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It can seem that extreme views
aren’t so much points on a line as on a circle: Once they pass the middle, they
get closer as they move.
The stories happened within a
few days of each other, though if anyone compared them I didn’t notice. First a
group calling itself the “Earth Liberation Front” lit arson fires that caused
over $12 million in damage to a ski resort in Vail, Colorado. Less than a week
later, Dr. Barnett Slepian, an abortionist practicing in Buffalo, New York, was
slain in his home by sniper-fire. As this is written, no arrests have been made
in either case.
While such incidents aren’t
common in the grand scheme of things, they are also not as rare as one would
like. There have been several well-publicized attacks on abortion clinics and
practitioners in recent years, some fatal. The reports I read on the Colorado
arson indicate that some “eco-terrorist” factions have tired of targets like
logging and land development and are turning their attention to tourism. Timber
industry employees have been killed in the past, and I have little doubt that
tourists will one day join them on the bulls-eye.
A noble cause can be a matter of
opinion, as are the boundaries of the cause itself. There are those in the
pro-choice camp who are sickened by late-term abortions, pro-life advocates who
would allow the procedure after incest or rape, environmentalists who support
responsible logging, and others who wouldn’t make lumber if the tree died of old
age. Whichever side you take, these are matters of debate for most Americans, a
people who often seem to love nothing better.
But for a small few, debate and
legal remedies aren’t enough. What drives them? I don’t think it’s right and
wrong; their evil methods betray them. It might be a consumptive desire for
“valor,” a need to be pure at any cost, but it’s a purity few of us would
recognize.
I’d have blamed zealotry once,
but some of history’s greatest figures have burned with single-minded purpose
that left room for little else. Mother Teresa and Mahatma Gandhi come to mind,
but many unknowns spend lives of peaceful dedication to a cause or movement,
never yielding or tiring, yet never posing a physical threat.
So perhaps there is no universal
root, but if there is I’m betting on pride. Not the glow one feels from
accomplishment, or even the more obnoxious variety that deludes some of their
infallibility. No, I think of pride twisted into hateful conceit, transcending
right, wrong, good, evil, purpose, or conscience. A pride that knows no victory
but victory.
How else does one explain murder
in the name of life? Society can debate for eternity whether abortion is
killing, and probably will. I hold that belief myself and know it offends some,
just as the idea that it isn’t offends others. But if that is what one thinks,
how could they rationally perpetrate a crime like the slaying of Dr. Slepian?
The simple answer is the right
one: they couldn’t. Rationality has no more to do with it than abortion. It’s
a self-obsessed determination to impose the will, the means be hanged. The ends
too, for that matter.
In Vail the arsonists’ stated
goal was to protect the habitat of the lynx. How habitat is protected by
burning a piece of it is an open question, as is whether an area where the
animals haven’t been seen for over 20 years is a lynx habitat at all. But as in
the Slepian case, logic is not the point.
The usual ethical gnats have
played these tragedies for political advantage, using the opportunity to paint
those with peacefully opposing views as lunatics. That’s arguably a lesser
arrogance than that of the arsonists and sniper, but an irony just the same.
I had hoped to end with a
succinct, pithy comment, tying it all up in a neat little bundle. I can’t.
Until someone does, I pray that the legitimate dissent our founders envisioned
won’t be profaned by those moved only by their own vicious egos.
© 1997 – 2002 Brent Morrison
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