• President Obama insisted that gathering in Paris to eat canapés and chat about the weather in the wake of the horrific Islamic State attack on that city constitutes a “powerful rebuke” to the terrorists. Add in dessert and brandy and it’s practically D-Day.
• The day after Thanksgiving, Robert Lewis Dear barricaded himself inside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, holding law enforcement at bay for nearly six hours before he was captured. In the interim, nine people were injured and three killed, including one police officer. Reports so far suggest that Dear was mentally disturbed, with a particular inclination toward paranoia, hostile to abortion but with no known organizational ties to the pro-life movement (and free of any diagnoses or convictions that could have prevented him from owning a firearm even under Colorado’s relatively stringent gun laws). None of this has kept the Left from pushing its pet conclusions. Liberals, from social-media pests to top congressional Democrats, have blamed the “hateful rhetoric” of the pro-life movement for “inciting” Dear to his heinous act. This is nonsense, and alarming nonsense. A tendency to blame the acts of deranged individuals on the rhetoric of advocacy groups is a sure path to the curtailing of civil society, of the rights of individuals and groups to work to change policies and attitudes. And, of course, the rhetoric blame game works in both directions: If the pro-life movement is responsible for Robert Dear’s attack on a Planned Parenthood clinic, then surely the Southern Poverty Law Center is responsible for Floyd Lee Corkins’s 2012 attack on the Family Research Council. We prefer that individuals be held responsible for their own actions, and reject those who exploit the tragedy to smite enemies or score political points.
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