s office. The Internet cache has the following comments in the past few months which now appear to have been deleted from the
current comment list:
————–
mondoballz (6 days ago) Show Hide
0
Marked as spam
Reply
watch out for scott roeder
hes the biggest fraud con man
on earth yehweh bless
4535210 (1 month ago) Show Hide
0
Marked as spam
Reply
Tiller the killer .. may God forgive you and us for all the wrong that is happening here. How sad a people we have become. Womens rights gone wrong!!!
eve805 (2 months ago) Show Hide
0
Marked as spam
Reply
Tiller will soon have his day…
kidjon (5 months ago) Show Hide
+1
Marked as spam
Reply
I do believe that Jesus died for all of us, even Tiller. We have to pray he finds Jesus and ends his murderous ways.
psalms23rules (6 months ago) Show Hide
0
Marked as spam
Reply
They are currently having 40 Days For Life outside this mill which is 24/7 prayer so if anyone can go @ anytime, please do. They’ve had a few botched abortions a week that no one would’ve known anything about since the start of this prayer vigil constantly outside the gate.
pineyjoesdad (9 months ago) Show Hide
-3
Marked as spam
Reply
Jesus died for George Tiller? I don’t think so. Stop praying and take action. A noose. A tree. A George Tiller. That’s all it takes.
LauraBelmont (9 months ago) Show Hide
+2
Marked as spam
Reply
Why are they protesting on a Sunday when the office is closed and NO ONE IS THERE?
Yeah. Really bright idea there.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:13 am
Will Allen:
“Yeah, and the Unabomber did most of his work while Democrats were losing Presidential elections.”
The unbomber kept carrying out bombings under the Clinton administration, and was stopped only by his arrest in 1996.
Even for you usual crappy “this is not valid because what about XYZ doing ABC..” arguments, this is lame.
You are such a dishonest little sophist, Allen.
June 1st, 2009 at 12:14 am
Previous post was an extract from
http://74.6.239.67/search/cache?ei=UTF-8&p=scott+roeder+kansas&xa=zhOTt81Pn2sabMN6z9CxCg–%2C1243914783&fr=yfp-t-106&rs=0&u=www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DUStyFKiUoDo&w=scott+roeder+kansas&d=EptJpUxIS2Rr&icp=1&.intl=us
June 1st, 2009 at 12:23 am
If it turns out that the suspect is named Scott Roeder, I wonder if it will be the same guy listed in this 1997 Topeka Kansas news story:
“A Shawnee County man convicted in 1996 of an explosives violation after bomb components were found in his car trunk was imprisoned this week when a Shawnee County District Court judge ruled he violated his supervised probation.
Scott Phillip Roeder, 39, was sentenced Monday to one year, four months in state prison after Judge James Buchele revoked parole, citing three violations. …
…Roeder acknowledged he hadn’t filed an income tax return for the past several years even though he had been employed during that time….
,,,After a long series of hypothetical questions about whether Roeder would pay income taxes to the federal government if he made money, Roeder said paying taxes was voluntary.
“Taxes are voluntary?” Buchele asked.
“Yes,” Roeder responded.
Roeder said that according to his understanding of the law, wages paid while he was employed at the restaurant were subject to taxation “only if you allow them to be.”
After sentencing Roeder, the judge asked him several times whether he would file a 1996 income tax return, try to file income tax returns for earlier years and fill out a W-4 form with his Social Security number to get a job if his sentence were suspended for a week.
Roeder eventually said he wouldn’t.
At one point, Roeder asked Buchele what court defined the laws Roeder is to follow.
“I’ve got the robe today; you’ve got a jail jumpsuit,” Buchele answered. “Seems to me that’s a significant difference.”
Monday was the second time Roeder had been brought before a judge after his probation officer accused him of violating his parole on the explosives conviction.
In August 1996, Roeder was accused of having ties to an extremist group. In that hearing, Buchele released Roeder, saying Roeder had touched base with his parole officer about whether living with a man formerly linked to the Freemen, an anti-government, right-wing group, would be a parole problem.
Buchele had placed Roeder on intensive supervised probation on June 21, 1996, for an explosives violation and ordered him to sever his ties to violent extremists.
Roeder had been convicted earlier that month of felony criminal use of explosives. A car he was driving on April 16, 1996, was stopped by a Shawnee County sheriff’s deputy, and law enforcement officials found a one-pound can of black powder, a crude electrical circuit, an electrical blasting cap and a fuse in the vehicle.
Officers also found a military rifle, a gas mask, mask canisters, two boxes of rifle ammunition, 20 rounds of pistol ammunition and a sheath knife.”
———-
Ref: http://www.cjonline.com/stories/071097/parole.html
June 1st, 2009 at 12:25 am
“There has consistent testimony from the time of the Apostles (and before that, from the Jews), that abortion was homicide.”
Then why isn’t the death penalty imposed for causing a miscarriage in Exodus 21:22-25. If Jewish law held than abortion is homicide, why does the Babylonian Talmud refer to the fetus as just a “limb of the mother”?
June 1st, 2009 at 12:36 am
Sock Puppet,
Flavius Josephus, the 1st century Jewish historian, states that Jewish law as it was interpreted at the time, forbade abortion and considered it equivalent to homicide. Even if, at times, Jewish and Christian law did not hold early term abortion to be homicide, it was, again, considered a _very great sin_. I don’t know how much more I can stress this. Please cite a single Christian or Jewish writing prior to 1900 AD which held that abortion was ever acceptable except when the mother’s life was at risk or when the fetus was inviable.
Hell, even _Persian_ law, in the pre-Christian era, held that in cases of abortion the mother, the father and the abortionist were subject to the death penalty.
June 1st, 2009 at 1:08 am
“A: Socrates is a man. B: All men are mortal. C: All men are Socrates. Means all men are homosexuals.”
You really are a bizarre nutball, aren’t you? You don’t even understand the argument you’re arguing against.
June 1st, 2009 at 1:10 am
FYI: Hipsters don’t live in Georgetown. Old Senators live in Georgetown.
June 1st, 2009 at 1:12 am
[...] Matthew Yglesias says that Randall Terry is right about that: [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 1:27 am
Actually, I’m curious as to why a drug dealer would want drugs legalized. They make their money now BECAUSE drugs are illegal. So, I’m pretty sure that your theory fails completely.
June 1st, 2009 at 1:55 am
Thanks all for enlightening me. I guess the sad reality is that there is no hope for dialogue. I have to choose which extreme, angry, unforgiving, hateful side I want to be identified with.
Reading all of this commentary really just makes me want to weep.
For the record Hector:
It’s possible to be ‘personally opposed’ to gay marriage in the sense that you think gay people should have the _legal right_ to get married, but that in a moral sense they would be better off if they chose not to avail themselves of it. I’m under no impression that that is what the aforementioned Julee thinks, but it is a logically consistent position.
that is exactly where I am coming from.
Shocking for a loony right winger, eh?
June 1st, 2009 at 2:07 am
Julee, no one here insulted you, or called you stupid, or anything. They asked you to justify your positions and pointed out flaws they perceived in them. Whether or not you’re new to the internet, that is a pretty standard way of responding when someone makes an arguable claim. It certainly is not anti-”dialogue”; on the contrary, it’s the definition of dialogue.
But from the beginning you weren’t interested in discussion. You were interested in being complimented for being such an open-minded, tolerant person; you were interested in people telling you how wise you were for seeking the “middle ground” (defined as whatever positions you occupy right now). So of course, when people wouldn’t give you that, you responded in a huff (”I’m leaving!”), sarcastically calling yourself stupid, evil, etc., and lamenting that the two sides just can’t find “common ground.”
Now you’re claiming that you’re in favor of the legal right of marriage for gay people, which is the exact opposite of what you said in comment 99. So despite what you said above, you’re not interested in “arguing the issues on the merits.” You’re interested in haughtily proclaiming how human and non-ideological and non-dogmatic you are. Well, pardon me, but I have very little use for self-flattery, particularly when it disguises itself as a political philosophy.
If you’d like to discuss gay marriage or other social issues, let’s discuss them, “on the merits.” Otherwise, I’m curious to know what you think you’re contributing.
June 1st, 2009 at 2:34 am
Hector,
We give you a hard time a lot on here, so I’ll take this opportunity to give you some kudo’s. Your views on Gay Marriage are something that all Christians should read and take to heart, you do a great job of explaining the difference between civil and religious marriage.
Every church is free to marry or not marry, recognize or not recognize whatever marriages they want, just like today, no one forces that Catholic church to marry divorced people and so on. But if the state is giving benefits to some people they cannot withhold those benefits from others.
June 1st, 2009 at 6:06 am
“Fostert, what you consider to be obvious proof that Action x has occurred is, well, novel, if nothing else.”
Well, maybe you should define what “Action x” is and maybe I’d address it. All I know is that when a Christian terrorist was on the loose and people were making T-shirts with the guy’s face on them, nobody saw the guy when he was in their town. Why the entire town of Murphy, NC isn’t already in Gitmo for their obvious failure to cooperate with the Federal authorities in a terrorism investigation is beyond me. They need to surrender to Federal authorities for their cooperation with terrorism. And they did cooperate with the terrorist when they ran the people looking for him out of town.
June 1st, 2009 at 6:21 am
“It works if you let it work, doesn’t work if you have the wits to recognize it and means to fight it properly.”
Maybe not the words most eloquently spoken, but the most true words anyone might say. The only way to defeat terrorism is to not be terrorized. Sadly, even the Israelis, who have been pretty stoic about it, can’t even do it. Nor can the Turks, who have faced much more terrorism, but have retaliated more brutally. But at least the Turks have a sense of humor about it. They don’t get nasty about it, they just get even. But that hasn’t worked either. But at least the Turks are willing to acknowledge that their adversaries are actually human beings. Obviously, this is a new thing for the Turks, but give them credit for it. When Israel does the same, I’ll give them the same credit.
June 1st, 2009 at 6:40 am
As for Hector, he’s a beautiful person. He can’t be a made-up person, because only a real person would really be so strange. Reality is always stranger than fiction, and I’ve seen way too much of reality to ever believe otherwise. Hell, I already have to tone my stories just so people just think I’m only bullshitting a little. But I like Hector’s perspective, and I’m glad to see him here. I may rail into to him from time to time, but he’ll do the same to me. It’s our nature. As for me, well, I really am as strange as I might seem, and actually a whole lot more. I’m in a transition phase right now, but who knows whether I’ll be manic or depressive tomorrow. Every day is a new day. So we’ll see. But I have one thing going for me: at least I really will admit that I’m crazy.
June 1st, 2009 at 7:47 am
I hate coming into these discussions 150 comments in. No fun.
fostert: I find you entertaining. Don’t tone down the weirdness.
And I have a lot more respect for Hector now that I understand his position on gay marriage. Somehow in previous discussions it never came through clearly.
anon, though, has some seriously wack ideas about what constitutes terrorism.
June 1st, 2009 at 8:13 am
I agree, but waterboarding isn’t enough. This may well be a first attack in a coming wave of terrorist attacks, as we saw in the 1990’s with all of the clinic bombings and murders.
We need to put them in naked stress positions until their legs and feet, hands and arms, swell to three times their normal size. They need to be forced to masturbate for the cameras in front of other men, as well as further sexual humuliations. The worst among them, for instance O’Reilly who certainly is an accomplice, needs to have all of that done, as well as be put in a coffin-sized box for days, with bugs.
All of this needs to be done so that we can find out if there are other attacks already in the planning stage. This is a ticking time bomb scenario folks, let’s roll.
June 1st, 2009 at 9:19 am
[...] Progress: Matthew Yglesias writes, “Random murder of civilians in order to coerce political concessions doesn’t have a great track-record. But direct action [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 9:43 am
After this act, doesn’t the DHS report on the danger of right wing american domestic terrorism seem prescient?
June 1st, 2009 at 9:48 am
You seem to take a lot of joy out of (what you believe to be occuring, which I don’t) eternal punishment. That is not Christian.
Your naïvité is touching and corny, but ultimately misguided.
June 1st, 2009 at 9:50 am
“Paul Hill told USA Today (3/7/94), ‘I could envision a covert organization developing–something like a pro-life IRA.’”
And yet – it didn’t. Eight murders (in six incidents) over a period of sixteen years, plus about the same number of attempted murders, are terrible atrocities – the proper number is zero, of course – and are indeed more than eco-terrorists (or for that matter the Klan) have killed over the same period, but by the standards of historical terrorist movements it is not a large movement. The wider pro-life movment has consistently repudiated such people.
“I not sure [Ayers is] a Democrat now, come to think of it.”
From what information has come out about Roeder, I think there is a good chance that he belongs to some kind of small right-wing third party rather than to the Republican party. Since I am not a Republican either, I don’t care one way or the other, but that should be noted.
June 1st, 2009 at 11:21 am
After this act, doesn’t the DHS report on the danger of right wing american domestic terrorism seem prescient?
Yeah but I think the danger is getting blown out of proportion, the same way lefties would argue that muslim terrorism is overemphasized.
In the 90s it was overblown too except for McVeigh and Oklahoma City. And then Clinton enacted also sorts of laws curtailing civil liberties. The ones that didn’t pass where later used as a blueprint for the Patriot Act. Thanks Bill!
June 1st, 2009 at 11:42 am
There’s a crew of old dolts who traffic their poison in front of the local Planned Parenthood office every Tuesday night and Saturday morning.
Who’s to say they don’t get a drive by visit as well to remind them the Left can shoot guns as well?…
Since they’re all so “eye for an eye”, why not a taste of their own medicine? Just sayin’.
June 1st, 2009 at 11:54 am
[...] but one of a handful in the Midwest performing abortions period. I’m sure this violence is scaring the crap out of other abortion providers and clinic workers around the US. Here’s hoping that this horrible act renews efforts to keep [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 12:01 pm
[...] A Kind of Terrorism that Works–Matthew Yglesias [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Turn yourselves in NOW, before it is TOO LATE
June 1st, 2009 at 2:07 pm
[...] Yglesias on political violence: Random murder of civilians in order to coerce political concessions doesn’t have a great [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 6:53 pm
I wouldn’t want to be in Tiller’s shoes when he is standing before the judgement seat of God. I don’t think being an usher is going to cancel out murdering a lot of viable human beings.
June 1st, 2009 at 7:45 pm
[...] Mr. Terry(ist), here are your “most effective rhetoric and actions” at work. OWN [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 7:46 pm
[...] the murder of Tiller "a kind of terrorism that works," Matthew Yglesias assesses the impact of anti-choice violence: "Random murder of civilians in order to coerce [...]
June 1st, 2009 at 8:53 pm
Yes, directly killing people IS the most effective form of terrorism.
Not really, it’s the propaganda value of perpetrating spectacular event that are very frightening and threatening whether they kill no people or 5,000 people. Witness Al Qaeda in Iraq, they killed lots of people. But when it became clear that they were more threatening to the people they claimed to represent than the U.S. occupation, their supporters dropped them like a rock.
The core of my plans back in the early ’90’s was to kill seriously important people.
Not even bin Laden has come close to doing effective terrorism. Killing 3,000 random civilians was less significant than bringing down the towers, a national landmark. And he was helped because it played into the hands of the assholes in Washington.
That seems to undermine your argument a bit. Don’t you think?
Had he killed far fewer really important people, he would have been caught by now. Nobody in power cares when the “little people” die. If bin Laden were to kill Bill Gates and the entire board of directors of CitiBank and five senior Senators, he’d be caught by Tuesday before lunch.
And there are plenty of Bill Gates, Senators and directors of Citi Banks out there to replace the ones a would-be terrorist can kill. And the remaining “targets” have the money to hire plenty of guards/security after others starting getting targeted. Targeted assasination has proven to be a woefully ineffective tactic that only provokes a security crackdown on the perpetrators. Think about the rash of anarchist killings of European monarchs during the late 19th century, the socialists active in Russia at the same time, the people that killed Nasser, etc. None of these people achieved what they set out to do through those means*.
*Socialists in Russia finally won, but it wasn’t because of targeted assasinations.
June 1st, 2009 at 8:56 pm
The core of my plans back in the early ’90’s was to kill seriously important people.
Opps….that was not me! I left that in from Richard Steven Hack’s post. Got that HSA?
June 1st, 2009 at 10:01 pm
Kropotkin,
Targeted assassination does work, sometimes. Probably the classic example would be the NLF in Vietnam, who relied heavily on targeted assassinations of people even remotely associated with the South Vietnamese government- apparently they had quite long hit lists of intended targets.
You realize that (according to Guevara’s theory of revolution), a “security crackdown on the perpetrators” is sometimes EXACTLY what the revolutionaries want. The theory is that more guerrilla assassinations will lead to more brutal government crackdowns, which will in turn alienate people in the mushy middle from their increasingly brutal government, which will drive more of them to join the revolutionaries, which will carry out even more assassinations….and so on in an expanding cycle until evidently the revolutionaries are powerful enough to take on the government head-on.
It worked in Cuba, and, I guess in Nicaragua, but its success elsewhere in Latin America was, at best, mixed.
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:04 am
ugg australia
June 2nd, 2009 at 10:06 am
http://www.leadjewellry.com
June 3rd, 2009 at 9:44 am
To Terry “the Tiller Killer” Randall:
I will go boldly, as never before, to peacefully spread the word of Atheism, to work toward bringing a new rationalism to the U.S. We will not stop until every house of worship closes it’s doors. Our aim is to not silence the fairy tales (I kind of like Santa Clause) but to put an end to the myth that these fairy tales are real. Atheists are peaceful and free of guilt. Today I will be opening my wallet to donate to groups that support those people that support abortion. Yes, the dollars will flow.
Peace, brother