I thought what was most shocking about the Pro Life leader doing a Nazi salute was the absolute glee it garnered from the Pro-Life crowd. They weren't just applauding the speech, they clearly reacted to the Nazi salute. Just disgusting and honestly scary.
I think they would probably say that they do not think it’s a Nazi salute, and that they were mocking those who did think it was a Nazi salute. But still seemed really inappropriate in either case. It limited the effectiveness of their message, but I suppose they might say they don’t care about communicating to those who do not share their beliefs in total.
Yeah I mean, I think it was a tongue in cheek, stick it to the libs gag. I think it was completely inappropriate and I hated it. I agree that it wholly undermined the message (I assume) he was getting at. I was relieved when I found out he wasn't a Catholic priest. If he was, I'd have written to his bishop.
Yeah, I mean it’s a fascinating implication of arguing for equivalence between abortion and run-of-the-mill murder
At the risk of further dovetailing this thread, I can maybe distill where we're missing each other, and I actually think a lot of it is semantics. "Murder" can be kind of a broad term. The definition of murder I'm operating on is something like "the unjustified, intentional killing of another human being." You can spar with that definition if you want, but as far as where we're missing each other, I do recognize recognize there's many important distinctions between (a) killing a stranger on the street and (b) participating in an abortion, even though both (imo) are "murder" (under my definition, above). Principally, I think the culpability of abortion participants and street murderers (using your example) are different because (ostensibly) abortion participants have a rational belief that what they're doing is not wrong. Society largely tells them it's not wrong. Our street murderers can't claim either of those things.
Even though i think it's a profound wrong, I recognize that reasonable minds (e.g., us, here!) can disagree on the wrongness of intentionally killing a human being in the womb. I think there are some solid pro-abortion rights arguments -- I don't find them convincing, but I can see how someone, rationally could. So, even if I think they're functionally equivalent, I don't think the culpability of people participating in an abortion is the same as our street murderer. Hence, my response to the two are (justifiably, imo) different.
In any event, even if there wasn't a reason based on moral distinctions for treating the two murders differently (I think there is) there are tons of reasons other than "disingenuous belief" that people may not do "crazy crap" in response to stopping mass murder (e.g. fear, security, apathy, hopelessness, strategic).
It would seem that if a person believes that abortion is the exact same as any other kind of murder, then they have to make this their number one issue when it comes to voting. unless there’s another topic that is more significant than a crap ton of murders. Said differently, People who believe that abortion is murder are forced to be single issue voters aren’t they?
I would think so, yes.
