Saturday, November 20, 2010

Comment on Safe, Legal and Rare

A follow up quote from the author Mark Shea: "We have to radically expand waterboarding RIGHT NOW TO SAVE LIVES!!!"

I think there is a parallel to what this quote encompasses, and it's right within our American heritage. The American Colonization Society within the mid 19th century supported the deportation of black Americans to Monrovia (named after yours truly, Little Jimmy Madison.) The Society encompassed concept of sending blacks back to Africa which to us now looks odd because hindsight allows for us to know the solution to the problem of freeing millions of slaves in the 1860s. But at the time, Lincoln, Thoreau, and Henry Clay were among other prominent supporters that were then-moderates. It was then-extremists like Henry Garrison and the first abolitionist martyr, Elijah Lovejoy, that spearheaded the "radical" opposition of slavery. And I would like to point out that Garrison's profound "Manifesto of the Anti-Slavery Society" was published in 1833. It wasn't until 1863 that the Emancipation Proclamation was put forth. In between '33 and '63 that the radical abolitionist and end to racism movements became widely accepted.

I would like to single someone like Mr. Shea for being one of the "extremists" that demand for radical change. Without spearheading a controversial topic, like abortion, with an absolute conservative opposition, there would be no movement for this radicalism to become more mainstream and accepted.