Smash Mouth Compromise, June 2, 2025.

Introduction.

A week or so ago, Bible Dingers hosted another debate on abolitionism versus smashmouth incrementalism.

This one involved four of us.

Joe Rigney was together with me and T. Russell Hunter teamed up with John's speed.

And while we didn't resolve anything, I do think that the debate was clarifying in several ways.

Many thanks to Bible-dingers for hosting us. There were various points that were brought up that I would like to develop further here,

and maybe even a point that should have been brought up but somehow wasn't. This latter phenomenon is something that French have a phrase for, Esprit de Scalié.

And please, for those of you listen to my blog posts, pardon my French, which I accomplished

by means of rusty hedge clippers. This refers to the wit of the staircase and refers to

things you think of later on that you should have said. The perfect point you ought to have made occurs to you,

but it does so on the staircase as you're making your way to bed.

Oh, well.

Fill it out some more.

First, there was one point that I raised in the debate that I want to fill out a bit more.

Because of the free-flowing nature of our discussion,

I didn't get to develop it as much as I would have liked to do. Nobody's fault of mine, of course, but there's no time like the present. Let us imagine a range of anti-abortion

responses and tactics, and rank them on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being the most tepid,

and 10 being the most radical. A 1 would be Bill Clinton's safe, legal, and rare, and 10 would

be armed bands burning down clinics

and summarily executing abortionists. Together with abolitionists, I would agree that the quote-unquote

pro-life options at the lower end of the scale are morally compromised and examples of sin.

...