A Classic O’Reilly Slugfest, Part I
By Robert Ringer
You may have seen Bill O’Reilly’s slugfest the other night with Joan Walsh, editor of the far-left website salon.com. First, let me give credit where credit is due. Ms. Walsh had the courage to go head to head with the one guy most progressives avoid like the plague.
In addition, it’s fair to say that, as much as I respect O’Reilly, he can, at times, be quite rude. And, indeed, he interrupted Walsh, shouted her down, and told her that she had blood on her hands.
Having said this, I still give O’Reilly credit for inviting her on his show. If it had been The Ringer Factor, the invitation would not have been extended. I gave up debating statists, collectivists, progressives, fascists — call them what you will — a long time ago. Was it Ayn Rand … or Nietzsche … or neither … who said, “It’s not my job to be a fly swatter?”
On her website, Ms. Walsh said about O’Reilly, “The man is driven by demons. God bless him and save him.” “Driven by demons” is code for “He doesn’t agree with my point of view.” Like all of us, O’Reilly has his faults. However, I believe he is driven by a sincere desire to be fair.
In fact, my only criticism of him would be that he tries to be too even-handed. I cringe every time I hear him say something like, “I don’t believe for a second that Barack Obama doesn’t have America’s best interest at heart.” (I’d like to have a long talk with him about that someday, though all he needs to do is listen to Dick Morris.)
Back to the slugfest: Ms. Walsh’s argument was that Dr. Tiller, the abortionist who killed a purported 60,000 babies, most of them still in the womb where they were defenseless, was acting within the law. She even went so far as to refer to him as “a hero.”
Now, as repugnant as her portrayal of Dr. Tiller was, honesty compels me to admit that her point that he was acting within the law is worthy of discussion — endless discussion about an issue that will never be resolved. But if you like to wax philosophical, this irresolvable topic is a good place to put your intellect to work.
It’s a question that goes back to the beginning of recorded history: Do people have an obligation to obey laws that are immoral? The answer, of course, depends upon whether you are talking about a moral or a legal obligation.
For nearly a hundred years in this country, it was against the law not to return a runaway slave to his “owner.” Was it a person’s legal obligation to obey such a law? Absolutely. But it was his moral obligation not to obey a law that relegated another human being to “property.”
Whether or not to obey an immoral law has always been a dilemma under totalitarian regimes such as Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union. In fact, to one extent or another, it’s a moral dilemma in virtually every country in the world as I write this. The United States, not to mention the fifty individual states, has virtually scores, if not hundreds, of laws on the books that are immoral. The most obvious examples of this are the endless number of redistribution-of-wealth laws.
Obviously, it’s not practical for you to disobey most of these laws, because it would result in your imprisonment. But where the line gets really fine is on virtual life-or-death issues — and abortion is at the forefront here.
I believe that I’m a very reasonable person. I can understand the dilemmas caused by pregnancies that are the result of rape or incest, or that involve serious health issues. Mature, sensible people have every right to debate such situations in a rational, civilized manner. But let’s get real here. Most abortions don’t fall into those three categories.
The only two reasonable defenses a “pro-choice” person can offer are:
Defense No. 1: A fetus is a parasite on a woman’s body, and she has a right to rid herself of that parasite. (This is a complex moral and social issue, so let’s save that debate for another day.)
Defense No. 2: A fetus is not a human being. With this defense, you avoid the need to justify the murder of a fetus simply by declaring that “a blob of cells” — which contain all of the human chromosomes! — is less than human. It sort of smacks of Al Gore’s mantra on global warming … you know, “The debate is over. Everyone agrees.” Cute.
Sorry, brother Al, but that non-argument doesn’t fly with global warming — and neither does it fly with abortion. I would respect a pro-choice person more if she would just come right out and say that, in her view, murder is justified when a life resides inside a woman’s body.
In Part II of this article, we’ll take a closer look at Joan Walsh’s contention that Dr. Tiller acted within the law. Could it be that she’s wrong about that?
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Copyright © 2012 Robert Ringer
ROBERT RINGER is a New York Times #1 bestselling author and host of the highly acclaimed Liberty Education Interview Series, which features interviews with top political, economic, and social leaders. He has appeared on Fox News, Fox Business, The Tonight Show, Today, The Dennis Miller Show, Good Morning America, The Lars Larson Show, ABC Nightline, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has been the subject of feature articles in such major publications as Time, People, The Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Barron's, and The New York Times.
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Robert,
I consider myself a libertarian, and I absolutely love your work. However, as a freedom lover, how do you justify removing freedom of choice from the one thing over which we should enjoy it most – our bodies? Regardless of whether you find abortion moral or immoral (morality is completely subjective, anyway), the bigger issue at hand is freedom. Imagine living in a society that tells you what you can and cannot do with your OWN BODY? Hmmm….
Again, love your work and philosophies, but I see a conflict here and would be curious as to how you reconcile your belief in freedom with your belief in the restriction of a woman’s rights over her own body. I can see where you might go with it…and it should be fun!
Cherie
Some good arguments listed at the following website:
http://l4l.org/
Would like to hear from those that appose Doris Gordan’s ideas.
Cherie–I too am a libertarian and consider freedom to be a high priority. However we can’t use freedom as a justification to trample or ignore the natural order. All freedom is limited by that order and whether or not we like that limitation is of little consequence–we’re still subject to it.
In that context, it is a fact that women have been assigned the child bearing responsibility by God (or at least by nature, if that’s your preferred belief). It IS a societal issue because child bearing is the ONLY means of continuation of the human race, therefore the child bearing responsibility is foundational to society and to human existence. That’s the natural order, and it isn’t subject to change or debate no matter what anyone on the planet thinks is right or fair.
With that responsibilty comes the obligation to protect and preserve that life. The idea that any woman doesn’t like that order may be understandable but it doesn’t extend to granting the woman the option to terminate a pregnancy for what is in the vast majority of cases a matter of birth control.
Like it or not, if a society is truly just, the preservation of life should never be subordinated to a “woman’s right to choose”, as though that right is the higher virtue of the two.
Notice how every pro-choice argument starts with the assumption that what’s developing inside isn’t a life. That’s the foundation upon which the entire pro-choice argument rests–otherwise we’re talking about murder! Notice too that when a woman intends to deliver, she calls it a “baby”; if she wants to abort, the baby is called a “fetus”. The very language of abortion is self-protective and completely ignores the basic human directive to protect the lives within our charge.
In our culture, we like to believe that we can become what ever or who ever we want–even if we have to pass laws to make it happen. But the world imposes limits on us despite our best efforts to turn things in a different direction.
If you are a woman, you are the child bearer, and carry a sacred responsibility to the life you are carrying inside. You have options: to participate in sex or not, to use avaible birth control or not–which is a nice set of options. However if that birth control extends to terminating a life then there’s something far more important involved than your right to choose.
Well, reasonable people, what you do with your own body may be your own business, but the fetus is not your own body.
Regarding defense No.1, a fetus is a parasite on a woman’s body that she has a right to get rid of, what did the fetus do to deserve death?. With regard to defense No.2, a fetus is not a human being, I saw a bumper sticker that says it best- “If a fetus is not a human, you’re not pregnant!
Abortion is legal, but bear in mind a person who procures one, and the people who encourage, will have to face God and account for it. THINK OF NUMBER ONE, first, remember him/her?
Robert…As much as I admire your willingness to speak out to help educate a mostly apathetic public, I emphatically disagree with several of your comments in this article.
To begin with to call Bill O’Reilly even handed is about the same as saying a Columbine style bully is just a kid with too much personality. He is not interested in the getting to truth or honest debate but in humiliating any guests that don’t share his often narrow and bigoted views. To promote him as an hones broker of truth only hurts our end game.
Of course that is also true of 60 Minutes, 20-20, et al. Let’s turn off the whole genre and quit pretending they are news or honest debate and get to focus on the real threat…the systematic and rapid destruction of all personal freedom in this country.
Forgive me if I’m coming across as rude, Mr. Ringer, but in your book “Looking out for #1″, at one point, you talk about how you treat everything you hear as false until you see it for your own eyes and you talk about how, unless one has first-hand knowledge on a subject, they’re not in a position to lecture others on it. Where is your first-hand knowledge that a child in the womb is alive?
Please understand that I myself do believe that life begins at conception, but in keeping with what I believe is your view of such situations, I lack any first-hand knowledge on the facts of conception, the fetus, and abortion and thus I’m not in a position to tell others if it’s right or wrong.
Cherie, I also consider myself a libertarian, and believe that personal responsibility is the way that should determine many of the laws we live under, especially the illegal drug laws–but that is a discussion for another time.
I really, really want to believe that you are sincere and true to yourself as you write the post, but I find it difficult since you are only repeating the mantra that a multi-billion dollar industry uses as its way to “sell” abortions to a public that’s proven itself to be malleable in the face of effective advertising. To this industry and the “doctors” that take money from it, the dollar is God– the great Equalizer which balances off the moral side of the equation by a huge margin.
How true to yourself are you? When you really contemplate it, are you willing to believe that the lack of responsibility running rampant in our society is OK– that you should be free to have sex without thinking of the consequences?
It hasn’t been mentioned here but there is also Restraint– the instinct that makes people think before they drink large quantities of alcohol maybe, or the natural fear of heights that keeps us from the edge of the cliff.
Restraint is something that exists within us naturally, but the Media like to glorify in the lack of it. And so also does the huge industry that is parroting the phrase, “My body–my choice”. They have an effective advertising campaign, don’t they?
Well, when you make the “choice” to have casual sex, the life growing inside you becomes your responsibility to protect– not destroy without a second thought.
I cannot say it more eloquently than KevinM so I simply refer you back to his post.
In one wing of a hospital, doctors are desperately trying to save the life of a premeture baby while in another wing a “doctor” is perfoming an abortion on a “fetus” in the same week of pregnancy. Does this picture disturb you?
It should.
Oh, one other thing Cherie: morality is not subjective. There is Right and there is Wrong, and as you grow and mature spiritually I think you’ll see this.