(Tim) David Lehr linked to a post titled, "Tiller, Long, Bonhoeffer, and Assassination," by Elizabeth Scalia on First Things blog that doesn't portend well for FT's post-Neuhaus era. Although the moderator hasn't approved it to go up, yet, here's my comment:
This is a very weak piece, depending more on dance like a butterfly than sting like a bee. Even on the matter of the morality of Bonhoeffer's commitment to kill Hitler, it's mostly equivocation. But one phrase exposes the underlying commitments of the author.
Precisely how do we come to the point of referring to any words spoken or written about the inexorable slaughter, worldwide, of somewhere around forty to sixty million little babies each year as "overheated rhetoric?"
Fifty million unborn babies made in the Image of God, friends--plus or minus ten million. And if the numbers are staggering, the despicable deed is more so. The place of greatest safety created by our Heavenly Father to protect the most defenseless human beings, and fifty million times a year mothers pay a man to go in there and murder their little one. If I'd ended the previous sentence with an exclamation point rather than a period, would that constitute "overheated rhetoric?"
The most awful condemnation of a wicked act found in Scripture is reserved for parents murdering... their own sons and daughters. God says this sin is so terribly wicked it hadn't "entered My mind that they should do this abomination:"
...and have built the high places of Baal to burn their sons in the fire as burnt offerings to Baal, a thing which I never commanded or spoke of, nor did it ever enter My mind... (Jer. 19:5)
They built the high places of Baal that are in the valley of Ben-hinnom to cause their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire to Molech, which I had not commanded them nor had it entered My mind that they should do this abomination, to cause Judah to sin. (Jer. 32:35)
So now, again, precisely what would one have to say or write to be guilty of "overheated rhetoric" about this extreme wickedness that is such an abomination that it never entered the Mind of God?
There's much else not to like about this post, but "overheated rhetoric" says it all.
