Leftist Straw Man -- Pro-Lifers Condone Vigilante Violence | [site:name]

Pro-life demonstrators pray at a rally in Washington, D.C. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty)

I’m sure you’ve seen the argument. Leftists seeking to blame the pro-life movement for last Friday’s Planned Parenthood shooting cast the gunman’s actions as the natural and inevitable consequence of the belief that abortion is murder. If abortion really represents the killing of a child, they ask, shouldn’t you be willing to take up arms to end the slaughter? And if you’re not willing to take up arms, doesn’t that mean you don’t believe your own rhetoric? In other words, you’re violent, or you’re insincere. Either way, you can’t escape responsibility for the actions of men like Robert Dear.

Former First Things associate editor (and now vocal critic of the “religious Right”) Damon Linker makes just this argument in The Week, condemning the “deeply irresponsible” rhetoric of the pro-life movement:

Is it really surprising that after months of railing against the baby killers (and dismemberers and body-parts harvesters) at Planned Parenthood, threats against and attacks on clinics are rising? Of course not. What’s surprising is that there haven’t been far more of them. Because if we take pro-life rhetoric seriously — if we accept that hundreds of thousands of unprosecuted and unpunished murders are being committed every year in the United States — then violence sounds like a perfectly reasonable response.

No, it is not “surprising” that there hasn’t been more violence at abortion clinics. Unlike many leftists, Linker knows theology and knows that the orthodox Christian faith utterly rejects a primitive and violent “ends justifies the means” moral code. He also knows not only Catholic “just war” theory (ably spelled out by Ross Douthat) but also should know of clear statements such as the Southern Baptist’s Convention’s thoughtful theological condemnation of pro-life violence, spelled out in its 1994 “Nashville Declaration of Conscience.”

The Nashville Declaration is a powerful document. Regarding the value of life, it is clear:

The Bible establishes a profound presumption in favor of preserving life rather than ending it. God wills that human beings should make peace with each other, should be reconciled, and should treat every life with the respect its divine origin and ownership demands. . . . This means that an extraordinarily stringent burden of proof is imposed upon any who would seek to justify the taking of a human life.

Vigilante pro-life violence simply cannot meet that burden.

Further, the Declaration outlines when force is permissible. It notes that Romans 13 places the sword in the hands of the state, meaning that individual citizens can defend themselves and others from attack (in other words, the Declaration isn’t a pacifist document). But it cautions: “Private citizens are not allowed to intend to kill another human being and are not allowed to engage in premeditated acts of deadly force in order to accomplish what they intend.” In other words, “according to both civil law and divine moral law, private citizens are permitted to use lethal force against another human being only if this occurs as an unintended effect of the act of defending oneself or another against an assailant’s unjust attack.”

As the Declaration notes, by committing murder, an individual is also assaulting and undermining the authority of the government itself: “Thus, any private decision to break the law against murder — even where there is an intention to do good — is an act of rebellion that threatens the existing governing authority, contrary to the will of God.” This wrong is compounded by the fact that our governmental structure retains its democratic legitimacy — pro-life citizens can seek reform through the exercise of their First Amendment rights, through the ballot box, and even through peaceful civil disobedience.

Truly, this is Christianity 101, and Linker knows it. The notion that the ends don’t justify the means and that Christians are to respect and protect the lives even of wrongdoers is deeply imprinted in the Christian DNA. Love your enemies. Respect the operations of legitimate government. Refrain from the use of force unless you and yours are under immediate threat. All of these principles are second nature to American Christians. That’s precisely why Christian vigilante violence is so shocking and rare.

But accusing Christians of fomenting violence is part of what Linker does. In 2010, he even accused homeschoolers of provoking civil strife, saying: “When evangelical homeschoolers treat social and political withdrawal as a preliminary step toward cleansing the nation as a whole of spiritual contaminants, it raises the spectre of theologically inspired conflict and oppression.” There’s a ready leftist audience for arguments that America’s sincere Christian believers aren’t just weird but dangerous. Linker feeds that ignorant beast.

#share#Over at Slate, Jamelle Bouie takes a different and more thoughtful approach. Quoting conservative writers (including me) who compare abortion to slavery, he asks, “Is Robert Dear Another John Brown?” While granting that Dear is not a known “anti-abortion activist” or involved in the pro-life movement, Bouie observes:

[Dear’s] intense and violent form of religiosity is also not far from the infamous figure, especially if you accept an analogy between slavery and abortion. Indeed, if actual anti-abortion activists style themselves abolitionists — and they do — then what relationship should they have to a figure like Dear, who seems to have killed in service of a shared goal (“no more baby parts”)? After all, abolitionist isn’t just a label for anti-abortion activists — it’s a cause that many conservatives embrace.

Bouie is exactly right that pro-life activists compare abortion and slavery. We make that comparison because it’s apt. In both instances, the abhorrent practice rested on dehumanization: the declaration that black Africans were somehow innately inferior to whites and the declaration that unborn children are somehow less than fully and completely human. But comparing Robert Dear to John Brown isn’t a compliment to Dear. Brown was a blood-soaked fanatic who raised fears of genocidal violence. He was an evil man.

In fact, Brown’s vigilante violence was so terrifying to the South that it motivated many Southerners to support secession and embark upon the Civil War. While contemporary historians ably document the extent to which the South seceded to preserve slavery, they overlook the crucial role of the Southern white fear that Northern radicals wanted them dead. Indeed, again and again Southern states cited alleged Northern efforts to “excite” or “promote” slave rebellions in their respective declarations of causes for secession.

#related#Brown’s actions illustrate the deeply destabilizing effects of political terror. Those adopting the brutal moral primitivism of the “ends justifies the means” by pointing to the Civil War and Emancipation Proclamation forget the horrible cost of the war (still by far the deadliest American conflict, far eclipsing World War II) and how close the North came to losing. While historical counterfactuals can be perilous, there were countless times when the Northern leadership and Northern public saw the war not as an inevitable triumph but as a costly endeavor that would lead to horrifying defeat — a defeat that would have permanently divided the Union and allowed slavery to expand. Whoever sows the wind may reap the whirlwind.

There is no coherent moral argument for pro-life violence, and that’s precisely why it is so rare. The pro-life movement represents millions of people who believe in the power of speech, democracy, and unconditional love to change hearts and turn the course of a nation. Pro-life Americans adopt children, support unwed mothers, and work desperately and legally to save lives. The pro-life movement is not “irresponsible” and neither is its rhetoric. It represents the best of the American spirit, and it should never stop telling the truth about our nation’s greatest shame.

— David French is an attorney and a staff writer at National Review.