"People have lost their lives fighting for and against abortion."
That sentence jumped out at me from an article at ESPN.com extolling Tim Tebow's participation in a Super Bowl ad financed by Focus on the Family.
My point isn't to dwell on the ad itself, or even CBS' transparent hypocrisy in running the ad after repeatedly refusing to run "advocacy" ads for liberal causes.
My focus is on the blithe manner in which sports columnist Jamele Hill stated that people have lost their lives fighting for and against abortion.
Have I missed news stories about abortion opponents being killed by pro-choice advocates? Is Ms. Hill equating murders committed by anti-choice fanatics with the execution of one such fanatic, following trial and conviction? Is she making reference to something that may have happened in China?
Or is it simply that those of us in the "reality-based" world have done such a poor job of standing up for that in which we profess to believe that there is no longer any sanction for deceit in the public square?
For all the talk of values from the right, the value of credibility seems to matter very little, if at all. Gone, it appears, is the notion that one should take pains to refrain from misstatements, and to acknowledge and correct any lapses in that respect, as the price of being taken seriously. In its place is the freedom to simply make stuff up, secure in the knowledge that there is no penalty for so doing.
Unless and until we fight and win battles over such crucial normative issues, we should hardly be surprised when we lose others.