People like Ed Feser (Pasadena City College), apologist for discrimination, now apologist for murder. It would really be hard to make this stuff up. Meanwhile, some suggestions for what to do by those who support abortion rights for women and oppose domestic terrorism against providers.
UPDATE: Jeremy Shipley posts a perceptive reply to Professor Feser in the comments section:
Of course, Professor Feser knows that.
ANOTHER: More information on the tactics of the terrorists of the Christian right.
AND MORE on the latest victim of the domestic terrorists.
UPDATE 6/6: Professor Feser's non-reply. A word for Professor Feser: it is not a "lie" to call you on your morally depraved rhetoric (and to link to your very words to prove the point!). Anyone in their right mind can see what the point of comparing an abortion provider to a serial killer/cannibal actually is, and it isn't to lend weight to your two or three (prudent) sentences expressing nominal objections to his murder (cf. Mr. Shipley's remarks, quoted above). The entire profession, except perhaps a few fringe lunatics (most of whom are already your co-bloggers), understands what's going on, which is why no one objects to my calling you on it. Your hysterical rhetoric in reply is just a giveaway that you know you've been caught red-handed, as it were. You and your co-bloggers are, indeed, "what's wrong with the world," as many readers of this blog have noted before. ADDENDUM 6/8: Professor Feser, please calm down--I didn't link to your now lengthy "reply" to Mr. Shipley because I hadn't seen it, because, unlike you, I don't spend the entire day reading blogs. The post I did link to was your purported reply to me. I am happy to link to your reply to Shipley, since all readers can assess its merits for themselves, just as all readers can assess whether or not you are an apologist for murder, since I linked to your comments in the first place. Of course, you know what you are, and that is why you're increasingly hysterical on this subject.
ANOTHER 6/10: This is a very funny, and apt, recap of the whole back-and-forth. (Addendum: I see Professor Feser has already discovered this item and--of course--'responded' at length.)
A FINAL UPDATE, 6/12: The comment section at the post linked above is instructive, both about Feser and his readers, who seem to have a lot of trouble staying focused on the issue at hand. Professor Feser reports deleting some of the personal attacks on him, but, being a high-minded and honorable fellow (unlike all his critics, of course), he left all the personal attacks aimed at me--including his own:
And what do you think Nietzsche would have thought of a pathetically status-obsessed egalitarian university professor whose "living dangerously" consisted of firing off nasty blog posts from the comfort of an office building, and only ever targeted at people he thought couldn't hurt him professionally?
Since no on else cares about this freak show, let me address my remarks to its main audience. Professor Feser, you're obviously burning with fury that I've called you out, more than once now, on your twisted view of the world, but surely you can do better than irrelevant personal attacks? I have focused on the appalling nature of your views, why not keep the focus there? When your fury subsides, I assume you will acknowledge that I do not produce rankings because I'm "status-obsessed": nothing has caused more harm to my professional "status" than producing them (I've remarked on this before, and it's obvious to anyone awake) and my actual opinion of lots of "high-status" academics is a matter of long public record. (Think for a moment about why someone sympathetic to Marx would be interested in rankings. You're not much of a philosopher, but you're not stupid, I'm sure you can figure this out.) And you know as well as I do that the list of people I've excorciated includes philosophers and academics of far more significance than you (that's the extent of my egalitarianism, I am an equal opportunity critic). I'm not as big a coward as most academics and I do say what I think. That I've been as professionally successful as I have been (is this part of what irritates you?) is attributable to some combination of smarts and good luck. It surely can not be attributed to my imprudent habit of targetting every religious fanatic, reactionary, mediocrity, and fool, whether they're at Harvard or Chicago or Pasadena City College. You and your swarmy co-blogger Beckwith had dropped off my radar screen until you showed up as apologists for discrimination against gay men and women and I started reading the extraordinarily deranged blog you folks produce. Catholicism and your sophomoric version of "natural law theory" do not excuse the moral depravity and venal creepiness of so much of what you folks believe. On the other hand, I confess I was amused by all the effort Professor Beckwith put in to his exercise in failed reasoning by analogy, but I assume it was prudence on his part to depart from normal practice at WWWW and not open comments, lest someone make the obvious points in reply. In any case, it's my intention to resume ignoring you, since mine and my readers' appetite for the "bizarro world" of WWWW (to borrow Professor Norcross's phrase) is probably sated.
Do the poster and commenters think that a relevant disanalogy arises from the fact that Tiller performed late-term abortions only when either the fetus was discovered to have a severe defect or when the woman's health was threatened? If not, why not? It certainly seems to me that even if I thought Tiller and others had reached the wrong conclusion that I could recognize the moral question as sufficiently difficult that a comparison with Jeffrey Dahmer was beyond the pale. Indeed, what is the purpose of making such a comparison? Surely it is not meant to rationally persuade others to your conclusion. You can't possibly have sat down to write this post thinking that you would change anyone's mind by this argument.
Furthermore, your injunction against vigilantism rings a bit hollow. Do you really mean for this to be an absolutely inviolable principle? Suppose a racist government refuses to protect a minority from persecution. Don't members of the minority have a right to protect themselves? Or, suppose a government refuses to outlaw rape. Would it not be justifiable to protect women by means outside the law? Do you really believe that there are absolutely no circumstances in which vigilante action is justified? I suspect insincerity. You offer a tenuous premise as the only reason more doctors should not be murdered. In light of the fact that your main argument cannot possibly be construed as an attempt to persuade and in fact adds nothing but incendiary rhetoric, I'm inclined to conjecture that the injunction against vigilantism is just cover for an incitement to further violence. That is, I suspect some might read this post and think "if the government had refused to stop Dahmer, I would have"; furthermore, I suspect you know that.