One Last Time

We at the Blasphemy Blog need to get over this thing with the Reverend Pat Robertson calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. We've been going on about this for three days now, and we need to get on to other topics.

But we can't, we just can't...the Reverend will not allow us. Here he goes, apologizing again, which is nice, but also in the same breath comparing himself to Dietrich Bonhoeffer, which is...well, a statement of obscene self-importance.

Bonhoeffer, a theologian, was executed by the Nazis because of his connection to the July 20 Plot, an unsuccessful attempt by German Wehrmacht officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler in 1944. Bonhoeffer was already in jail by 1944 and didn't set off any of the bombs, but he was a well-known political and ideological opponent of Naziism, and had associated with plots to overthrow or assassinate Hitler in the past. For the Nazis, who were not big on due process, that was enough to hang him, and they did so in October 1945.

Robertson is calling on people to "consider" the example of Bonhoeffer, and to consider that political assassinations are not always immoral. After all, it wasn't immoral for Bonhoeffer to try and kill Hitler, was it? He was a minister, and tried to assassinate someone! Just like the Reverend wants to kill Hugo Chavez! See?

Well, let's just assume for a moment that, left unchecked, Hugo Chavez, the elected President of Venezuela, will someday become an evil as great as Hitler. (Hitler was elected, too, after all.) It seems like a stretch, but, for the sake of Robertson's argument, we'll allow it.

What would Dietrich Bonhoeffer do, in this situation? Well, he would create a church dedicated to non-violently resisting this evil. He would persist with this dissident church, even after Hugo Chavez forcibly closed all of its seminaries. He would be willing to go to jail for his acts of civil disobedience. And he would work as best he could to aid the innocent victims of Hugo Chavez' monstrous reign.

Pat Robertson went on TV and called for Hugo Chavez' assassination. It just doesn't seem like he's put quite as much work into his resistance as Bonhoeffer did, you know?

Now, we at the Blasphemy Blog didn't know Dietrich Bonhoeffer. But it doesn't seem like Robertson is anything like Dietrich Bonhoeffer.