America and ISIS: Blood on our Hands

Cardinal O'Mally shaking the hand of SS John Kerry

It is legal to murder Christians in the Islamic State, the friendly new caliphate that has recently arisen on the Middle-Eastern frontier. Over 5,500 civilians thus far have been killed. This is surely a great number, surely indicative of a business-like offensive on the part of the Islamic State. These fellows know what they want, and they are willing to fight for it. 

In fact, their progress towards the goal that is nothing short of ummah is not so impressive as the remarkable progress of Planned Parenthood and its affiliates, who have easily and gainfully slaughtered tens of millions of innocent boys and girls not because they were Christian, but because they were (are) human.

What? Yes, because they are human. This is an intellectual breakdown of cosmic proportions.

We have a larger crisis on our hands. This is not to say that the murder of Christians in Iraq and Syria is a negligible event, but we must approach massive genocidal crises with a sense of proportion: in a few days time, the number of murdered children in America will surpass the number of murders perpetrated by members of ISIS. How long have we been preoccupied with ISIS? A few months.

HuffPo gives this number for one month of ISIS terrorism:

"1,922: The number of people killed in Iraq in June, according to government figures, making it the deadliest month since May 2007. Official figures report 1,393 civilians, 380 soldiers and 149 policemen among the dead. Another 2,610 people were wounded, the majority of them civilians."
Whereas abortion statistics in America go thusly: 100,516 every month.

Compare the following paragraph to the first paragraph of this post.

It is legal in America to destroy the life inside of a mother's womb merely to protect personal convenience: i.e. it is legal to murder a person because he/she is a person. Over 56 million murders have been committed by medical professionals against other humans since 1973. This is surely a number beyond the wildest nightmares of most, a number utterly staggering, a number beyond the reach of imagination. Stalin's regime is responsible for c. 20 million deaths, Hitler's for c. 42 million. Americans are responsible for the murder of over 56 million persons.

We sit here scrolling while our own countrymen are hard at work, churning in the voiceless victims, churning out bloody corpses, meanwhile condemning ISIS or some other terrorist group.

I don't know what else to say. It has come to this. It has come to a blindness, a hypocrisy too unwieldy to address. We must stand to defend our own! How can we pull the speck from our brothers' eyes with an M16 if we aren't willing to pull the telephone pole out of ours with a few arrests and some non-violent physical interventions? An easy price for 56 million lives!

We are not as yet morally equal to ISIS. We do not yet have their resolve. If we are to be true to anything, we must end this complacent political shmoozing with the enemies of humanity and protect our brothers and sisters who die as I write.

There are some who say that it is not well to always have abortion or other vital issues in mind. That sentiment is a bit too Aryan for me, and just as effective.

As a movement, we do need leadership. We need leadership that exhibits not excellent taste in business attire or the ability to finagle daytime TV hours for interviews, but the heartfelt determination to end abortion, to "stop", as Pope Francis says: "it is licit to stop the unjust aggressor. I underline the verb: stop. I do not say bomb, make war, I say stop by some means. With what means can they be stopped? These have to be evaluated. To stop the unjust aggressor is licit."

We have the numbers, and we have the truth: it is far easier to prove that innocent children be saved from slaughter than it is to prove the same for Christians in the Middle-East (and this truth is universally accepted).

Without a leadership that is intent on stopping murder from occurring, we are lost in a senseless legal battle with the same forces that will force an unwilling man to bake a cake for a gay couple's wedding.

Such inanity does not merit dialogue, but the use of nonviolent physical resistance. If we do not do more than make a show with our chanting and free concerts at the March for Life, there will be blood on our hands. There is already blood on our hands.

A Challenge to the Pro-Life Establishment

Abortion and the Postmodern Imagination

"If the law purports to require actions that no-one should ever do, it cannot rightly be complied with; one's moral obligation is not to obey but to disobey....If the lawmakers (i) are motivated not by concern for the community's common good but by greed or vanity (private motivations that make them tyrants, whatever the content of their legislation), or (ii) act outside the authority granted to them, or (iii) while acting with a view to the common good apportion the necessary burdens unfairly, their laws are unjust and in the forum of reasonable conscience are not so much laws as acts of violence....Such laws lack moral authority, i.e. do not bind in conscience; one is neither morally obligated to conform nor morally obligated not to conform." 

"All who govern in the interests of themselves rather than of the common good are tyrants....Against the regime's efforts to enforce its decrees, one has the right of forcible resistance; as a private right this could extend as far as killing the tyrant as a foreseen side-effect of one's legitimate self-defence."

-- from the Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas

Today, I go to work, wait anxiously for lunch time, sit outside and bask contemplatively in the play of sunlight through oak leaves, turn quickly into the building at the appointed time, let the last hours of rushing and typing and talking fly by, and go home to entertain myself with -- maybe -- a short read and certainly a show or two. Cigarette and wine after cycling and water. Aestheticizing. Bed.

Tomorrow, I will behave similarly, and perhaps call it "the holiness of the ordinary". 

In fact, many Americans will do likewise. They will be educated, self-educating, confident, secure, and moderately sane. They will be capable of thoroughly and admirably condemning the social ills around them, especially in the company of friends, of making sweet moan about the many seething injustices that exist almost by default in our rotten society. They will swear, philosophize, and prophesy. 

They will go out to eat on weekends, sleep in on Saturdays, mow the lawn, hate and love themselves -- with a little more love than hate -- and live quotidianly.

Aestheticizing on the non-despairing hope of helplessness as parousia slowly grows nearer.

The Metamorphosis of Narcissus, Salvador Dali

We only do what we like. We go off to die in wars when peace is hell. When peace is not quite hell, but a fine balance of leisure and self-deceit of salvation, we can endure.

And hence the ever-crumbling edifice of abortion yet lingers.

There was a story a few years ago about a woman who stood her ground as a large man armed with a hammer beat her door down. Her two children were with her in the house, and she was going to protect them. She told as much to the 911 dispatcher. When the man rushed through the door, she shot him full in the chest with a 12-gauge shotgun. 

We consider it right and just to kill a man who would harm an innocent. The woman in the story had no charges placed against her. 

We consider it admirable to defend a human life, admirable because it is a difficult duty. We would call a soldier a coward who hid as his wounded brethren were murdered. We call soldiers heroes who defend their country, placing themselves in the sight of death in order to kill.

In keeping with this consideration, we ourselves organize large marches on Washington, elaborate displays of passion with no follow-through. ...

The citizens of the capitol prepare their businesses for great profit, concerts are organized, politicians make seasonal speeches pantomiming deep commitment to the cause, friends meet and talk, tourism abounds, and everyone goes home fat and happy. Thanks for coming, pro-lifers. See you next year!

And the intellectuals aestheticizing on leisure in a sinking world, waiting for the sun to liven gray tendrils that pull forth dawn.

Our moral fantasy is our great masque of protestation. It is a device of self-preservation, an intellectual necessity if we are to maintain personal safety, and, furthermore, comfort, convenience. Our great masque: our legality, our passive inoffensiveness, our pattering-about on sidewalks. 300,000 strong could shake a country. 300,000 strong could certainly shake a capitol. ISIS is not nearly so strong. But we are poor stewards of our flesh, and allow the murders.

Indeed, we have such complex rationalizations which we describe as peace, patience, humility, hope. Unfortunately, these are in practice fear, sloth, helplessness, anxiety.

We permit the mutilation and murder of innocent human beings. Right now. This minute. And the next.

The plea through the courts has been accomplished. The plea has been rejected (Cf. 1973). This was, in truth, a declaration of war. Those who met that devil's declaration -- priests who chained themselves to the doors -- are now despised and ridiculed for tarnishing the reputation of the cause.

This should be a ready sign: that we put on a pretty face for murder. "Listen to us, postmodern society. We're legitimate!" we whine.

And the intellectuals just waiting and aestheticizing. Not helping the psychosis of the masses.

And any mention of physical resistance is met with the argument that it would be paradox. An unworkable contradiction.

An unworkable contradiction is declaring abortion to be the most heinous evil we now suffer and standing by while the perpetrator struts from his Bentley to the clinic door.


This is a posture against hope.


The revolution in policy will begin. And if it does not, then ISIS will have been our moral superior: they annihilate what they perceive to be evil.