|  Candace Talmadge Read Candace's bio and previous columns
June 2, 2009
Unlike Dr. George Tiller,
the Culture Wars Are Far From Dead
“Always, after a defeat and
a respite, the Shadow takes another shape and grows again.”
- J.R.R. Tolkien
A gunshot claims the life
of Kansas abortion physician George Tiller. Maybe it is now tragically clear
that rumors of the death of the culture wars have been greatly exaggerated.
Ever since the 2008
election of President Barack Obama, mainstream pundits have pronounced the
end of the religious right. Americans supposedly care more about pocketbook
issues in this bad economy than about abortion or gay marriage. It’s ancient
history now and, after all, we are finding common ground on these divisive
issues under Obama, the Great Compromiser.
Just one small hitch in
this Kumbaya fantasy: Some people do not want to find common ground. They
despise compromise as weakness. They intend for their views to prevail no
matter what the cost, even unto the destruction of what the rest of us
recognize as the United States.
As just one example, while
purporting to decry the killing of Tiller, Randall Terry, founder of
militantly anti-abortion Operation Rescue, said, “If abortionists were
gunned down every week, it would gather no more attention than crack dealers
who are gunned down every week.”
This sounds a lot more like
an invitation to additional violence than a condemnation of it.
With
Tiller’s demise, there remain just two physicians in the entire country who
provide late-term abortions, which sometimes are medically necessary,
despite the Supreme Court practicing medicine from the bench and outlawing
one late-term abortion method. According to the Associated Press, they are
Dr. Warren Hern of Colorado and Dr. LeRoy Cahart in Illinois.
"Dr.
Tiller's assassination is not the lone and inexplicable action of one
deranged killer," Hern told the Boulder Independent.
“This was
a political assassination in a historic pattern of anti-abortion political
violence. It was terrorism."
Tiller’s
slaying “is absolutely the inevitable consequence of 35 years of
anti-abortion fanatic rhetoric and intimidation and assassination violence
and exploitation by the Republican Party of this movement,” Hern added.
He should know, having
endured decades of threats and harassment by abortion opponents. Indeed, the
suspect in Tiller’s death reportedly has past ties with Operation Rescue,
which the group’s president, Troy Newman, has denied.
And while Terry likens the
anti-abortion crusade to the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 60s, the
reality is far more akin to the Ku Klux Klan and its reign of terror. The
KKK often lynched blacks on the steps of the local courthouse as a political
signal and terror tactic. The message: We are more powerful than the law.
Fear us and do not try to oppose or stop us.
Tiller was gunned down
inside his Lutheran church during the start of Sunday services. The message:
The only true Christian stance is against abortion. Those who believe and
practice otherwise are targets for elimination.
Only a twisted religious
zealot could rejoice over this killing. It makes an absolute mockery of the
words of Jesus, who admonished his followers to love their enemies and turn
the other cheek when others wronged them. This country, however, has more
than its share of warped religionists as extreme in their views as the
Taliban or Wahabi versions of Islam.
In Pakistan, the army and
the citizenry have acted to rid themselves of the religious zealots bringing
death and destruction to their nation. When will we Americans also rise up
and proclaim in no uncertain terms that enough is enough to extremists
veiling their political goals in religion?
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