When Dr. George Tiller was murdered last Sunday, many left wing websites and blogs started putting up video of FOXNews personality Bill O'Reilly's multiple statements calling Dr. Tiller a murderer, a Nazi, and so forth. Pressure mounted for O'Reilly to make some kind of statement, which he - characteristically enough - botched. The campaign continued, and it seemed the idea of putting a certain amount of responsibility squarely on O'Reilly's shoulder was gaining some traction.
I was wary, for a variety of reasons. After some time spent perusing the fever swamps of the right, specifically those places that address the Tiller murder directly, make it pretty clear that O'Reilly's rhetoric was hardly unique. Indeed, the idea that, rather than a doctor running a clinic providing legal, safe health services to women, fully compliant with the law, he was some psycho, piling up the bodies of babies for his own glee and, of course, profit. The words "murderer", "murder", "dead babies", and much, much worse are pretty routine, not just in addressing Dr. Tiller specifically, but the entire issue. Abortion is considered not a safe, legal medical procedure fraught with all sorts of moral and emotional baggage and consequences, but rather murder, pure and simple. A fetus isn't a fetus, but a "pre-born baby", which is why "infanticide" is tossed around so glibly.
We don't need to go to the big right-wing websites to discover this. Consider Neil, and Eric, Mark. There really is no difference between these hate-filled, ill-informed, blood-lusting posts in which they don't so much dance with glee on Tiller's grave as actually spit on it.
Making a martyr and symbol of Bill O'Reilly serves no purpose. The entire right-to-life movement bears responsibility for Tiller's murder; by creating an atmosphere which (a) views a medical procedure as part of a project of mass murder; and (b) those who commit these acts "monsters" in the wonderfully dehumanizing phrase of one of the linked posts, murder becomes not only a live option, but the only truly moral act left. Politics has failed. Judicial action has failed. The abortion mills continue to churn out millions of dead babies a year. Stopping just one abortionist (in Neil's nomenclature) by any means necessary becomes a bad means justifying a moral end. Tiller's murderer is the only truly moral actor. All those "denunciations" ring hollow, drowned out by the clamor of those calling him a Nazi, comparing him to Josef Mengele, and on and on.
While many big-name liberals and progressives might get a certain sense of satisfaction out of some kind of action taken against Bill O'Reilly, I won't.
All those bastards have blood on their hands. I hope the tears of Dr. Tiller's family keep them up nights.
