Friday, July 06, 2007

More letters

Someone else has decided to weigh in on my condemnation of anti-abortion terrorists. David Rydholm has been around for a while, making appearances in chatrooms, blog comments, and on letter-to-the editor pages. He is a supporter of doctor killing terrorists like Paul Hill, and appears to fancy himself something of a Biblical exegete. I'm not qualified to comment on the value of his Biblical scholarship, but we don't appear to have much basis for a meeting of the minds in politics, social policy, or the morality of assassination.

Let's take a look at what he has to say.
Mr. McKay,

Your opinion is worthless. Why should anyone care what you say?

Why? That's a question you should answer for us, Mr. Rydholm. Why did you take the time to find my little blog? Why did you take the time to stick around and insult me? Surely there are much bigger pro-choice fish in the sea that you could have insulted. Why do you care what I say?
By your approval of legalized killing of children in the womb, you take personal responsibility for the deaths of over forty million of these children in the USA alone, not to mention the hundreds of millions of others who have been killed in other nations.

It's an interesting argument, but I don't accept it. First of all, I do not "take personal responsibility" for killing hundreds of millions. You might want me to and you might feel that I bear responsibility for the decisions of millions whom I have never met, but I don't accept that responsibility. Sorry.

I'm not even sure I understand the mechanism by which I should bear responsibility for so much. I was not on the Supreme Court when Roe vs. Wade was decided. I wasn't old enough to vote at the time. I have never lived in a state where a vote was taken on the issue. To the best of my knowledge, I have never been the cause of a woman getting an abortion, either through paternity or through the power of my arguments. It seems that your sole basis for assigning so much responsibility to me is that I do not actively oppose the concept of women having a right to choose whether or not to have an abortion and that I do not condone the use of assassination to prevent them from being able to get one if the decide the want one. This puts me in company of the vast majority of Americans.
In the face of that, do you think anyone will take seriously that you care about the deaths of a few born people?

I don't have to think think anyone will take me seriously; I know they do. I actually go out now and then and meet people. People write to me and make comments on this blog. None of them have ever questioned my empathy or compassion. At the risk of repeating myself, Mr. Rydholm, you took me seriously enough that you felt you need to stop and heap abuse on me.

You might not want people to take me or my position seriously, but merely asserting that they do not does not make it so.
You like to throw around the word, "Psycho", as if it didn't describe you.

If the word "psycho" describes me, merely because I believe a woman has a right to decide whether or not to have an abortion, then it also describes over seventy percent of the American public. It must be very scary for you to live here believing that. If I am a psycho because I don't believe Americans should settle disagreements over social policy by assassinating other Americans or their families--I'll bet those who agree with me are in the high ninetieth percentiles. You must be terrified. Do you even leave the house?

One final note, I puzzled at the location that chose in which to vilify me. I have several other posts where I condemn doctor killers and their supporters, but you chose to leave you comments attached to a post in which I condemn those calling for a pro-choice reign of counter-terror. My use of the word "psycho" was to describe DoctorDefense, a loon who has for years been trying to get someone to massacre Paul Hill's widow and children. Why would you drop by and insult me for opposing that? I would think that not murdering Karen Hill is the one thing we can agree on. Is it that you want a pro-choice terrorist to emerge in the hopes that it will push more people over to your side?

Respectfully,
John

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