June 2, 2009

• Abortion, Murder, Terrorism, and Bullshit

  

  Scott Roeder was scheduled for a court appearance in Sedgwick County, Kansas at 3 PM Central time today.  He made that appearance by video link from jail, presumably because of fears of mob violence if he appeared in public.  Perhaps the mobs authorities feared were the media.  Roeder was arraigned on a charge of first-degree murder.  That seems reasonable, given that after publishing several open threats against Dr. George Tiller, he carried a gun into church and shot him in front of witnesses.

  And that is just about where the reasonable discourse leaves off in this case.  Many of those for whom the murder was significant are either jubilant or outraged, depending on their stances on abortion.  Another faction is calling the killing “terrorism,” assuming that Roeder was a minion of a hate group, making a statement meant to frighten other abortion doctors and the women who might need their professional services.

  The Jewish Anti-Defamation League has made a statement about the case, presumably because of things Bill O’Reilly said.  I tried to track down some authoritative and accurate info on that, but after encountering several contradictory sources and at least four websites that tried to sneak malware in on me, I gave up.  Here is what I did find:

  Roeder is known to have been associated with the “Sovereign Citizen” tax protest movement, an offshoot of Posse Comitatus, “an intermittently active, loosely organized group of ‘Christian Identity’ activists dedicated to survivalism, vigilantism, and anti-government agitation.” [source]  In 1996, Scott Roeder was on parole or probation for I-know-not-what, when he was caught with bomb-making materials.  Explosives charges were dropped due to a technicality, but he is reported to have served sixteen months for probation (or parole) violation.  At the time, his father claimed that Scott, “wouldn’t harm a fly.”

  His ex-wife is reported to have claimed that Scott suffered from periodic episodes of mental illness.  Some people’s reaction to that is to see it as a ploy to prevent his being prosecuted for this murder.  I seriously doubt that.  I suspect that it was his ex-wife’s way of politely saying that from time to time he crossed the line from just neurotic to delusional and seriously disturbed.  Or, perhaps she meant that he was a complete nut job who had a few lucid moments.  Who knows?

  I found no evidence anywhere to support a contention that Scott Roeder is a terrorist.  He was probably influenced by anti-abortion propaganda spread by terrorists whose aims include scaring women out of having abortions and frightening doctors out of performing them.  By his own statements, however, he had a specific agenda involving Dr. Tiller. 

  Scott wasn’t any “outside agitator” coming into Wichita to blow up a clinic.  He was a local man who hated one specific physician.  He had a single target, and he hit it.  Those who see terrorism in every act of violence, and say that political assassination is the same as terrorism, are more terrorists than most of the murderers and assassins are.  We have too many psychological terrorists assisting the aims of the violent terrorists by spreading fear of terrorism. Warren Hern, a Colorado physician and close friend of Tiller’s, who said that Tiller’s death leaves him the “only doctor in the world” now performing late-term abortions, called it, “assassination.”  That’s what I call it.
  

  • 7:25 pm
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