Eliminationism on parade: Coulter, Joe the Plumber, and military chaplains' leader wish for deaths
By David Neiwert Saturday Jun 27, 2009 12:00pm
The right-wing pundits have been busy whipping a fresh batch of eliminationist rhetoric this week.
Leading the parade, as is often the case, was Ann Coulter, appearing on Bill O'Reilly's show on Monday:
Coulter: Well, apparently, this one random nut who shot Tiller -- I don't really like to think of it as a murder. It was terminating Tiller in the 203rd trimester.
... I am personally opposed to shooting abortionists, but I don't want to impose my moral values on others.
... OK, their logic is, if you don't believe in abortion, don't have an abortion. If you don't believe in shooting abortionists, don't shoot an abortionist.
Coulter actually was just regurgitating this week's column for cable consumption:
I'm not justifying it, but I understand when you take democracy away from people, some of them will react violently. The total number of deaths attributable to Roe were seven abortion clinic workers and 40 million unborn babies.
... I wouldn't kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn't want to impose my moral values on others. No one is for shooting abortionists. But how will criminalizing men making difficult, often tragic, decisions be an effective means of achieving the goal of reducing the shootings of abortionists?
Following the moral precepts of liberals, I believe the correct position is: If you don't believe in shooting abortionists, then don't shoot one.
As Fred Clarkson observes:
So that's four times in the past year and a half that she has coyly or not so coyly justified political assassination: Before prominent religious right audiences; in a nationally syndicated column, and on national television.
Meanwhile, as Blue Texan at FDL observes, Joe the Plumber was joining the parade with an open wish for the lynching of Sen. Chris Dodd:
Wurzelbacher has a reputation for being a blunt, politically incorrect speaker. Referring to Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., more than once, Wurzelbacher asked, "Why hasn't he been strung up?"
...Referring to the Constitution as "almost like the Bible," Wurzelbacher said of the Founding Fathers: "They knew socialism doesn't work. They knew communism doesn't work."
The real prize, however, belongs to Col. Jim Ammerman, leader of the Full Gospel Chaplaincy. as Bruce Wilson at Talk2Action reports,
As noted in the Newsweek story, last fall - as the presidential election was heating up, retired Colonel E.H. "Jim" Ammerman, in the official September 2008 newsletter [ PDF of newsletter ] of his Department of Defense approved chaplain endorsing agency, published a letter which suggested, per the advice of a fabricated Abraham Lincoln quote, that four US Senators should be be "arrested, quickly tried and hanged!!!"...
The alleged crime ? - voting against a Senate bill that would have established English as the official language of the United States. Newsweek did not reveal the names of the four senators. But a May 20, 2009 Huffington Post story by Military Religious Freedom Foundation Senior Researcher Chris Rodda does: Democratic Party senators Dodd, Biden, Clinton, and Obama.
