Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Radicals and the Moral High Ground

I know I am a little behind on responding to the Pope's speech and the reaction that followed, but I wanted to think about it for a bit before I said anything, because I wanted to be fair to both sides, but now I have to ask: do "radicals" ever embrace the concept of moral high ground?

I am not just talking about Islamic radicals...I mean radicals period. Take the Army of God (not Hezbollah, the one in the U.S. that bombs abortion clinics, etc.) for example. How is it possible to justify a cause that claims to save lives through murder? I could name several more groups that lost the moral high ground by choosing violence, including the Black Panthers, but I hope the point has been made. In the case of the Pope's quote of a historic figure's comments, didn't anyone realize that by burning churches and killing a nun that they were reinforcing the very quote that they were disputing?

I guess the question that I am asking is: has the radical's cause degenerated into rebelling for the sake of rebelling?

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