Murder vs. Justifiable Homicide

So libertarian Charles Murray recently said of abortion: "It’s a murder—it’s a homicide—but sometimes homicide is justified." (Salute to Matt Archbold.)

Sometimes homicide IS justified. When the only way to prevent an imminent murder is to slay the imminent perpetrator, that is justifiable homicide. There are other cases. Justifiable homicide is the entire point of Just War Theory -- to delineate the cases where nations may engage in mass, military homicide. But it is ALSO to delineate where such use of force is NOT justified. In fact, it makes the case that it is possible for soldiers fighting a just war to commit murder on the battlefield.

By having sex with a man, a woman voluntarily assumes the risk of pregnancy. The pregnancy is certainly not the fault of the child. Even if she becomes pregnant from rape, bear in mind that the child is neither the perpetrator of the rape, nor his accomplice, nor his co-conspirator. The child is every bit as much a victim of the rapist as the mother; he has denied his child its inherent right to be reared by its own parents in a stable, permanent marriage. I don't see any justification for slaying the child.

Murder is unjustified. The lack of justification is what defines "murder" as a subset of "homicide." Cases of homicide which are murder and cases of homicide which are justifiable have NO overlap. Mr. Murray's statement is profoundly irrational. He needs to either admit that abortion is murder, or make the case that it's justifiable homicide, and not equivocate the two.

Blogrollin' on Executive Fiat Mass Murder

Was Bush's decision that his people could torture captives gravely evil and utterly inexcusable? You bet. Has Obama done even worse? You bet! (salute to The Anchoress, whose post here is worth reading.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Hot Air's story, which has the video, in case embedding doesn't work right.

Does this excuse Bush's use of torture? Nope. It just demonstrates that our Ruling Class has no respect for the rule of law, for morality, or for us, regardless of which side of the aisle they may call home. I have no solutions. I agree with Zippy when he says that national office elections are basically theater meant to reconcile us to being the subjects of the Ruling Class.

On Newtown, CT, and Policy

I ran across Larry Correia's statements on mass shootings and what makes people safe in Mark Shea's commentariat.

Larry Correia may truly be one of the most qualified of people to discuss the issue of how gun ownership and use affect criminal behavior, including mass shootings like what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary. I have seen nothing I think you would do better to read if you wish to be informed on the relevant issues, especially not anything I've written.

Mafia Discourse and the Church Militant

This post is going to ramble. Once again, I've seen a number of things online that just seem to tie together.

This article was on the front page of Catholic Exchange today; in it, Dr. Stanley Williams takes Sean Hannity to task for his use of what Eric Scheske once called "mafia discourse tactics" (and on Fr. Thomas Eutener, at that)! It seems to me that all too often, such tactics are used to avoid the truth.

Then I found a link to this post by Adoro te Devote. She goes on at length about what it means to be a confirmed Catholic -- it means we've volunteered to be part of the Church Militant, to go into spiritual and rhetorical battle to defend and promote the Faith. But she also expounds on the way we are to do this: with caritas. St Paul tells us that without caritas, all other gifts of the Spirit are nothing.

I don't mean to suggest that there is no place for all-out warfare. There are cases where our opponents clearly intend nothing less than our complete destruction, and doing whatever it takes to stop them is called for by the Church. (The Caveman makes the case for executions here, and provides an example of when warfare is so justified.) But such cases are rare. I think the Church is better served by initially giving others the benefit of the doubt, and not presuming hostility before it has been demonstrated.

Franz Jägerstätter, martyr, Beatus

I'd finished with Catholic Caveman, and wandered over to Catholic Anarchy. Yeah, the two are very different. I fully agree with the Caveman on the need for more manliness, particularly in the Church. And I agree with Michael Iafrate over at Catholic Anarchy, that we ought not have invaded Iraq. I expect that he and I are fellow=travelers regarding the War on Terror as well. But this here is my blog, and I'd like to write about Franz Jägerstätter, who came to my attention via Catholic Anarchy.

Jägerstätter was one of many Catholics martyred by the Third Reich. St. Benedicta of the Cross (Edith Stien) was martyred for being a Jewish convert to Catholicism in a city where the Catholic Church decried the Nazi deportation of Jews from every pulpit. St. Maximillian Kolbe was arrested and sent to Auschwitz for sheltering some 2,000 Jews in his Franciscan friary and speaking out against the Nazis via amateur radio. He was killed because he thought it better that he should die than Franciszek Gajowniczek, who had a family. But Jägerstätter was killed for one reason only: he refused to carry a rifle for Hitler. And he refused because he recognized, as Pope Pius XII made clear in Summi Pontificatus, that Naziism was clearly incompatible with authentic Christianity. He offered to carry medical supplies and serve as a medic in the Wehrmacht, but that wasn't enough, and he was executed for it. Refusing to aid in evil, regardless of the cost, is heroism worthy of our respect, and emulation if possible and/or necessary.

Most of what I've seen praising Jägerstätter comes from voices that seem to abhor war unreservedly and praise pacifism in every case. (edit: thanks to The Western Confucian, I have found this exception.) Nothing I've seen suggests that he would have been such a voice. He saw that the Nazi Party, in both ideology and action, was completely unChristian, and he refused to take even the most limited part in their evil. But I saw no sign that he would have had similar objections to bearing arms in just defense of his nation. In my opinion, the war against the Axis was a just war, though at times conducted unjustly. Of course, the Axis made it so much more difficult by how they conducted themselves. The point I'm trying to make is that first, it is necessary to fight evil in every case. But even in fighting great evil -- and the evil of the Axis was very great -- one must not succumb to the temptation to fight evil by doing evil.