I didn't kill him either...

In today's Philadelphia Daily News (via RCP), Christine Flowers makes a smart observation regarding the double standard applied to guilt by association.

Excerpts:

I DIDN'T kill George Tiller.

Neither did Bill O'Reilly, Randall Terry, Pope Benedict or the little old lady praying the rosary outside Planned Parenthood.

So to all of the pro-choice advocates and their sympathizers in the media, drop the collective guilt trip, OK? Because the myth that the pro-life movement bears any responsibility for Tiller's death is on par with the fairy tale that most abortions are performed to protect a woman's health....

The man who murdered Tiller, Scott Roeder,... was not one of us. He was a psychopath, a man whose demented mind led him to commit a crime that is, essentially, the antithesis of what the pro-life movement represents.

But that's not the way it's being played on the editorial pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post and our sister paper here in Philadelphia. Somehow, Tiller's blood is on the hands of all of us who ever wore a rose in our lapel, protested in front of an abortion clinic, criticized Roe v. Wade or sent money to crisis pregnancy centers.

WHICH IS really interesting because those same opinion pages loudly lamented any demonization of Muslim-Americans after 9/11. They were appalled that a whole group of people could be blamed for the criminal acts of 19 men. They took great pains to call Islam a religion of peace and distinguish it from the violence of extremists.

And they condemned guilt-by-association.

They've even downplayed the fact that the killer of a soldier outside of an army recruitment center was a Muslim convert who spent time in that favorite vacation destination for budding terrorists: Yemen.

But when it comes to the pro-life movement, there isn't the same attention to detail....

It's an excellent point. The same folks who bent over backwards to make sure we understand that peaceful Muslims were not responsible for 9/11 have no problem not only connecting peaceful pro-Lifers like you and me to Tiller's assassination, but portraying it as evidence of a growing movement of violence.

Most in the left-leaning media wouldn't know a religion of peace if it bit 'em.