“Extreme.”
This is a great word. It’s a tabula rasa term…a blank slate upon which the losing debater—desperately flailing about, treading the dangerous waters of his own weak philosophical position—may write a snappy rebuttal of his rhetorical better. When we are losing on substance, we may resort to the argumentative fallacy of name calling.
“Racist.”
“Sexist.
“Extreme.”
It’s telling that the ones who so quickly throw out this term in shameless attempts to silence dissension are typically the same ones who shriek the loudest about “freedom of speech.” The same crowd doesn’t seem to find “extreme” the films of, for example, Michael Moore. They don’t consider it extreme for an Illinois State Senator to kill a bill that would have made actual infanticide illegal (http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaB
A good deal of this negative emotion is tied up in people’s annoyance at those pesky sorts of Christians who take their faith AND their civic duties seriously enough to speak out. Secular society would much prefer the staid, quiet, Christian who leaves public policy to others. The metaphorical toothless hillbilly Christian who has withdrawn entirely from the cultural discourse on this and other topics is the picture that reigns supreme in the minds of many—and it’s the picture that comes to mind when carelessly tossing out terms such as “extreme.” Woe be unto those Christians who dare to speak up for the weak, the innocent, and the despised in culture (you know, the kind of thing Christ did—to the irritants of the cultural gatekeepers of His day, too). When someone does so, he’s called “extreme.”
But why? If the facts are on your side, of what serious threat is dissension? Why would you stoop to name-calling if you have the more defensible position? That’s the essential question that rhetorical giants like Quintilian and Socrates would have asked.
Unlike the bomb throwers, the man who made this video presented facts to a hostile audience and engaged in discourse that had, as its chief end, persuasion. This is classic rhetoric, plain and simple. It’s not extreme in any way. He admittedly had better production value than most Christians use in their arguments, but how is that extreme? Again, it’s not extreme when the heroes of the Left do it. Apparently, artistic production may only be attempted by the Left.
We think that there is plenty of “extreme” to go around in this debate. It’s pretty extreme, for example, for nine people in robes to write law for the people of the United States. Since the Constitution explicitly dictates that this should not be the case, it follows that favoring such judicial activism is BY DEFINITION an extreme position. If the pro-abortion folks are so confident in their persuasive abilities, why not put it to a vote? Let the people have their say, once and for all.
Ah….but there’s the rub. Such a vote would spell the end of blanket federally-sponsored abortion once and for all. For we are no longer dealing with a college bull session philosophical conversation any more….we now have incontrovertible evidence that that fetus is ALIVE in there. There is such substantial scientific evidence that it’s LIFE in there that a majority of American voters would reject abortion for their state if given the choice (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/i
And back to the favorite Pal of the Left, Science—now that good old Science has proven that that’s a live baby in there….we are faced with troubling questions. Questions that the pastor in 180 Movie asked.
If that’s really alive in there, at what point does it become ok to kill it?
Now that this is the only unanswered question pertinent to the topic, the onus of moral responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of those who refuse to see it. For those of us who have seen the evidence with our eyes, there remains only the civic duty of speaking up for the saving of that life. To fail to do so makes our society every bit as culpable as the residents of Auschwitz who deliberately closed their eyes to the unspeakable horrors just outside their city limits.
If it weren’t for “extreme” Christians speaking out, there would have been no movement for the abolition of slavery. If there weren’t “extreme” Christians, there would have been no civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century.
And if “extreme” Christians don’t speak out now, we are cowards, plain and simple.
This is a great word. It’s a tabula rasa term…a blank slate upon which the losing debater—desperately flailing about, treading the dangerous waters of his own weak philosophical position—may write a snappy rebuttal of his rhetorical better. When we are losing on substance, we may resort to the argumentative fallacy of name calling.
“Racist.”
“Sexist.
“Extreme.”
It’s telling that the ones who so quickly throw out this term in shameless attempts to silence dissension are typically the same ones who shriek the loudest about “freedom of speech.” The same crowd doesn’t seem to find “extreme” the films of, for example, Michael Moore. They don’t consider it extreme for an Illinois State Senator to kill a bill that would have made actual infanticide illegal (http://www.nrlc.org/ObamaB
A good deal of this negative emotion is tied up in people’s annoyance at those pesky sorts of Christians who take their faith AND their civic duties seriously enough to speak out. Secular society would much prefer the staid, quiet, Christian who leaves public policy to others. The metaphorical toothless hillbilly Christian who has withdrawn entirely from the cultural discourse on this and other topics is the picture that reigns supreme in the minds of many—and it’s the picture that comes to mind when carelessly tossing out terms such as “extreme.” Woe be unto those Christians who dare to speak up for the weak, the innocent, and the despised in culture (you know, the kind of thing Christ did—to the irritants of the cultural gatekeepers of His day, too). When someone does so, he’s called “extreme.”
But why? If the facts are on your side, of what serious threat is dissension? Why would you stoop to name-calling if you have the more defensible position? That’s the essential question that rhetorical giants like Quintilian and Socrates would have asked.
Unlike the bomb throwers, the man who made this video presented facts to a hostile audience and engaged in discourse that had, as its chief end, persuasion. This is classic rhetoric, plain and simple. It’s not extreme in any way. He admittedly had better production value than most Christians use in their arguments, but how is that extreme? Again, it’s not extreme when the heroes of the Left do it. Apparently, artistic production may only be attempted by the Left.
We think that there is plenty of “extreme” to go around in this debate. It’s pretty extreme, for example, for nine people in robes to write law for the people of the United States. Since the Constitution explicitly dictates that this should not be the case, it follows that favoring such judicial activism is BY DEFINITION an extreme position. If the pro-abortion folks are so confident in their persuasive abilities, why not put it to a vote? Let the people have their say, once and for all.
Ah….but there’s the rub. Such a vote would spell the end of blanket federally-sponsored abortion once and for all. For we are no longer dealing with a college bull session philosophical conversation any more….we now have incontrovertible evidence that that fetus is ALIVE in there. There is such substantial scientific evidence that it’s LIFE in there that a majority of American voters would reject abortion for their state if given the choice (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/i
And back to the favorite Pal of the Left, Science—now that good old Science has proven that that’s a live baby in there….we are faced with troubling questions. Questions that the pastor in 180 Movie asked.
If that’s really alive in there, at what point does it become ok to kill it?
Now that this is the only unanswered question pertinent to the topic, the onus of moral responsibility falls squarely on the shoulders of those who refuse to see it. For those of us who have seen the evidence with our eyes, there remains only the civic duty of speaking up for the saving of that life. To fail to do so makes our society every bit as culpable as the residents of Auschwitz who deliberately closed their eyes to the unspeakable horrors just outside their city limits.
If it weren’t for “extreme” Christians speaking out, there would have been no movement for the abolition of slavery. If there weren’t “extreme” Christians, there would have been no civil rights movement in the mid-twentieth century.
And if “extreme” Christians don’t speak out now, we are cowards, plain and simple.
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