I lost most of today to a trip to a lawyer–there are still tasks to complete in connection with the death of my mother-in-law.  However, on days when I do e-mail I am exposed to information from a variety of sources, and several of them caught my attention today.

One of the more notable concerned a ruling in a Kansas court allowing a man who killed a doctor who performs abortions to present a case for voluntary manslaughter rather than murder, based on the assertion that he believed that the lives of unborn children were being endangered and that he was saving them.  What intrigues me most about this is that several years ago I explored the possibility that the conflict would escalate into violence much on the same basis as John Brown’s attack at Harper’s Ferry did (the web site is currently experiencing trouble, I’ll get back to you with more on that).  This is a subject over which it is probably fairly common to have mixed feelings.  After all, everything that can be said against the pro-life protesters could have been said about the anti-slavery protesters before the Civil War, some of whom resorted to violence to protect the rights of the slaves.  We count them heroes now; the question in our day is very much whether those who defend the unborn will be heroes in the future or merely villains in the present.

There was another piece that caught my eye.  Apparently Brit Hume made a comment publicly that Tiger Woods ought to seek forgiveness through Jesus Christ instead of through the Buddhist faith of his mother.  This has stirred some serious outrage; but I agree with the columnist who defended Hume:  is it not possible in America for a public figure to speak positively of his own faith in public?  If Tiger Woods prefers to believe that forgiveness is neither possible nor necessary (the Buddhist position), nothing that was said will change that; but if Woods feels a need for forgiveness, telling him that there is a faith which offers it puts no one under any obligation to embrace that faith.  Neither of the two arguments that remain against Hume seem all that cogent to me.  One is that Hume is a news analyst and ought to be “unbiased”; but “unbiased” (apart from being impossible) does not include leaving behind your own knowledge of the world.  If a news commentator suggested that a judge ought to consider Dworkin’s arguments for judicial activism or Bork’s arguments for Constitutional originalism, those statements fall within the realm of the commentator bringing his knowledge of the field to bear on the circumstances in the news.  In the same way, if such a commentator suggests that a man who appears to be seeking absolution look for it in Christianity (where it is offered) rather than in Buddhism (where it is nonsense), that is a similar application of knowledge to the circumstances.  The other is that Hume ought to have made his suggestion privately; but just because two individuals are well-known does not mean they know each other in the way that enables them to chat in person.  Hume seems to me to have acted appropriately.

All of that, however, is just a part of my reading for today, and I would prefer to pass to you information about some writing published earlier today for your reading pleasure.  The Examiner has another short piece on temporal anomalies, entitled Butterfly Effect part 11:  on the edge, dealing with the trip to the past in which he tries to arm himself with a knife.  I hope some of you enjoy it.

–M. J. Young