What’s Wrong with the World

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What’s Wrong with the World is dedicated to the defense of what remains of Christendom, the civilization made by the men of the Cross of Christ. Athwart two hostile Powers we stand: the Jihad and Liberalism...read more

Mark Pickup does not submit

I bet you think you know what this post is about. Muslim violence, right? Wrong.

Mark Pickup, for those of you unfamiliar with him, is a long-time pro-life writer and, nowadays, blogger who has progressive multiple sclerosis. I've talked just a little about him here.

We all know about the thuggish intimidation tactics of the Religion of Peace (tm). "Say we're a peaceful, non-violent religion, or we'll kill you," is pretty much their slogan. What is less well-known even among conservatives is the history of violence among death worshipers of other sorts. The pro-aborts and pro-euthanasia types have done an excellent public relations job of portraying themselves as flower children who stand about singing "Love Makes the World Go 'Round," their violent proclivities limited to...the unborn, the disabled, the elderly. Well, so okay, maybe pro-lifers don't think they're nonviolent. But still, the impression often is that at least they don't engage in ideologically motivated violence against fellow talking, mentally competent human beings over their political disagreements. Human Life Review did a service years ago by publishing this article about little-known incidents of pro-abortion ideological violence.

Now I come to learn today that Mark Pickup has been the recipient of intimidating communications (letters? e-mails? phone calls?) warning him not to write about Robert Latimer. For those of you who don't know who Robert Latimer might be...

I strongly suggest you read Mark's detailed article about him. But in brief, Latimer is the Canadian father who murdered his 12-year-old disabled daughter, Tracy, by putting her into his truck and running a hose from his truck's exhaust pipe into the vehicle. Latimer's chutzpah knows no bounds. After initially lying to conceal his crime, he has since decided that brazening it out is the best approach and has garnered a following who consider him just too, too charming and humane. Father of the year, in fact. Given parole earlier than his supposed minimum sentence allows, Latimer is now demanding a new trial in which the jury will decide not whether he murdered Tracy but whether he was morally justified in so doing. Presumably he wishes to write Canadian law anew so that a crime can be blatantly committed but all penalty remitted if the jury decides you were "justified."

Evidently Latimer's supporters are exceedingly enthusiastic, so much so that Pickup says the following at the top of his blog entry on this subject dated March 27, 2008:

I have received threatening communications designed to intimidate me from writing or making posts that portray Robert Latimer in a negative light. Therefore, I am republishing an earlier article in fuller detail about the Robert Latimer case, complete with references. I don't submit to any form of intimidation or threats.

Bravo for Mark. Let's join him. Just blog it all over the Web, y'all who have blogs. I thought of making the headline for this post "Latimer Supporters Threaten Disabled Pro-life Blogger," but I couldn't resist the allusion to the "I will not submit" T-shirts. So I'll leave that headline for some of you. When I see something like this, it gets my blood up. Not content with lauding this cold-blooded murderer, his followers seek to silence even those normal human beings who tell the truth about him and criticize his actions.

Let's be like Mark Pickup. We do not submit.

Comments (12)

Lydia,
Thanks for making this known.
I'm in.

Thanks Michael. If you have a link for a post later, feel free to post it here.

A somewhat related question. Recently, in Czech Republic, a mother of a healthy seven-year-old daughter got 80, 000 CZK as compensation for a previous unsuccessful abortion of this child.

See http://aktualne.centrum.cz/czechnews/clanek.phtml?id=522990

Does it have a parallel you know about? Has it a precedent in the Anglo-Saxon region?

The case you cite, Vlastimil, is somewhat similar to what are called "wrongful life" suits in some states in America. What's unusual about it is that the child in the case you cite was healthy. What I've seen of wrongful life suits is that they usually are only made when the child has a disability and the mother is suing someone or other for not having informed her of this, giving her a chance to abort the child. I believe not all states in the U.S. permit such suits.

What is just so very striking about Latimer's case, of course, is that Tracy was twelve years old and that he killed her in this entirely active and unambiguous way and still gets sympathy. I read that one poll shows something like 80% support for him among Canadians, though that may have been support for his getting parole rather than for his action per se. But still, he has an enormous amount of support in Canada.

Alright Lydia. I have been too busy to post lately at LTI, but this is too fun not to join in. ;-) I will get to it today.

Jay

Latimer is just going with the tide, pushing the envelope some but riding with the culture of death nonetheless.

We will see more of these cases from the mind your own business crowd, the crowd that in other areas can't have enough government power, the crowd that clings to and values their own lives.
Justification comes easy in the absence of a moral and empathetic consistency.

That may be true, but as long as laws against gassing your 12-year-old to death remain on the books, murderers like Latimer can and should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law.

Will blog it. If you don't mind, I'll nick your original newsy title. Here is another site for anyone interested: http://abortionviolence.com

Lydia, I couldn't agree more, my post wasn't meant to excuse this abomination.

I knew that, John. I wasn't getting on your case. I would just say that too much negative fatalism on the part of conservatives can lead to things' moving faster than they might have otherwise. The fact that something is illegal doesn't make it wrong, but where we do have the law on our side my own rhetorical approach is usually to take it for granted that we can use that fact to push back fairly decisively.

This story is awful. Just awful. When I was 17, there was a kid in the neighborhood with CP. He was about 12, and got around on a specially constructed tricycle into which he was firmly strapped, and wearing a helmet. He was one of the sweetest kids I ever knew, with a sense of humor (often self-deprecating) that evinced genuine wit and perception, who could poke fun without meanness. He was hard to understand at first, but we quickly got the hang of it. All the other kids in the neighborhood loved him, even the jerks, so amazed were we. We included him in as many activities as possible, which was difficult, of course, but he seemed to be our special charge. One day, swinging a bat at a pitched baseball (which he missed), he lost his balance and the tricycle tipped over. We heard his helmet crunch the pavement. Afraid to move him, several of us ran to his front door and told his mother, who calmly walked out with us (she possessed of a sort of unearthly patience that must come to those who care for the disabled). She took a look at him, then gave me permission to set him upright again. "I made contact," he said. He was fine, obviously, but the kind of kid I still think about a lot today. He seemed a kind of saint to me. I guess Tracy's mental integrity was not so well preserved as this fellow's, and these days that can be fatal.

I think that is indeed part of it, Bill. Pickup says that the newspaper stories kept referring to her as having the "mind of a four-month-old baby." It's okay to gas four-month-old babies? But you get the drift: They played to the masses by the supposedly terrible horror of a child's being 12 years old with the mind of an infant, as though this means, well, heck, let's kill her. Pickup indicates that there's reason to question the "four-month-old baby" characterization. I gather she vocalized but couldn't talk, which of course makes it hard to know how much was going on inside. Not that it matters, of course, but I guess it does matter to that large percentage of Canadians who support Latimer. And then there was the claim that she was in terrible pain all the time. But not only does that appear to have been greatly exaggerated, and not only is it no excuse for gassing somebody to death (!), what pain she had at the end of her life also appears to have been caused by a dislocated hip for which she needed surgery, which her parents were delaying because they felt they couldn't face another surgery for her! So Latimer put her out of his misery.

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