I am not someone who gets involved in politics. I plan to vote this election, and it will be my first time voting.
Because I don't usually vote, I also make it a policy not to judge people based on their political choices. However, I have been horrified from the beginning of this election season by Obama's stance on the Born Alive Infant Protection Act.
I just watched this video. I feel like I am going to throw up. I now think that Obama and what he represents is pure evil.
May God have mercy on all of us.
4 comments:
Dear Mary,
I declined to watch the video you linked to, as I can only guess what it consists of and I would rather not be grossed out by that.
I agree with you that people who justify abortion as some sort of "women's choice" issue live in a fantasy world. And it doesn't make me happy that this has become an issue the way it has in American politics. There were a lot of crazy, stupid state laws around before the 1930's and FDR's nationalization of America (which I know the flashpoint Supreme Court case for abortion issues is Rowe v. Wade, but truthfully the real problem Rowe addresses (which is substantive due process and federalism, or maybe inherent sexual or privacy rights, but all of this really goes back to incorporation of constitutional rights into the 14th amendment via substantive due process, something I can't really fully explain in this comment) actually stems from the New Deal era and a much more insidious case called Lochner v. New York, but I digress), and I certainly don't think we need to see a backslide into that kind of country. But the vast majority of states at that time also banned abortion, and I for one think that, even though lots of kinds of progress can be good, the progress towards a society that condones rampant non-productive sexual activity and post-sexual abortive measures to allow women (and men) to maintain self-centered (and frankly homicidal) lifestyles is a repulsive kind of progress.
However, I also feel obliged to voice another concern of mine, one that I find often as equally as disturbing, if maybe not quite so "icky". A lot of socially conservative people seem so turned off by politicians and fellow Americans who favor a right to abortion, that they gravitate towards another polar spot on the political sphere that has somehow managed to combine a pro-life stance with a pro-war mentality. One of the biggest absurdities to me, in modern politics, is the bizarre justifications people who on one hand claim to be pro-life then put forth to explain how they can support war (and by that, I mean any war). This "practicality" idea that a lot of people seem to have about the necessity of protecting oneself seems just ludicrous. It reminds me of the Dr. Seuss book about the butterside-up people vs. the butterside-down people. It's like they believe their form of killing is the only good form. Perhaps at the very least, probably a good portion of pro-choice people are not necessarily anti-war (as in, pacifists) but rather just anti-this-war, and would not be opposed to, say, another world war two type of involvement by the US. So maybe along the political spectrum, by choosing pro-life/pro-war people, at least they don't have two strikes against them (although, I think there is a very good argument that pro-war people are actually much, much, MUCH worse than pro-choice people, because pro-war people encourage our government to use our social resources in order to actively pursue the death of others, while pro-choice people are more like neutral parties that don't really care whether unborn children die or not; I guess it goes back to a "Who deserves to die less?" type of issue, where killing unborn children seems a lot worse than killing eighteen year-olds, because the unborn children seem so much more innocent, even if in one context we are just allowing repugnant individuals and their equally culpable doctors to murder their children, whereas in the other context we are actually funding the deaths of others by sending soldiers off to die).
All I'm really trying to say is that gruesome medical footage (or whatever that video contains) can be a very strong argument for disagreeing with somebody, but I don't think it should be used to blind oneself of equally bad reasons against agreeing with somebody else.
-Owen
October 21, 2008 10:40 PM
Thanks for posting, Mary! Abortion is always evil and should never be tolerated. Owen, you make some good points.However, some wars are justified-how would the Nazis have been defeated w/out military intervention? Agreeing with some wars does not make one "pro-war" or somehow worse than those who slaughter babies because it is convenient.Those who join the military voluntarily know what they are getting into. If they do not agree with the particular war being waged, they can always defect to another country. There is a choice in the matter. The purpose of having a military is to defend the country and it's citizens.
I'm sorry, Julia, I can't say how the Nazis would ever have been defeated without military intervention. But I still take the stance that all violence is unjustified. That does not mean I cannot accept the fact that, in our society, there is violence. And it does not mean that I do not understand that some laws allow for or promote violence, and that all our government asks us to do is follow the law. But from a personal standpoint, I find all war wrong, no matter what the justification is. I know some people fear this kind of mentality because of a concern that violent powerful forces will overwhelm us and take away our freedoms. The argument seems to be that we are only protecting what is right. But from my perspective, God did not create humans so that we could protect things or each other. The early Christians may have been able to escape the lion's den if they forsook Christ. The European Jews may have avoided the holocaust if they renounced their religion (doubtful, but not impossible). Yet both these people held to their faith (theoretically; I, of course, do not have proof of this), and were ultimately persecuted for it. If it is God's will that people suffer, then I must accept his will. I believe Jesus's core message was that love is the only answer, and the justified violence so prevalent in the Old Testament is no longer an acceptable path to Heaven.
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