Busloads of protesters have decended upon South Bend, Indiana to protest abortion and to voice their objection to the University's decision to invite (pro-abortion) President Obama to give the commencement address tomorow and to award him an honorary degree. Yesterday, twenty-one of them were arrested, including conservative activst, and former presidential candidate, Alan Keyes. Keyes has been jailed until Monday, after the President's visit to campus. The protesters have employed some pretty shocking tactics, to wit:
On May 1, anti-abortion activist Randall Terry and another man were arrested on campus while pushing strollers containing dolls covered in fake blood. On May 8, Keyes and 21 others, many of them pushing strollers containing dolls covered in fake blood, were arrested.
Words like "disgusting", "shameful", "foolish", and "adolescent" come to mind. Like I've said before, I agree, I think, with the protesters' position, but I can't get behind this kind of thuggery. Whom do the protesters think they are persuading? Who looks at a baby doll covered in blood and is prompted to re-think his stance on abortion? The more likely, and I think, only reasonable response, is to view the protester with contempt and derision.
My hypothesis is that the true motivation for this kind of nonsense is not, actually, to persuade anyone, but rather pride and guilt on the protesters' part-- it's a raw, obtuse, clumsy, assertion of force, like kicking a dog, that gives the protester a perverse sense of power; and, it satisfies the protester's felt need to do something, however ridiculous and ineffective, about what he perceives to be a terrible injustice. The point is not to achieve anything for society, for the those suffering under the injustice, for God, etc. The point is only to achieve something for the protester himself. It's childish and selfish.
I'm sure that the protesters think they're doing the Lord's work; but the Lord does not work that way.
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