Thursday, September 04, 2003
Pro-Life and Pro-Death
This morning's execution of a pro-life murderer (how's that for an oxymoron?) leaves me all over the place:- he had carried out the killings "to prevent innocent babies being killed". In what way does killing a doctor and his driver stop abortions from being carried out? Wouldn't the abortions just be carried out by someone else?
- How many women with unwanted pregnancies are going to change their minds and decide to bring their babies into the world because there's terrorism on their local streets?
- How many pro-lifers want women with unwanted pregnancies to decide to have their child for the sole reason that there was someone out there murdering doctors (i.e. through fear rather than love)?
OK, so he was clearly a deranged twat. Locking him up to protect us from his warped actions is good - both for him and for us. But then the authorities go and ruin it all by demonstrating that it's wrong to kill people in cold blood - by killing him in cold blood.
What's worse is that he welcomed his own death sentence. He "was looking forward to dying for his cause". So, rather than subject him to a life of incarceration, during which time he might learn to rue his actions or be cured of his sickness, they let him off the hook and make him a martyr.
Far be it from me to suggest that Jeb Bush decided to further the extreme pro-life cause in this way to please his fundamentalist sponsors.
posted by Plig |
12:10 |
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Forget the sentimental notion that foreign policy is a struggle between virtue and vice, with virtue bound to win.
Forget the utopian notion that a brave new world without power politics will follow the unconditional surrender of wicked nations.
Forget the crusading notion that any nation, however virtuous and powerful, can have the mission to make the world in its own image.
Remember that diplomacy without power is feeble, and power without diplomacy is destructive and blind.
Remember that no nation's power is without limits, and hence that its policies must respect the power and interests of others.
Hans Morgenthau
The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts
Bertrand Russell
The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one
Albert Einstein
When you are right you cannot be too radical; when you are wrong, you cannot be too conservative
Martin Luther King Jr.
Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man
Bertrand Russell
I think it would be a good idea
Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization
There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun
Pablo Picasso
Those are my principles, and if you don't like them... well, I have others
Groucho Marx
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it
Mahatma Gandhi
Always make new mistakes
Esther Dyson
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