I feel this way about Pro-Life. The idea for this blog has been gnawing at me for some time now and I expressed it once before and it is this: let's say conservatives got everything they ever dreamed of and then some but that abortion and euthanasia were still the law of the land and was to be forevermore for me at least this would be a spiritually empty victory. In fact I feel so strongly about this that it is reason enough for me to stop blogging since what good is talking about all the other stuff if we don't have a pro-life culture first? For me it's as if having a pro-life society would free us up to consider more fully and less distractedly these other important parts of the conservative agenda but without this what good is all the rest? For the record I will continue to blog probably until the day the Good Lord calls me home but am just emphasizing how passionate some of us are about the issue.
Nothing else really matters if you have an event that in pro-life terms is such a tragedy, a kind of moral catastrophe and this may or may not help to explain the mystery of the "retired" bloggers or at least some of them, not everything at your heart's core gets expressed in print, and speaking for myself I've often considered not blogging or retiring from blogging since the pro-life issues are so much on the back-burner these days. I mean how can we even talk about Obama the Socialist let alone concentrate fully on this issue and others like it when as I said there's been so many recent horrors on the pro-life front?
I really think there needs to be something so newsworthy in pro-life terms, some event so positive and of such moral magnitude that it will rock us back to our collective senses, make us rethink our attitudes towards the unborn, the disabled and the elderly, the poor, the downtrodden, the voiceless, the totally vulnerable among us. To continue on this pro-abortion/pro-euthanasia arc is so depressing that what good is all the rest of what we ever dreamed or fantasized about if we still continue down this destructive course?
Today's blog is simply a lament, to explain a thorn that's been in my side for awhile now before I continue to blog about the Other Important Issues of the Day. It's just something for your consideration.
You are so right, Z-man, part of the wrongness of our culture these days is the vast disregard for human life in every form. If we just respected life, TRULY ALL LIFE IN EVERY STAGE, then we wouldn't be looking to the government for anything, we would just care care of one another and ourselves and treat others well, and in return be given the same consideration. So easy, and yet so easily dismissed.
ReplyDeleteThanks Z-Man...
ReplyDeleteC-CS
Does make for hard choices ...
ReplyDeleteThe flip side to this coin is this whole "life" issue trumps everything else. To be sure, it is an issue which has been exploited and bastardized to death by the Republican party. It has been worn as a cloak; a shield which when yielded can protect said candidate from any other criticism.
ReplyDeleteLiberty trumps life because a life without liberty is hardly a life at all.
BB first. Ah yes this brings back to me Catholic teaching on the matter that even when the mother's life is at stake you cannot directly kill the unborn child and the example they used when I was a yoot was an ectopic pregnancy, the removal thereof would be ok as you're removing something containing the fetus...splitting hairs maybe. Never heard of this case and am surprised it went this far. BB, always doing his homework I see.
ReplyDeleteThanx Carol for dropping by. Beth good point as usual. Soap the problem I have with libertarians wanting their side to be dominant is this: libertarian arguments basically boil down to money -- capitalism, free markets ka-ching ka-ching and that's fine since I agree generally but take away pro-life and all you're left with is the money matters and that's what I mean when I say spiritually empty victory.
ReplyDeleteI'm assuming part of what you're saying when you say the issue has been exploited and bastardized by the Republican Party is the Terri Schiavo case. I was thinking about this the other night back to the days of my high school history class where we learned about the 3 co-equal branches of government and seems to me in this context the Congress really did nothing wrong. Then again if you view the judiciary as not being co-equal to the other two branches of government but actually superior to them then it was needless, even offensive intervention but that's the thing about a Catholic high school education, you take worthwhile things with you for Life's trip.
I'm a libertarian sort of a guy and I can tell you flat out that money is not the driving force for capitalism.
ReplyDeleteIf you want a justification for the existence of capitalism I can surely give you one.
And no, I wasn't relegating the argument to the Terry Schiavo case in the least. You can go right down the list with the life issue. It has become the litmus test for the Republican party while seemingly everything else be damned.
ReplyDeleteJust ask Huckabee.
& yet you have those who want to banish the issue forever from the party. Regardless of how you personally feel about the issue Roe vs. Wade is really the problem here imo, taking an issue that was perfectly amenable to legislative solutions which somehow seems more fair and short-circuiting the entire process. Litmus tests are often maligned but I think you would agree that one of the litmus tests should be if you're a Republican you can't at the same time be a socialist. Sure litmus tests strongly imply that you have to throw your mind out the window but they can also ensure party cohesion, that a platform of real principles won't just be temporary.
ReplyDeleteWhere I see the pro-life issue and conservatism going hand in hand is that both are based on the premise of taking personal responsibility, whereas the anti-life and socialist side of things takes the view that someone else will take care of any perceived problems one may encounter.
ReplyDeleteGetting the mop bucket, that's liberalism in a nutshell.
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