I am probably a bit biased, but I (Bryan) think that today’s column is one of Kevin Leininger’s best ever. (That said, the NS really does need a better picture of me. I have substituted my favorite Bryan Brown picture, with mustache)
Simply cutting and pasting today’s News Sentinel article is not fair use unless commented upon. Thus the black is Kevin’s and the red are my own comments.
BY KEVIN LEININGER
Murder simply is not justified, regardless of philosophy
You could say George Tiller helped shape the last 28 years of Bryan Brown’s life.So when Brown, one of Fort Wayne’s leading pro-life activists, condemns Sunday’s murder of Kansas physician Tiller, one of the nation’s few “providers” of late-term abortions, it’s not just philosophical or political. An uncomfortable but very real connection between the two men has been violently broken – and that makes it a little personal, too.
I personally reminded George Tiller of his date with his Maker in this post during Lent. I did not realize it would arrive so soon, but any and all of us can find ourselves before that imposing throne in the next minute, or ten, or ten thousand.
“What happened is tragic, and on so many levels,” said Brown, a New Haven native who moved to Wichita in 1991 to oppose Tiller’s practice after he and other pro-lifers were arrested and fined $61,000 for picketing near the former Women’s Health Clinic at 827 Webster St. – a building Brown’s pro-life Archangel Institute bought [make that is renting, Donegal Corridor, LLC owns the building] after he returned to Fort Wayne in 2007. “It’s tragic for his wife and children. It’s tragic for Kansas, because violence will not help, and for the pro-life movement, because this will be a pretext for more government surveillance and control.”
It is also tragic because the Kansas medical authorities were moving against George Tiller’s license to practice his “medicine” (that sure begs a question) and, had some zealot not slain him, it is quite likely he would have been forced into retirement. He was, in a word, near checkmate.
Brown called Tiller’s shooter a “coward” who is likely to make something of a martyr out of Tiller, who only last week was acquitted on 19 charges of performing illegal abortions. That because, for abortion foes, Tiller’s murder is both a moral and public-relations nightmare – one sure to be exploited by a generally unsympathetic news media: a man claiming to be “pro-life” guns down a defenseless man as he was ushering at church.
Whatever happened to the historic doctrine of sanctuary? Of course, it was an ELCA sanctuary, so links to history (even Lutheran history) would have been strained, to say the least.
But, some will say, the movement’s most radical elements have now reaped what they have sown. If Tiller was indeed a “mass murderer … every bit as vile as the Nazi war criminals,” as Operation Rescue Founder Randall Terry said this week, well, doesn’t that seek to justify murder in defense of the unborn?
No, Brown said firmly.
Kill an abortionist to stop abortions, Mr. Terry? Why Randall did not even block access to South Bend’s abortion clinic while at Notre Dame for a month. He did, however, perform his circus act of pushing dolls around in carriages. (No little dogs or ponies in the act, I am told.) And no worry of FACE charges, either.
“Abortion is legal, so by definition it can’t be murder,” said Brown, who supported himself as a pro-life missionary in Kansas [actually others supported me, mostly great Kansans] before earning a law degree from Pat Robertson’s Regent University in Virginiain 1996. Brown’s arms-length relationship with Tiller took another twist in 2003 when Brown was chosen to run the Kansas Consumer Protection and Center for Law & Policy by state Attorney General Phill Kline, a staunch advocate of pro-life causes defeated in his bid for re-election four years later.
Brown’s pro-life activities during his four years in the office are unclear. According to a 2008 Associated Press report, Kline testified during Tiller’s trial that Brown had helped with the facts of the case but was not consulted on legal matters. A memo also indicated Brown and his contacts had obtained names of clinic employees, the AP added.
Kline actually knew little about the factual side of the case, focusing mostly upon the legal side himself. He delegated some fact gathering to me, I passed the plate onto others. My hands were very full running the Consumer Protection & Antitrust Division and chasing crooks and conmen in that context.
But Brown said the only link he had to Tiller during that time was when pro-choice supporters used his pro-life background in the battle to unseat Kline – in ads Brown believes were partially funded by Tiller.
As in a $250,000 ad buy just for me, featuring my Summer of Mercy mugshot. Click here for details. I owed Mr Tiller for that, no one, not even my Dad, ever spent so much on me at one time.
Even so, Brown and Cathie Humbarger, executive director of Allen County Right to Life, saved their criticism for Tiller’s killer.“We denounce the use of violence in the strongest terms. This is completely unacceptable,” Humbarger said. Unfortunately, there are people on the fringes of all issues, and hopefully the vast majority of (pro-life) people who are peaceful and prayerful won’t be painted with a broad brush.”
I hope so, too, because Humbarger’s right: There is hypocrisy in every movement. Some people who claim to support civil rights nevertheless also advocate discrimination against white people in the name of diversity.
Very nice transition to the raging Supreme Court debate, Mr. L. And courageous.
Some senators who have filibustered conservative Supreme Court nominees now insist President Obama’s nomination of Sonia Sotomayer be passed almost without debate.
Yes! Even the Hypocrite in Chief. See four posts down the screen for that.
The Justice Department, which has prosecuted efforts to keep minorities from voting, decided this month not to prosecute members of the New Black Panther Party for trying to intimidate voters in Philadelphia last year.
Yet they want to shut down talk radio for saying things that the government does not want to hear!
And it doesn’t exactly foster peaceful protest when people who do successfully work to change laws on abortion, same-sex marriage and other topics are constantly undermined by unelected judges.
Right. We have a new monarchy, the federal bench. No wonder there are tea parties flourishing across the fruited plains. Click here for ethnic cleansing, Hoosier style. (Note that this is the federal judge that President Obama is placing on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals.)
A “nation of laws” functions peaceably only when people believe they can influence the laws under which the must live.
But none of those causes has murdered in the name of protecting life, as appears to have happened – again – in the Tiller case. That’s why Brown’s unique insight should be heeded by those who truly want to reduce or eliminate legal abortion-on-demand.
My best advice:
Psalms 2: 10
Now therefore, be wise, O kings;
Be instructed, you judges of the earth.
11 Serve the LORD with fear,
And rejoice with trembling.
12 Kiss the Son,[b] lest He[c] be angry,
And you perish in the way,
When His wrath is kindled but a little.
Blessed are all those who put their trust in Him
According to a recent Gallup Poll, a majority of Americans call themselves “pro-life” for the first time since 1995 – but, of course, that was before some fool substituted cold-blooded murder for peaceful protest, persuasion and prayer, becoming in the process the very thing he supposedly despised.
This column is the commentary of the writer and does not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of The News-Sentinel.
E-mail Kevin Leininger at kleininger@news-sentinel.com, or call him at 461-8355.
PS Just joking on the picture, but it anyone wants a fine corollary to what I am up against with the legal profession and where things appear to be pointed then Breaker Morant cannot be beat.
Love, Sweet Love? So it was sang back in 1965, just as the Free Love society, the generation that gave us Bill Clinton, George Bush Jr. and our present cultural cul de sac, was being formed.
extremist for love: “Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you.” Was not Amos an extremist for justice: “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an ever flowing stream.” Was not Paul an extremist for the Christian gospel: “I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” Was not Martin Luther an extremist: “Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise, so help me God.” And John Bunyan: “I will stay in jail to the end of my days before I make a butchery of my conscience.” And Abraham Lincoln: “This nation cannot survive half slave and half free.” And Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal . . .” So the question is not whether we will be extremists, but what kind of extremists we will be. Will we be extremists for hate or for love? Will we be extremists for the preservation of injustice or for the extension of justice? In that dramatic scene on Calvary’s hill three men were crucified. We must never forget that all three were crucified for the same crime–the crime of extremism. 
depopulating cities that have fallen to the avarice of America’s ruling elites == those who have sold out our nation by undercutting its economic independence. Cities in the rust belt, cities that the Obama Admin will now finish off via state owned means of production.
Frequent visitors to this site know that the founder of the ArchAngel Institute and head of the ArchAngel Michael Division, Bryan Brown (me), has a long history with George Tiller, the recently assassinated late term abortionist. (So late as to be infanticide)
