We’re all very concerned about the lethal consequences of “extremism” these days.

Who, we might ask, are the extremists most responsible for millions of deaths, with the full knowledge and support of their government?

How about people who think no time, no method, no concern for safety, should limit those who make their living killing unborn babies?

“I support letting women and their doctors make this decision without government getting involved,” [Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman-Shultz] volunteered in a statement. “Period. End of story.”

One day earlier, Kansas governor Sam Brownback had signed into law the “Unborn Child Protection from Dismemberment Abortion Act,” which would, according to the Associated Press, “ban a common second-trimester procedure that critics describe as dismembering a fetus.”

“Dismemberment” is not a term of propaganda.

(source: Democrats Are the Real Abortion Extremists)

Indeed, it is not. (Read the article.)

I do not care for the notion that one party or another is the custodian of God’s will for Americans, or the world, or even any given issue. The politics of mass-market democracy, especially, are too duplicitous and corrupt to justify confidence–instead, we really must double down on “put not your trust in princes.”

But as I said months ago, and keep saying in various ways, 

There is no sincere and actual question to be resolved about the legal and moral standing of a recognizeable human child who is acquiring language and responding to pain. You may just barely be able to argue that torturing a dog to death is not the sort of thing we have an obligation to stop (you would be wrong, but you could make a case for it). You might honestly be unable to commit to the idea that the first four cells of a human being are just as human as the next thirty trillion (the cure for that is some basic medical knowledge, or spending time among loving families welcoming life). It is simply impossible to make a rational argument for slaughtering recognizeable humans; the only way to do it is to flatly refuse to evaluate the actual evidence, and substitute distractions for that evidence.

Do not waste my time talking about the feelings of whales, or the needs of Gaia, while you kill infant humans. Do not waste my time talking about Turing tests and the meaning of the Singularity, while you kill infant humans. Do not waste my time preening about the relative merits of Palestinian and Israeli human rights violations while you kill infant humans. And do not waste my time arguing for your preferred set of tax benefits and carve-outs for your preferred corporatist-regulatory conglomerates while you kill infant humans.

To maintain that we have no obligation to prevent the deliberate and brutal killing of recognizeable, suffering, helpless members of our own species–human beings–is bigotry, unscientific bigotry, the sort of thing that medieval Christendom rescued us from; it is the very essence of the Dark Ages and the dark side of pagan empires.

Sooner forward to Judgment than back to that, people.

(source: This Exam Only Needs One Question | Hang Together)

As long as there is only one party in American politics that does not actually cheer the slaughter of innocents, it will be hard for anyone affiliated with the other party to earn trust from me.

And it shouldn’t be hard to find a few million others like me, in this respect.

Might take a little moral courage, though. And a little bit of willingness to be reasonable when the mob is not.

Any takers?