Christian Assassination Doctrine

I don’t know if I heard this right, but I think that one of the CNN anchorettes just asked a first amendment expert if Pat Robertson’s statement should fall under freedom of religion since he was advocating “the idea of taking out one very bad individual to save thousands of others.”

I don’t even know where to start laying out everything that is wrong with that premise. I’m no biblical scholar but I don’t think there is any religious precept that backs up this notion, certainly no Christian precept. But even if there were — when did Hugo Chavez morph into a genocidal monster? I certainly understand that free market capitalists have serious beefs with his economic vision and he’s not exactly a beacon of transparent governance and political freedom, but he’s no Stalin. He’s not even Fidel. Robertson himself said that oil was the main concern. (She would have made sense if she said “saving thousands of others … a few bucks at the gas pumps.”)

I haven’t heard this formulation anywhere else, but I haven’t been keeping up on all the nuances. Is the religious right now characterizing criticism of Robertson as an attack on his religion or was this just a case of a very dumb TV actress coming up with this weird premise all by herself?

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