What If …
By Callimachus | Related entries in Smart Things Said By Smart People, The War On TerrorismDebra Saunders of the San Francisco Chronicle writes:
Imagine, as I’ve written before, if anti-abortion terrorists began killing innocent civilians and said they would stop only if the government outlaws abortion. (After all, if terrorism wins for Islamic extremists, why shouldn’t U.S. extremists adopt it?) The Left would not fault pro-abortion policies. The Left would not blame the government for legalizing abortion. The Left — correctly — would denounce the terrorists, the violence and any attempt to extort policy by threatening innocent lives.
… Imagine if anti-abortion terrorists killed 52 civilians and themselves, and Americans blamed feminism, or abortion rights, or the U.S. Supreme Court for Roe vs. Wade. Because the equivalent is happening at home and abroad.
Courtesy, again, of the indispensible American Future.
This entry was posted on Monday, July 25th, 2005 and is filed under Smart Things Said By Smart People, The War On Terrorism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 25th, 2005 at 1:53 am
And imagine, if you will, that a member of our government said that if anything like this should happen again we should bomb The Vatican…
That is essentially Tancredo’s argument, no?
July 25th, 2005 at 3:04 am
Tancredo is a contemptible non-entity with no authority but the sound of his own voice. To introduce him and demand that anyone to the right of Michael Moore must defend or explain him is a tactic best left to the Democratic underground nitwits.
July 25th, 2005 at 2:12 pm
So it’s somehow more useful to make use of an analogy between abortion and terrorism than it is to make use of an analogy between Tancredo and terrorism?
It seems to me both analogies are entertaining (depending on which ideological direction you approach the issue from) but fundamentally useless.
Coming from the left side of things, I think it’s no more ridiculous for people on the right to have to collectively atone for Tancredo’s ridiculously ignorant remarks than it is ridiculous for me to atone for every single thing that comes out of Michael Moore’s mouth.
July 25th, 2005 at 2:53 pm
Patrick, the analgy is between terrorism and anti-abotrion extremism, not terrorism and abortion. Reading before you rant always helps.
It is not the mere Michael Moores of the world who are saying we should respond to post-2003 terrorism by retreating from Iraq. This is a commonly held position in Britain and America.
If this is to be a place where every sane liberal argument is shouted down with cries of “what about Chomsky?” and every right-of-center post has to also justify the Right Wing Nut of the day, then I submit it is no center ground.
Part of being a centrist — perhaps the only quality, in my book — is assuming people you disagree with are proceeding from good and honest motives unless they prove otherwise, and trying insofar as possible, to treat those people differently than you treat the fringe-dwellers. And certainly not to conflate the thoughtful with the fanatical.
July 25th, 2005 at 5:38 pm
I completely disagree. Tancredo isn’t a non-entity when you have articles like this on centrist blogs and elsewhere. Just check Technorati. Remember, Rick Santorum got on the map for saying outrageous things too.
Who said anything about Chomsky? Respectfully, please stick to the topic at hand. Nobody’s attacking you and yet you’re responding as if you’re being attacked.
And by the way…
Agreed. However, how one defines a fringe-dweller is very, very important and I think we should all give each other the benefit of the doubt around here, especially since we’re trying to elevate the conversation.
July 27th, 2005 at 5:16 am
Chomsky = left equivalent of Tancredo. It’s all about analogy, remember? If sticking to the topic at hand was important, Tancredo never would have entered this thread.
The “attack” comes when someone posts a hypothetical situation intended to allow “the other side” to explore the bare ethics of some hot issue, without the usual passions their side is heir to.
And the response is, “yes, but WHAT ABOUT X?” X being the most extreme fringe example of “my side” on the hot issue. To me, that’s not polite, and it’s not engagement. It neither enlightens nor answers.
July 27th, 2005 at 10:03 am
Fair enough.
August 7th, 2006 at 1:43 am
Good job.
August 7th, 2006 at 6:54 am
It’s a false analogy. In the abortion scenario it is only the terrorist who is acting improperly. In the domain of US foreign policy and its terrorist response, both the terrorists and the policy makers are acting improperly. Both have it in their power to prevent or reduce terrorism, hence both are causing it.
August 9th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
Talking about useless arguments…
This whole page here seems pretty useless. After all, the topic at hand is that our government actually did 911. This is no whacko conspiracy theory, its now actually provable and is rightly getting actual press coverage. I think its not allowed to post Internet-links here, therefore you have to search yourself.
Chomsky, Tancredo, Michael Moore, left, right .. it all doesn’t matter much when you employ the killer-comparision, the juxtaposition of fiction and reality. THe fiction is that we are the good guys. Reality is that our private corporate rulers go over dead bodies, successfully. BTW exactly what Chomsky says. Hard to prove him wrong… should make one think.
Even if you don’t believe me. that 9/11 was done by our people, and not by arabs, is no longer in doubt, no matter how much howling and gnashing of teeth.
Considering it took almost 5 years to realise it, one can only say it with Blackadder:
We are really as thick as clotted cream,
been left out by some clot until the clots are so clotted up
that one couldn’t unclot them with an electric de-clotter.