Readers comment on these controversial tweets from NRO’s Kevin Williamson:
In this country, even the most vile criminals are entitled to lethal injection. Why hanging? Is that not how the theocracy in Iran hands out its moral judgments?
Another:
I consider myself strongly pro-choice, but I do have to give Williamson props for at least being logically consistent in his beliefs, which is more than I can say for 99% of pro-lifers. If one makes the assertion that a fetus has the same right to life as any human being, it logically follows that the termination of that fetus should be treated under the law like every other homicide. And, under current law, this would mean that a woman who paid a doctor to perform an abortion would be participating in a “murder for hire”, which in many states is a capital offense.
Punishing only doctors is a tacit admission that a fetus IS different in some respects from living, breathing human beings. But, of course, nothing would turn this country more in a pro-choice direction than deciding to punish women in this manner. Which is why it will never happen, and why the pro-life rhetoric regarding personhood will never match up with reality.
Another digs into Williamson’s past:
Here’s his typical pattern.
He’ll write a column or publish a Tweet making some statement that is both literally true, yet also outrageous and offensive to anyone but hardcore cultural conservatives. Thus, his column mansplaining that transgendered person Lavern Cox is “not a woman” is both literally true—Cox was born with a Y chromosome, and presumably the equipment that comes with it—and offensive because he uses that truth to ridicule Cox’s gender identity. Or his column equating a black boy protesting in Ferguson with a “primate”, since it’s literally true that humans are primates, and yet pretends to ignore the centuries of racist depictions of African Americans as sub-human apes. (Added bonus, he invoked the Constitution’s Three-Fifths Compromise when he described the boy as “a three-fifths-scale Snoop Dogg”, which would mean Snoop stands 6 feet, 7 inches tall, but sure, he didn’t mean anything racist, it was just a coincidence and he didn’t check the math before publishing the article.)
Williamson disavows animus, but it drips from his columns, trolling readers who understand he is writing about more than literal truths. “But wait,” NRO readers demand, “Cox is NOT a woman! Humans ARE primates! Why is the truth so offensive to you leftists?” But read the comments to his articles, which are full of disdain and disgust for the subjects he describes, and you see that they get his subtext.
As an added bonus, he can later republish the repugnant tweets he receives in response to his “truths” – including calls for his death – as “liberal intolerance.” I believe he has even recycled attacks into subsequent columns about liberal intolerance. He wins all the way around: his readers love his attacks on the lefties; he outrages the lefties; he gets more fodder for his “conservative as victim of political correctness” worldview.
Which brings us to his latest. If you view abortion as murder, and if you support the death penalty for murder, you’d naturally support hanging every mother who’s had an abortion, right? What other course is there? Do you really believe he’s trying to make a reasoned point, as opposed to trolling abortion rights supporters? Wait for his reposting outraged and vile tweets from people offended by this argument, but don’t hold your breath for the reasoned policy explanation for why it’s a good idea to hang women for having abortions, or how it would play out in reality, or why only women should be hanged and not also the men who impregnate them, because I doubt it will come.
The Dish 