Moral Relativity

It's funny how bad arguments based on faulty reasoning are okay in some circumstances but not others. Megan McArdle understands murdering people whom you think are guilty of a crime--as long as the crime is of her choosing.

My argument is that abortion, like slavery, is becoming in this country an issue upon which people have no reasonable political recourse. I'll go further, and say that the process by which 7 judges enforced their consciences on the American public was itself borderline illegitimate; it was first, not in their proper job description, and second, a bad way to run a government.

[yap]

Questions of fundamental human rights that have been closed off from the normal political process are very likely to produce violence. I can simultaneously, as I do, want Tiller's murderer given a long jail substance, and worry that we've left his fellow lone gunmen no other outlets for their legitimate moral beliefs.

When you say that it's understandable to break the law if you have what you think is a really, really good reason, then anyone who thinks he has a good reason can do whatever he wants. Kill Jews. Beat women. Lynch blacks. Shoot doctors. McArdle is far too careful to say that it's okay or even the right thing to do to kill abortion doctors. But she sure is sticking up for the mindset that creates lawless killers. The only difference between the male supremacist and the white supremacist is that McArdle has more sympathy for the man who kills in the name of God than she does for the man who kills in the name of Hitler.