There’s much to discuss in terms of implication, as regards the shooting of abortionist George Tiller, none of them particularly complimentary to those claiming to take up Tiller’s side.
Even from the outset, my instinct was that the reaction to the Tiller story was overblown… intentionally so. Whatever else might be said, we’re talking about one man’s death. Absent the issue of Abortion, and in light of the seven men in Chicago alone, shot in the same 24 hour period, one man being shot just isn’t national news, sorry. It also and most certainly doesn’t rise to the level of ‘terrorism’ as some have been loudly claiming.
It’s interesting, too, how the word “‘Terrorism” has been rediscovered by the left, to be applied to this thing, isn’t it? Let’s examine this, for a moment:
Since back in 1993, there have been seven abortion clinic workers killed as such. If this constitutes an organized bit of terrorist activity, I suggest it to be so far below the radar as to be invisible. This is a misapplication of the term terrorism, in light of the much larger terrorism we’ve seen in the last decade… terrorism that for the most part, the left ignored. They also ignore that the killing of Tiller has been condemned by every mainstream pro-life group. Their entire response seems out of the bounds of reason.
So unreasonably loud is the howl over this one in fact, that one cannot help but wonder if it wasn’t orchestrated so. If we take what we see on the web as indicative, for the most part these are leftists…. who are people already used to making noise far in excess of their actual numbers. I think we can take this level of noise as an indication of the number of organized mouthpieces on the web right now. (And I think that has implications for our political future.)
There are a goodly number of left-of-center bloggers that have blamed Bill O’Reilly and other more-or-less mainstream conservative commentators for creating the tension that made murdering Tiller more likely. I reject that argument on its face. Unless of course we’re going to see admissions on the part of pro-abortion types that their rhetoric is directly responsible for an environment conducive to the attacks on those who, while non-violent, oppose abortion.
Or, we’ll see them admit that anti-military protests from the left has generated an environment where recruiters are far more likely to get shot at, as we saw yesterday. That happening, and the reaction from the left on that score… or more correctly, the lack of it, is instructive. The leftie blogs who were all over the Tiller shooting, using all kinds of overheated rhetoric to make their case, were all but silent, as the news broke from Little Rock, yesterday afternoon. Clearly, someone in uniform is of less import to these than is one late-term abortionist. Consider that for just a moment. Let it roll around in your head for a bit.
At the bottom line, then, this noise from the left is an attempt at martyrdom for Tiller, so as to impose a particular point of view. What we also have is a group of people who in the words of Rahm Emanuel, don’t waste any ‘crisis’ toward that end. Tiller’s family is still making funeral arrangements. That fact, however doesn’t slow down those seeking political points on Tiller’s body before it’s cold, though. Gotta use the crisis for the political aims of the left. And so, they are.
Regardless of your views on abortion, that much must be acknowledged.
Start adding the actual issues directly surrounding abortion to that discussion, however, and the situation makes a rather foundational change. There seems to me an internal conflict inherent in arguing, as the noisemakers have been doing on this, that Tiller as a victim was wronged, and that his death was wrong, but that Tiller’s victims… those aborted… were not wronged. Is either, less dead?
That logical conflict seems to me indicative of a movement more dedicated to imposing views, than changing minds. The resistance to the government just now in terms of tea parties and whatnot seems suggestive to me of how much of a success impositions have been having of late. That position is a sure-fire turn off to anyone not pro-abortion, and I suspect a goodly number of those who ARE pro-abortion.
Then again, all this noise was never about discussion, was it? See, here’s the thing; If Tiller’s murder is the result of overheated rhetoric, what does anyone suppose the kind of overheated rhetoric we’ve seen in response to it, will bring?
I’m sure there are those who will suggest I’m trying to paint the murder of George Tiller as no big deal. It’s not true, of course, but we’ll see such charges, as surely a the sun will rise tomorrow. (I’ve checked the weather report… we can be reasonably assured the sun will in fact rise. ) I’ve been writing political commentary since Jimmy Carter was in office, in various forms, and based on that experience, this kind of attack is eminently predictable, particularly when they run out of logical defenses.
To people making such charges, I will point out that there is a very thick line between saying an event is no big deal, and saying that certain political factions have overblown the event for their own political ends.
The difference in the reaction to the Murder of Abortionist George Tiller vs the murder of Pvt William Long, are the clue to that fact. Clearly, one must be in the political favor of the left to garner their concern when they get murdered, and Pvt Long being military… and the left being anti-military and pro-abortion as a rule, Pvt Long’s murder doesn’t merit the leftist outrage that George Tiller’s murder does.