I’ve wanted to stay away from the murder of Dr. George Tiller because in my experience abortion is a topic in which normally sane people tend to lose their bearings. I have no desire to get embroiled in that. That said, those that cheer on murder for a cause will reap the whirlwind–if it’s okay to kill people you don’t agree with then there’s going to be a lot of bloodshed, and if what Dr. Tiller did rises to the level of a capital crime though not legal defined as murder, then there are some polluters and munitions manufacturers that might get a turn up against the wall.

When Dr. Tiller fell, those that had helped make him a target did a lot of wriggling. It’s nothing new. I was immediately struck by the aftermath to the assassination of President William McKinley in September, 1901. That April, an editorial in William Randolph Hearst’s New York Journal (not written by Hearst) had discussed McKinley in these terms: “If bad institutions and bad men can be got rid of only by killing them, then the killing must be done.”

There is no evidence that McKinley’s assassin read those words, but they demonstrate the atmosphere of the time–this editorial was the culmination of a long series of vitriolic attacks upon the president in Hearst papers. Even before McKinley’s demise, Vice-President Theodore Roosevelt blamed the publisher directly: “Every scoundrel like Hearst and his satellites who for whatever purposes appeal to and inflames evil human passion has made himself an accessory before the fact to every crime of his nature.”

As detailed in Paul Grondahl’s book on Roosevelt, “I Rose Like a Rocket,” the accusation drove Hearst out of politics and made him a pariah for a time. Sample editorial: “As for Hearst personally… He will always remain the degraded, unclean thing that he is, shunned by every honest citizen, whose wandering feet there shall be no resting place where the American flag rises and falls on the breeze.” Roosevelt added, “He preaches the gospel of envy, hatred, and unrest. He cares nothing for the nation, not for any citizen in it… He is the most potent single influence for evil we have in our life.”

…As are all who preach dissension.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 5th, 2009 at 5:46 am and is filed under The Political Mindscape. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.