Killing in the name of...

As a blog that often espouses Pro-life ideas I think it is important along with all the pro-life community to soundly condemn the murder of George Tiller. Tiller was a well-known abortionist who did late pregnancy abortions. He was shot yesterday in the foyer of his church.

Being pro-life means trusting that killing is not the right way to fix problems. Tiller had most certainly killed thousands of children, but stepping outside of justice and killing him is evil and inexcusable. Murder and mayhem for a good cause is still murder and mayhem. It is sad that many in our society believe violence is the path to goodness and peace (apparently even a few isolated pro-lifers).

It is encouraging to see the pro-life community as a whole condemn this violence. I hope that the understanding that even the killing of so bad a person as Tiller is wrong will lead the movement to oppose other such behavior such as capital punishment and unjust wars. I am still hopeful that someday our culture will find common ground on a Consistent Life Ethic that defends and respects all human life.

Values and Personality: Part II

An examination of the effects emotions and personality on political beliefs, continued from Part I:

Part II: Non-Violence

The transformation from a hawkish conservative to a pacifist opposed to the death penalty didn't begin with careful reasoning, but with subtle experience. First, I fell in love. I married the most amazing woman. Perhaps it is an accident of natural selection that young males are eager to kill or die for their nation or a cause, but having a wife and now a child on the way have tempered any inclination toward killing. The list of things I would be willing to kill or die for rapidly began to empty. The only thing I would be willing kill for is to save her from danger. The thought that I had once been willing to go to war and kill another woman's husband filled me with remorse. I find now as a husband and father that violence and cruelty depicted in films which had never bothered me before often make me sick to my stomach.

Another thing that happened was that I became a doctor. Suddenly people dying and suffering, which had before been an abstraction, became something I saw frequently and intimately. Before I had rather harshly realistic opinion that everyone dies. Perhaps I have a “thin skin,” but after caring for so many as they die I can no longer have such a cavalier attitude toward the death of a human being. No matter how painful or peaceful, the end of a human life strike me as an immense tragedy. We all still die and suffer, but I can never speak of the death of another human lightly. Even more so willfully killing a person, even a vile person or someone who is a threat, became horrible to my mind.

Medicine also altered my concept of “deserving.” Much of the illness I care for in my patients is self-inflicted through unhealthy decisions made in the past. The conservative idea that bad acts should get what they deserve, doesn't work in medicine. My oath as a physician binds me to care for the suffering and ill regardless of patients “bringing it on themselves” or not. It is my job to prevent (as much as possible) people from getting “what they deserve” from years of unhealthy habits. I should advocate for health, but realizing unhealthiness exists it is my job to forgive and restore. Perhaps it is a stretch, but my job in human restoration after bad deeds made me wonder about humans metering out the justice of God by putting evil people to death. My own experience in my family of evil and redemption again figured in my perspective. Also in medicine I have cared for many prisoners, including several who I know killed others ruthlessly. Did I have the right to tell them they didn't deserve lifesaving care because they were bad? No. They were in chains and no longer a threat to anyone. Why should I want them killed?

The ancient rule of medicine is “First, do no harm.” This beneficent rule has restrained physicians for centuries. We are not any better than any human beings, but something as simple as this has given us perhaps the greatest respect among professions. I liked this principle. It made sense and even misanthropic doctors act well when they are reminded of this oath. I sought such a simple principle for my political beliefs. The Consistent-Life Movement is above all things simple: Kill no human. It fit with my pro-life upbringing. It fit with my Christian beliefs. While the holy scriptures don't expressly prohibit capital punishment or war, the commandment to love others with the sacrificial love of Christ certainly makes consistent non-violence seem consistent with my belief.

During this internal transformation of my values, the external world seemed to be moving to confirm my new views. The war I had initially supported had become long, bitter, and pointless. Now our brave soldiers are dying and killing to prevent a cataclysm that our invasion set in motion. Certainly this preemptive war was started with the best of intentions: a fight for security and freedom. This war and my initial support of it leaves a sad stain on my consciousness. How easily I supported sending our defenders to kill and be killed! I now deeply believe that war should always be a last resort and only in self-defense.

My conservative friends and family think me a bit of an embarrassment for becoming a vocal pacifist, and liberal pacifists find my antiabortion convictions to be offensive, but I must admit being consistently pro-life is a relief. I am by no means a perfect person or a perfect Christian, but to my mind this is the most true and honest way to let the mind of Christ effect my politics. “As far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.” -Romans 12:18 And so my mind is at peace with this. With a personality that impulsively spills my thoughts out to everyone (as evidenced by this blog) it is this piece of my mind that I speak.

The Wages of Nihilism

Today's news is sad but not surprising. It seems that meaningless violence is the hallmark of our generation's nihilism:

"The ideal young revolutionary of our generation is like an uncaged animal that unleashes blind lust or fury at anything that nears it. What other kind of revolutionary could we expect in a world with nothing worth believing in? It is only the insightful revolutionaries who truly identify... the oppressor within themselves, in their own unrestrained passions. What else to do but turn that limitless fury in on itself? So they unleash all fury on their own angry selves, often killing a schoolyard full of random classmates with them, creating a horror so beautiful and rebellious that the rest of us can only watch with awe and envy. The school shooter is not an isolated phenomenon, he is the final product of the Revolution."

Continue reading "Generation X and the Revolution"

The Execution of Saddam Hussein

Saddam Hussein was executed for crimes against humanity last night. Certainly Hussein is an example of the worst sort of criminal, but I cannot help but feel this was pitiful and unnecessary. None of the evil things he did are undone by his execution. He would have died eventually and answered to God for his sins without us taking his life.

In my job I see a lot of people die. I watched a man die at the hospital yesterday. My response to the news was the same as I felt in the hospital: Sorrow. Even with my political opposition to the death penalty, I had not expected to be saddened by the death of someone as horrible as Hussein. I suppose my eyes are too full of seeing death. I want no part in killing, even those who “deserve death.”

Blood on My Hands (South Dakota)

Most of the fuss over the recent election is likely a lot of noise over nothing, exchanging bad for bad. The real tragedy of this election was the ballot that struck down the South Dakota Abortion Ban. I fear this injustice among us will not end in our lifetime, because in the end we want the ability to terminate those who inconvience us. What finally brought down the ban was that it would protect offspring of rapists from being killed. It reminds me of how even good people want to excuse the deaths of Muslim civilians and children, because they might be relatives of terrorists.

I found something I wrote in the gridbooks during medical school that reflects how I feel today:

On being a pro-life medical student:

Lord Jesus, how eagerly my brothers and sisters rush to shed innocent blood! And I am guilty with them. I cannot deny my hand in this. I have raised my fist and joined in the battle cry of individualism, which deals death the weak, the silent and the inconvenient. How lost we are! How desperately lonely!

And what do I say to them? I understand too well. I have blood on my hands as well. Would I lay down my rights, my life, even my comforts for another person I have never met? I say "yes" but it is only an abstraction. So I am forced to sit and listen as they sing the praises of destruction. I speak, but they respond, "What right do you have?"

I have no right. I am no less a sinner. So I am here among them, alone and shuddering. What have we done? How did we get so lost? Why don't we care about what we have done? How did our compassions become so misguided that even our caring breeds more violence?

How long can this last? How long can we go on neglecting our neighbors and living well at the expense of the weak, poor, and small? The problem is that we can go on this way indefinitely. Our human capacity to misuse each other is almost limitless.

9/11 Before and After

These are two pieces written before and after 9/11. It is not often that we are able to see our own darkest imaginings take place in the real world:

3/11/01 (Before)

I am sick of the TV, of the internet, of the radio, of the people I meet. I am sick of constantly being solicited for one thing or another. I am sick of the wealth-generating, mass-marketing juggernaut that has taken over our culture. I am sick of being reminded that working at the homeless clinic is advantageous because it will look good to residencies and make me feel proud of myself. I am sick of the idea that every interaction must boost my pleasure / entertainment / self-esteem / net-worth / sex-appeal / market value. Is there anything genuine left without a dollar amount attached?

Life / Love / Freedom / Faith / Sex / Anger / Fear / Happiness: all bought and sold like grade-D meat these days. Sure there are "some things money can't buy," we used to believe that. We told ourselves the world wouldn't affect us, but look at us now. Everybody's got their soul for sale to the highest bidder of money / pleasure / love / whatever. Nothing is genuine. Nothing is honest. Nothing is selfless.

I fear the best thing for us would be a humiliation and destruction. Perhaps a people as ruthless and narcissistic as ourselves will attack us... kill us by the thousands and rob us blind. As horrible as it sounds it may be the only way to save us from ourselves. We will never repair things ourselves (although we often say we will--and sell the idea for cheap thrills and votes) because we have become addicted to our own decay.

November 2001 (After)
*Written in the same page of my gribook as the above:

Exactly six months later to the day was one of the bloodiest days in our history. Ruthless people leveled our towers... and we watched on TV for shock entertainment. Then we created a war for an even bigger television event. Watching someone else's sons in the special forces risk their lives is even more exciting than seeing 3000 bankers and MBAs go down in a towering inferno!

We took the fact that evil men had targeted us as a sure sign of God's blessing on us. "God must approve of our selfishness. Gluttony and greed are now sure signs of freedom and virtue. Suddenly it is heroic to rescue our sacred economic prosperity by consuming even more luxuries. Send the special forces overseas to fight on television, and I'll do my duty by doing the Christmas shopping in my gas-guzzling SUV!"

We are not capable of justice or even sustained hatred. We only redouble our relentless pursuit of wealth and entertainment. We didn't even stop to think about examining our own souls. We seem to have forgotten that the terrorists only did what we had been longing to do in our own self-loathing. No instead we are now quite certain that divine justice has spoken in favor of our greedy pleasures.

If these last few months were unable to constrain us... I fear we are beyond saving. May God have mercy on our souls.

Generation X and Revolution

This is something I wrote a few years ago. It still strikes me as applicable to our society.

A commercial I have seen on TV recently: A shoe commercial with a loud and chaotic stream of angry, physically-absurd images with pictures of running shoes and the word DEFY over and over again:

Defy gravity!

Defy limitations!

Defy electricity!

Defy anything!

What a ridiculous lot of furious fools my generation is! And now they are using our fury to advertise shoes. We always want to raise a fist of angry revolt in the air. One must revolt in order to establish one's identity (a tradition we learned from our parent's generation). But we can't find much worth rebelling against. We are a nation of rich and unrestricted people, but still we must defy something. We must loose control of our passions and strike out against anyone who dares oppress us, but no one cares about us enough to oppress us, which infuriates us even more.

The ideal young revolutionary of our generation is like an uncaged animal that unleashes blind lust or fury at anything that nears it. What other kind of revolutionary could we expect in a world with nothing worth believing in? It is only the insightful revolutionaries who truly identify that hateful oppression they riot against. They recognize the oppressor within themselves, in their own unrestrained passions. What else to do but turn that limitless fury in on itself? So they unleash all fury on their own angry selves, often killing a schoolyard full of random classmates with them, creating a horror so beautiful and rebellious that the rest of us can only watch with awe and envy.

The school shooter is not an isolated phenomenon, he is the final product of the Revolution. But alas, most revolutionaries sell out too soon. Not many are willing to become martyrs for the cause. Instead we fade away into hedonism and self-loathing narcissism. Corporations harness the sentimentality of our fading revolution to sell us running shoes.

What a miserable generation of old people we will become! Not only did we sell out like past generations, but we didn't even know what we were trying to do. Our grandparents tried to create an orderly and decent society, and failed. Our parents were revolutionaries for peace and love, but they all sold out. And what about us? We gave ourselves over to every desire. We shook a defiant fist at everything and nothing. What was our revolution? What was our struggle? Perhaps we wanted to end up empty inside. If so, we may have been the first American generation ever to succeed in its struggle.