What Cecil the Lion and the Planned Parenthood Videos Have in Common
While liberals have expressed their outrage at the cruel killing of Cecil the Lion while mostly ignoring the grisly Planned Parenthood videos, the response from conservative pundits has largely been to emphasize the moral hierarchy of the two crimes. Conservatives have argued that what Planned Parenthood does is worse than what Cecil’s killer did — and it is. But in focusing their efforts on ranking the wrongs, conservatives are missing a good opportunity to highlight the similarities, which are more damning than the contrasts.
In both cases, the killing was senseless and barbaric. The loss was great, the gain empty, and the means gruesome. In both cases, the victim’s innocence stands in vivid contrast to the killer’s selfishness. The developing children off of whom Planned Parenthood profits have plainly not wronged anyone, and Cecil was a semi-domesticated lion who seemed to like (or at least not to mind) the presence of human beings, often moving within a few feet of them yet never using his great might to cause them harm. And in both cases, the warped killer decided that the victim had more value dead and carved up into pieces than alive and whole.
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