Too often, I’ve heard about how the murder is not part of the “mainstream” anti-choice movement. Perhaps not. But vandalism certainly is. Harassment certainly is. Trespassing certainly is. The idea that you can employ little crimes but distance yourselves from the big ones is transparently disingenuous.
Once the guy with the guns decides that gluing the doors of a clinic shut, or stalking a doctor’s children, or jumping ugly with traumatized patients, or mailing phony anthrax isn’t working, what is he likely to do? Start a blog? Go back to writing impassioned letters to the editor? Not hardly.
This isn’t the time for a prayer that cooler heads will prevail on “both sides.” This is time for the country and its leaders to tell one side of the debate to knock it the hell off. Start turning in the vandals and thugs in your midst. Acquaint yourself with your friendly local FBI agent if somebody shows up at your meeting with a rosary in one hand and a Glock out in the car.
Surely, a president who has proposed the astonishing concept of preventive detention for people who might one day abet and commit terrorist acts can muster up a more vigorous condemnation of people who are actually doing it.
Charles Pierce | Altercation