Look left folks.Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a "blob of jelly"?
None of the above.
It's a defenceless, baby human being who has no civil, human or legal rights.
Obama's nasty side came out yesterday when he over-turned the pro-life policy on US funding to family planning groups abroad that counsel abortion.
With the full range of anti-life fatuity, he said that the policy was "unnecessarily broad and unwarranted" and had become too politicized an issue.
Too politicised? What? And just who did the politicising, eh? The anti-lifers, that's who.
Is the "ban" on eliminating adults "unnecessarily broad and unwarranted"? No? Then why is it so when the victim is a human baby?
Obama said in a statement that the policy had "undermined efforts to promote safe and effective voluntary family planning in developing countries. For these reasons, it is right for us to rescind this policy and restore critical efforts to protect and empower women and promote global economic development."
What priceless tripe.
What's safe about killing?
And how does it "empower" women or "promote global development"?
"I have no desire to continue this stale and fruitless debate" says the new President. Really? And will he be saying that to NARAL? Or is this newspeak for "I am only against such debates if I disagree with the view expressed"?
The fatuity gets more and more bizarre.
By resuming funding to the UN Population Fund, he said, "the US will be joining 180 other donor nations working collaboratively to reduce poverty, improve the health of women and children, prevent HIV/AIDS and provide family planning assistance to women in 154 countries."
So abortion prevents HIV now, does it? And improves the health of children?
Yeah, right.
And what sort of "family planning assistance"? This means condoms instead of food and medicines, contraceptives instead of hospitals, schools and proper care.
But, hey folks, let's not worry because new Secretary of State, representative of America's new foreign policy and Feminist loony, Hillary "Marry your man and get a top job" Clinton, welcomed the step.
So that's OK, then.
Anyone seen my broomstick?"This policy has made it more difficult for women around the world to gain access to essential information and healthcare services," Clinton said. Sure, Hillary. For "healthcare services" read "abortion services". If this is the newspeak for "healthcare services" then God help the Third World countries that place any reliance on US aid!
Clinton said she was looking forward to working with "the NGO (non-governmental organization) community to promote programs and policies that ensure women and girls have full access to health information and services".
That is, "abortion services".
After all, Hillary dear, we can't have all those poor, foreign people with different coloured skins and foreign, non-American cultures, having children, now, can we?
Come back Margaret Sanger and all her racist fellow-travellers - all is forgiven. At least by Hillary and other phoney humanitarians.
Remember the Feminist legacy, folks. Here it is, again, just in case you forgot what Feminism has done to the world and to humanity. Figures are from the notoriously and odiously pro-abortion and anti-life Alan Guttmacher Institute:
Approximately 46 Million abortions per year worldwide
Approximately 126,000 abortions per day worldwide.
© Copyright 1999-2000, The Alan Guttmacher Institute.
So, if these figures are right, when it comes to the killing business, Feminism dwarfs both Communism and Nazism put together!
Will any more people die as a result of Obama's lifting of the ban on federal funding of abortion-providers abroad than would have died as result of John McCain's Bush-like poverty inducement (poverty being far and away the largest cause of death before as well as after birth - hopelessly poor women have abortions) and never-ending war (with, among so much else, all the abortions that follow all the rapes and prostitution)?
ReplyDeleteObama, McCain and Bush are all as anti-life as each other, just in different ways. Well, mostly different, anyway. McCain is in favour of scientifically worthless embryonic stem-cell "research".
Like all Republicans, Bush delivered absolutely no change whatever to the abortion law (consider that in "godless" Europe, the usual upper time limit is 12 weeks, several countries outlaw abortion entirely, and by far the most liberal laws are in Americanised Britain and those lands to the east still caught up in the cult of Ronald Reagan).
If such a change ever did come to pass, then the white Catholics (who have decided every Presidential Election since 1976) and the white Evangelicals would simply declare "Mission Accomplished" and go home to the Democratic Party. Last year, the white Catholics, at least, simply did so anyway. The white Evangelicals will be next.
Meanwhile, much bitching about Douglas Kmiec - the conservative law school professor, strong traditional Catholic, associate of the Evangelical-related Pepperdine University, and Obama supporter - and his possible appointment as Ambassador to the Holy See.
The price of his support? Why ever ever not? Whom would we want instead as Ambassador to the Holy See, and why? The Democratic Party has no shortage of Catholics decidedly lacking in traditionalist credentials or Evangelical connections.
Dear David,
ReplyDeleteI like your description of yourself on your blog descriptor, save that I'm not sure what a Social Democrat is and whether it is a good or a bad thing.
The two Davids?
No thanks.
But for the rest I say 3 cheers.
As to your post, I challenge a few things:
- What "poverty-inducement" did John McCain support? None that I know of.
- Who says that poverty is "far and away the largest cause of death before as well as after birth". I challenge you to provide some hard evidence of that. Being poor is not a terminal disease.
- John McCain has never caused "never ending war" since he has never had the power to do so. He didn't get elected. Remember?
- Bush unwisely invaded Iraq but that is by no means the same as murdering millions of innocents by abortion. Where is your moral theology? Killing an enemy in war is not to be equated with murder, still less murder of the innocent unborn. As a comparator, it just doesn't stack up.
- What rapes and prostitution leading to abortions have been recorded in Iraq or Afghanistan? Evidence, please.
- You say: "Obama, McCain and Bush are all as anti-life as each other", citing support for embryonic stem-cell research. I challenge that. Obama is just as much in favour of such stem-cell research. However, Bush and McCain are both opposed to partial-birth abortion and the killing of babies that survive abortion. Obama isn't. Both McCain and Bush do not oppose over-turning Roe v Wade. Obama has said that he is. Bush and McCain think that life begins at conception. Obama doesn't. And on, and on, and on... Face it, Obama may have qualities but being pro-life is not one of them and in that respect he is far, far worse than either Bush or McCain.
- What change could Bush or the Republicans deliver on abortion law in the face of a hostile Congress, Supreme Court or large sections of the people? At least they are trying to do something. The Democrats - including "Catholic" Democrats - are committed to making the laws even worse!
- There are many more black Catholics than white Catholics, pro rata supporting the Dems but you do not criticise them. Double standards? And plenty of white Catholics are very committed Republicans or conservatives.
Bit of a re-think on these issues, David, I suggest, even though I agree with your general outlook.
"I'm not sure what a Social Democrat is and whether it is a good or a bad thing"
ReplyDeleteI believe in Catholic Social Teaching and Distributism. And under that, I stand, like most British people, in the economic tradition that had came down from the conservatives Colbert and Bismarck through the Liberals Keynes and Beveridge to the Attlee Government, and the Keynesian side of which, at least, was pioneered in the United States by FDR with the extremely forceful support of that half of the other party which represented the freeholding small farmers of the American West rather than big capital in all its globalism and anti-family zeal.
"What "poverty-inducement" did John McCain support?"
Global capitalism, and everything that it entails.
"Who says that poverty is "far and away the largest cause of death before as well as after birth". I challenge you to provide some hard evidence of that. Being poor is not a terminal disease."
But it's the overwhelming reason for having abortions in the developing world, and easily the largest in the developed world. Really radical poverty reduction programmes really do reduce abortion, among so many other positive effects.
"John McCain has never caused "never ending war" since he has never had the power to do so."
But he would have done. And he backed it in the Senate.
"Bush unwisely invaded Iraq but that is by no means the same as murdering millions of innocents by abortion. Where is your moral theology? Killing an enemy in war is not to be equated with murder, still less murder of the innocent unborn."
It is hardly as if only combattants have died, or are dying, either in Iraq or in Afghanistan. And since even one abortion is wrong, so, on exactly the same principle, the avoidable death of even one non-combattant is wrong. There have been, and there are, many thousands of such deaths. This is not to minimise the evil of abortion, it is to maximise the evil of these (not necessarily any, but these) wars.
"What rapes and prostitution leading to abortions have been recorded in Iraq or Afghanistan?"
They always happen in war zones.
"What change could Bush or the Republicans deliver on abortion law in the face of a hostile Congress, Supreme Court or large sections of the people?"
But the promise to do so keeps the GOP in existence. That is my point. If it ever actually happened, then the GOP would be finished. So it will never happen under the GOP. As large numbers of American Catholics and others seem to have realised, not before time.
"At least they are trying to do something."
What, exactly?
"There are many more black Catholics than white Catholics, pro rata supporting the Dems but you do not criticise them."
They don't decide Presidential Elections. White Catholics do.
"And plenty of white Catholics are very committed Republicans or conservatives."
Two different things. And on the specifically party point, far fewer than used to be. Their GOP allegiance was always rather soft, anyway. Like the white Evenagelicals, they were Democrats well within living memory, their economic interest has really always been on that side of the aisle, and they have really always wanted to go home. Increasngly, they are doing so.
There, they really will change America, precisely by changing the Democratic party into something pro-worker, anti-war, and at least tolerant of the powerfully pro-life and pro-family message behind those positions.
I hope Obama has the courage to refuse to appoint an ambassador to the Vatican; if we need to talk to the pope, have the ambassador to Italy take a cab over and talk to him. We didn't have an ambassador until the 1970s and both sides (the US and Vatican) didn't go to war.
ReplyDeleteWe have no established religion in the US; we don't need to talk to clergy.
Sorry, David, but you have failed to produce one piece of evidence to answer my challenges or support your case.
ReplyDeleteMerely re-asserting your position, as you do, is not evidence or, indeed, argument.
Evidence, please.
Your characterisation of Party is way too sweeping and absurdly over-simplified. For a start, the Democrat Party was the Party of segregation until relatively recently.
The Republican Party's core supporters have always included white Evangelicals and, I might add, many more Catholics than you are prepared to admit.
Fred,
ReplyDeleteYou are going to have to get over your delusional paranoia about clergy.
If you don't then you may get to the stage where the men in white coats have to pay a visit - and we wouldn't want that now, would we?
I'd say that Pope John Paul II had at least as much to do with the final defeat of Communism as any US President or political leader.
It is a foolish political leader who fails to reckon with the power of the Papacy and the Catholic Church.
Remember Stalin's fatal words: "How many divisions has the Pope?".
Answer: rather more than you, Joe!
And we know who won in the end...
"The Republican Party's core supporters have always included white Evangelicals and, I might add, many more Catholics than you are prepared to admit."
ReplyDeleteThe GOP contained extremely few Catholics until the long-ago rise of paleoconseravtism, and barely any until Roe v Wade. Until Roe v Wade, it contained few or no Evangelicals.
Huge numbers voted Democrat last year because they wanted their country back. The name of that country is America.
She is the country that long led the world in protecting high-wage, high-skilled, high-status jobs both against the exportation of that labour to un-unionised, child-exploiting sweatshops, and against the importation of those sweatshops themselves.
And she is the country that could until very recently say that she led the world in that she “did not seek for monsters to destroy”.
For she is the country of big municipal government, of strong unions whose every red cent in political donations buys something specific, of very high levels of co-operative membership, of housing co-operatives even for the upper middle classes, of small farmers who own their own land, and of the pioneering of Keynesianism in practice.
At the same time, those same voters made it clear at exactly the same polls that (in Florida and California) they wanted back the country where marriage only ever means one man and one woman, that (in Colorado) they wanted back the country that does not permit legal discrimination against working-class white men, and (in Missouri and Ohio) that they wanted to preserve the country where gambling is not deregulated.
The name of that country is America, too.
The betrayal of those voters by Obama where appointments are concerned has already cost the Democrats a Senate seat in Georgia (where the third-placed candidate was a morally and socially conservative economic patriot and foreign policy realist), and thus a filibuster-proof Senate majority.
Midterm meltdown awaits unless both Obama and the Congressional Democrats wake up to these realities.
As Obama, at least, appears to be doing. He has appointed the pro-life Governor Tim Kaine of Virginia to chair the Democratic National Committee. He seems on course to appoint Professor Kmiec as Ambassador to the Holy See.
Having given Obama his job (as they have given every President his job since 1976), Catholics should now come up with 20 things that must not happen (not must, but must not) if he expects them to consider him for re-appointment when his fixed-term contract expires.
Those lines in the sand would after all be widely shared, both on the Right with regard to pro-life and pro-family (and, among the paleocons, anti-war) issues, and on the Left with regard to pro-worker and anti-war issues.
Five of each would be more than welcome, and are more than necessary.
Oh, spare us, please! This is just maudlin "New Dealer" mythology of a truly mawkish kind.
ReplyDeleteAmerica? America!
Gimme a break!
Could this be the Democrat America of Andrew Jackson, the founder of the Party, who sent the Cherokee, Seminole and Creeks to a cruel extinction west of the Mississippi illegally and in flat contradiction of the judgment of the Supreme Court which he had sworn to uphold?
Could it be the Democrat America of Tammany Hall, Boss Tweed and the most stinkingly corrupt bunch of swindlers that ever disgraced a nation?
Could it be the Democrat America of Woodrow Wilson whose asinine failure to understand European history, and his arrogant plan for post-war Europe, so readily paved the way for the next world war?
Could it be the Democrat America of the Stalin-bedazzled FDR and his Communist fellow-travelling wife?
Could it be the Democrat America of Harry Truman who authorised the dropping of the biggest and dirtiest radio-active bomb ever dropped and that almost smack on top of the one and only Catholic Cathedral of Japan?
Could it be the Democrat America of John Fornication Kennedy?
And now - the Democrat America of the most anti-life President in the entirety of American history!
Come on now - please! Reality check time.
And, moreover, you say:
ReplyDelete"And she is the country that could until very recently say that she led the world in that she “did not seek for monsters to destroy”".
From the invention and evolution of the Monroe Doctrine onwards, successive American governments have repeatedly sought monsters to destroy.
And one of the "monsters" the Founding Fathers particularly wished to slay was the Roman Catholic Church!
The Republican National Committee now has a very significantly more anti-life and anti-family Chairman than has the Democratic National Committee. Democrats need to be out there, asking moral and social conservatives directly, “What have the Republicans ever done for you?”
ReplyDeleteWell, as you can readily see, I'm no republican with a big or a small R.
ReplyDeleteAmerican politics is deeply flawed on all sides.
But you can hardly avoid admitting that members of the Democrat Party are in no position to be asking “What have the Republicans ever done for you?” when their own Party's dismal record on social and moral issues is far, far, far worse.
Obama? And the real oily lizards like Biden, Kennedy, Tom Daschle, Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the crew.